Instead of hiring salespeople or running ads, you pay people a percentage of revenue they help generate. They introduce you to potential customers, you close the deal, and they get paid when you get paid.

Simple structure: "Introduce me to someone who buys, get X% of what they pay."

The reason this works comes down to alignment. You only pay when revenue comes in. They only make money when you make money. Nobody's taking a risk on salary or ad spend that might not work.

Why Some Businesses Can Do This (And Others Can't)

This model works best when you have:

• Strong unit economics. If your margins are healthy and you're paying 20–30% commission, you still keep a strong profit. That math works.
• Fast close cycles. The quicker someone goes from introduction to customer, the faster your partners see results. Long deals kill momentum.
• Repeatable delivery. You need to handle more customers without rebuilding everything from scratch. If delivery isn't scalable, you'll hit a ceiling fast.

SaaS, high-ticket services, consulting, and agencies tend to fit the profile. Low-margin businesses or ones with complex sales cycles have a harder time making the model work.

What It Actually Looks Like

In practice, you end up with a small network of people who occasionally send opportunities your way. Not a sales team. Not employees. Just people who happen to know potential customers and are happy to make introductions for a cut.

Some months, one person brings you multiple deals. Other months, nobody brings anything. It's inconsistent at first, but over time, the volume stabilizes.

The key is making the process frictionless: clear commission rate, simple tracking, fast payment. The moment you add complexity or delay payments, people stop participating.

The Compounding Part

Where this gets interesting is when it starts to compound.

One partner brings you revenue. You pay them fairly. They're happy, so they tell a friend who also has access to your target market. Now you have two people bringing in deals.

After a few months, you might have a handful of active partners. Not all of them are consistent, but collectively they generate more pipeline than you could alone.

You end up spending most of your time closing deals instead of finding them. Which, if you're good at closing, means you can focus on what you're actually best at.

The Tradeoffs

This isn't perfect. You're giving up margin. A 25% commission on every deal adds up. If you closed those deals yourself, you'd keep more money.

But the calculus is simple: would you have closed those deals yourself? And more importantly, do you have the time and energy to find that many opportunities on your own?

Often the answer is no. You can either close fewer deals that you found yourself—or more deals that others brought you. Even after paying commissions, the second option typically wins.

What Breaks This Model

A few things can make this fall apart:

• Thin margins. If you're only making a small profit, paying out commissions doesn't work.
• Long sales cycles. If deals take forever to close, partners lose motivation.
• Inconsistent delivery. If you can’t deliver good results, partners stop referring because it reflects badly on them.
• Poor communication. If people don’t know when they’re getting paid or how much, trust erodes quickly.

This model requires a solid business already. It's a scaling mechanism, not a fix for broken fundamentals.

Implementation Notes

If you're considering this, here's what matters most:

• Keep the commission structure simple. One percentage, applied consistently.
• Pay quickly. Same day or next day if possible. People remember fast payments.
• Track everything transparently. Use a simple spreadsheet or tool where partners can see their referrals and earnings.
• Start with people you already know. Your first partners should trust you and understand your business.
• Define a qualified referral. Be clear upfront so there’s no confusion later.

Why This Isn't More Common

Most business owners are uncomfortable giving up margin. It feels like they're "losing" money.

But that framing misses the point. You're not losing margin on deals you would have closed anyway. You're gaining deals you wouldn't have had access to.

The shift is treating commission as a customer acquisition cost, not a loss of profit. If you’d pay $2K in ads to acquire a customer, why not pay a person $2K to introduce you to one?

If You're Thinking About This

Start small. Find one or two people who already have access to your ideal customers. Offer them a straightforward commission deal. See if it works.

If it does, expand slowly. Don’t try to build a huge network overnight. Just add partners as you find people who fit.

And be honest about whether your business model supports it. If the margins aren’t there or the sales cycle is too long, forcing it won’t help.

But if the fundamentals are right, this can be one of the cleanest, most efficient ways to scale—without the overhead of a traditional sales team or the unpredictability of paid ads.