6 smart ways to get more inbound referrals from your existing clients.

CRE Success Principle: Asking for referrals shouldn’t feel forced—just wait for organic moments when a client expresses satisfaction, and then be ready to make a clear, specific request.

I’ve got some great news if you don’t like cold calling:

Grinding away at outbound prospecting isn’t the only way to find new clients.

The best commercial real estate agents know that referrals are a powerful way to build a pipeline of high-quality opportunities.

But how do you get more of them?

Here are 6 simple strategies for generating more referrals:

🤝 Deliver value beyond expectations

🤝 Quantify outcomes

🤝 Build strong relationships

🤝 Leverage client satisfaction tools

🤝 Look for organic opportunities to ask for referrals

🤝 Make specific referral requests

Too many agents don’t ask for referrals, or they ask for them in a way that feels transactional.

Once you know how to spot the right moments and position the ask correctly, you’ll have a steady stream of warm introductions coming your way.

For all the details on how you can turn these 6 proven strategies into systems that consistently bring new leads into your business, join me for episode 209 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Episode transcript:

Client acquisition is not just about the hard slog of outbound prospecting.

It's about building relationships, delivering unparalleled results, and setting up systems that facilitate a consistent flow of inbound referrals.

Now you're going to get more referrals when you're a trusted advisor whose existing clients are eager to recommend you to others.

So, in today's episode, let's go through how you can receive more referrals that will grow your revenue pipeline.

Hello, welcome to episode 209 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak.

Thank you so much for joining us. And if it's the 1st 24-hours since this episode dropped, I want to give you an extra special ‘thank you’.

On Thursdays, we take a look and see how the episode is performing in the 1st 24-hours. And we often see that it's a similar number of people who have consumed the content.

They're the people who are hanging out for us to drop that new episode, which we do every single Wednesday around lunchtime, Melbourne time.

And we really appreciate your loyalty, so, thank you if that's you.

And if it's not you and you want to be part of this special club of people who are consuming the content who are getting this information to help them to get the right people on their team serving ideal clients inside a business that just works, well, all you've got to do is subscribe to us wherever you are watching this content right now.

And I mentioned at the top of the show that we're talking about client acquisition.

And by the way, you're in the middle of a three-part series of episodes about client acquisition.

And I also said that outbound prospecting is not the only way.

That's a hard slog outbound prospecting, but it is critical.

And while I don't want to talk too much about outbound prospecting today because we're talking about referrals, I do want to quickly let you know that I will be speaking at an event for the REIV (Real Estate Institute of Victoria) on Thursday, the 27th of March 2025, that's next month.

And the topic is going to be prospecting.

And I'm going to be covering the 3 core principles of prospecting and presenting 9 specific strategies that will help you to leverage those principles and to bring them to life and to get exceptional results from the effort that you're putting in.

So, if you're already putting in a lot of effort to prospecting, but you want to really get the results the next level, I think you're going to get a lot of takeaways from this specific event that we're hosting in Melbourne or the REIV's hosting and I'm speaking at.

So, if you want more information about that, go to the REIV website and all the information will be on their events page.

So, to today's topic ‘how to get more referrals in commercial real estate’, I want to tell you a couple of fundamentals first.

The first fundamental is that we've got to be committed to delivering value beyond the expectations of our clients.

So, delivering work to the best of your ability is a non-negotiable.

Because when you deliver excellent service, that not only satisfies the client but it also creates measurable outcomes that can set you apart from the competition.

And when I say measurable outcomes, it's important that we quantify what those outcomes are, so the client understands the value of working specifically with you.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

So, when I worked in tenant rep, one of the things that I would be always telling my clients in a negotiation tracker is not just that we increase the annual escalation from 4% to 3%, for example.

I would say that we achieved that result, and that results in an X dollar of savings in the initial lease term, for example.

Now if you're not representing tenants, if you've got vendors and you're running campaigns, one thing that you can do to weave the ‘so what’ in your campaign vendor updates is to let them know where you're going above and beyond.

So, they're paying for vendor paid advertising, but maybe you're getting the word out through additional channels like your email list or your social media channels and perhaps that's resulting in X number of people getting information about the campaign.

And you can actually point to a specific number of inquiries that have come directly as a result of that, which leads to more people attending the auction and of course that results in more competitive tension on the day which produces a better result for the vendor.

So, what we want to do is just make sure we're connecting the dots, making sure that we are getting the credit for the extra work that we're doing.

And that is going to show our clients that we have something of value to deliver, and that will help them quantify the value that we can provide, if and when they do, then go above and beyond for us and actually deliver us referrals.

Now, we want to also have really strong relationships with these clients.

