Three ways to exceed clients’ expectations.

CRE Success Principle: If you want to truly delight - and not just satisfy - your clients, take the time to engineer a surprising moment that makes them say, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!"

Exceeding client expectations can transform your business. But how do you do it consistently? Here are three powerful strategies:

✅ Use proactive communication: Anticipate challenges before they arise and provide solutions before your clients ask. Share insights on what they can expect from the process before it happens. Clients appreciate clear, timely updates. Don’t wait for them to check in; keep them informed every step of the way.

✅ Add value beyond transactions: Go beyond the transaction by offering insights, resources or referrals that benefit your clients in the long run. You can connect clients with valuable resources like contractors, lawyers or even professionals unrelated to the property sector. If you have developed a more personal relationship with them, you can offer them something that will help in their personal life. Share resources and become a strategic partner.

✅ Take ownership: Be the calm, confident voice when things go wrong. Take responsibility and ensure client satisfaction, even when issues are beyond your control.

Empower your team with real-life examples and watch referrals and repeat business grow. To learn more about how to build lasting client loyalty and set yourself apart in the competitive commercial real estate market, join me for episode 215 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Episode transcript:

 Let's kick off the show today with a couple of quick questions:

Can you remember the last time that you really exceeded your client's expectations?

Are you consistently meeting your client's expectations?

I hope that you are. And if you are not sure, I want to bring to light some ways that my expectations have been exceeded over the last few days, and then give you three ways that you can start exceeding your client's expectations in your commercial real estate business.

Hello and welcome to episode 215 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name's Darren Krakowiak. I'm the host of the show. And I really appreciate you joining us for another episode.

I'm here to help commercial real estate principals to accelerate revenue growth by building the right team, serving ideal clients, and implementing scalable systems.

And in today's episode, I want to share with you just a few ways that my expectations have been exceeded over the last few days. I've got three quick stories to tell you.

My favourite of the three is one, involving a football game that I went to with my daughter last weekend.

Well, a couple of weekends ago by the time this episode is released, but it was a football day that her kindergarten had organised to go and see Melbourne versus the Gold Coast at the MCG.

Now, if you know anything about football, you'll know that that would be a pretty dull affair from an atmospheric perspective, although the teams were pretty evenly matched going into the game.

But based on the fact that it was kind of a nothing game, I just thought, “Ah, I don't think I'll go to that.”

And then one of the parents said to me, “Oh, you're coming on Saturday? You should go. It's going to be good. These other kids are going from Juna's class.”

And I said, “Okay, alright, I will go.” So, I paid the money and they started exceeding my expectations massively, right?

So, it was $45 for me and my daughter to attend, which seems reasonable, but then they gave us a show bag.

And this show bag contained so many good things, including paraphernalia for the Melbourne Football Club because, even though we're not supporters of the club, we’re there as their guests because one of the parents from the kid works for the Melbourne Football Club. So they gave us all this Melbourne football gear, which was great.

But it wasn't just the show bag. We then got an email two days before the actual football game, which, first of all, we’d got great seats.

Just the week before I'd been at the footy to watch Carlton versus Hawthorne there with a friend who is a member of the MCC.

So, I was sitting in the Jim Stynes Grill in the members’ area, which was a very nice sort of place to be.

But for this $45 experience for me and my daughter, we had two seats right in front of the Jim Stynes Grill on the second level, so it was very premium seating.

But, even better than that, they told us that we were going to be invited to be involved in the guard of honour, which is where some extreme fans of the club get to line up and cheer on the team as they run onto the field.

So, we actually got to be on the ground before the game starts, as the team song comes on and the players run through the team banner.

And it just blew me away. I was like, “Wow, I cannot believe that we are invited to do this.”

And it was absolutely, it was fantastic. In fact, it was so good that my daughter said to me on the way home from the football, “Daddy, can we go to the football every Saturday?”

Now I think she's probably going to have very high expectations of what a day at the footy involves in terms of the fact that she got to be on the ground and be there to cheer on the players as they ran onto the field.

But still, it was a pretty good introduction for her first football game. And the point is, is that my expectations were massively exceeded.

There was something that happened the day before I went to that game that also exceeded my expectations that I