And of course, you know, relationships, everyone knows is fundamental in commercial real estate, but when it comes to referrals, there's a specific outcome that I want you to think about.

And that is, we want the client to be invested in your success.

And how can you do that?

I think it's when you are going to, I guess, deliver value more than they expected, also when they don't expect it.

So, when you're going out of your way to help clients when there isn't even a transaction to be done, I think that's going to build up a lot of goodwill with that client.

So that they are more invested in seeing you succeed, and it's going to, I guess, create an environment where they are more likely to do the things that are going to help you get what you want.

It's the law of reciprocity.

The best way to get what you want is to give other people what they want.

So, let's talk now about referral systems.

And there's a few ways that you can, I guess, bring out the positive stories from clients that isn't necessarily a referral but can create the environment where more referrals will come.

And one of those ways is by having testimonials, case studies and also client satisfaction surveys as part of your process.

And if you know that a client is particularly happy, and that they have agreed then to provide a testimonial, when they're writing that testimonial, they're reminded of all the great things that you've done.

That gives them tangible proof of your expertise.

It also provides some evidence for other people about your ability to serve others.

And it makes it more likely that they are going to be open to sharing that story with someone else because they've actually gone and taken the time to write down and think about how it is that you have been helpful.

And the way that you can turn that into a referral is, for example, if we get a client satisfaction survey that's particularly strong, or if we have a testimonial interview or written testimony that comes back that's particularly glowing.

There's an opportunity for us, I think, to call that client or to respond to that client or to say in the moment that we're receiving the feedback.

“Thank you so much for that feedback. We really enjoyed working with you as well, and we would love to serve more clients like you. In fact, would it be okay if you know someone with X, Y and Z attribute that you'd be willing to send them our way?”

And I think that's a better approach.

It's got more specificity than just asking for a referral, like, “Hey, we love referrals, but not giving people some context about the referral that you are looking for.”

So, that activates their reticular activating system, right?

And we teach this in our Top Performer program. We talk about what does a 5-star client look like.

We want to be able to identify what those attributes are and to reel them off so that when we're in a conversation about referrals, because the client's done something that's given us permission to ask for the referral, that we're ready to go and tell them, “This is the actual type of referral that we're looking for.”

So, then we actually get better quality referrals and not just any old referral.

So, we want to be specific about the referral that we're looking for, but also, we want to be making sure that we're asking for referrals in response to something that the client has said, and not just because we've reached a particular point in the transaction.

I can remember watching this video by Simon Senik, and he was talking about working with a mortgage broker.

And at the end of the transaction, the mortgage broker contacted him to just make sure that everything was okay, and then asked for a referral, maybe it was 2 or 3 referrals.

And it kind of rubbed Simon up the wrong way because it felt just very transactional, like, “Okay, now I've done this work, I want you to do this.”

It wasn't natural.

What you've got to do is look out for those opportunities where it seems organic that you are asking for a referral, but you know that actually you're waiting for these opportunities to come up.

So, when a client mentions, for example, somebody who they know who's unhappy with their real estate agent.

That might be too much of a layup, but maybe it's just when they're letting you know something that they're particularly happy with.

Like the story I said before, “We really appreciate that. We'd love to work with more people like you. And this is in particular the types of clients that we're looking for, and we'd be extremely grateful if you're able to refer somebody like that to us so we can continue to work with great clients.”

And you want to practice that spiel. You want to be aware of the exact types of clients that you want your clients to send you, so you're ready to go when the opportunity comes up.

Because like I said, I don't think we just out of the blue email our clients, “Hey, you got a referral for us.” Or, “Hey, can you go out there and find referrals?”

It's got to feel organic, it's got to feel natural, but it's something that you're on the lookout, you're looking for these opportunities.

So, if you're a commercial real estate principal, you've got to teach your team about how to look out for these opportunities.

And if you're not the principal, if you're an agent, well, it's your responsibility to be on the lookout for these opportunities because we want to work with more great clients.

If we've done good work for clients and they're happy, they're likely to know people who are probably similar to them, because birds of a feather flock together.

So, we want to, as much as possible, encourage those clients to send more of them who are like them to us.

And the best way to do that is to do it in a way which feels natural, not forced, and it's a natural extension of what it is that has just occurred.

So, for example, fantastic feedback.

It feels natural we might say, “Thank you so much. And you know, there's one thing that we could ask from you which is.… this.”

So, we've been talking about client acquisition.

The second episode today about client acquisition has been about referrals.

Last time we talked about how you can use more advanced strategies that perhaps you would be using an agency to help you to activate.

We've got one more episode about client acquisition, so if you want to fat a pipeline of opportunities in 2025, make sure you do join us for our next episode.

That is our episode for today though.

Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.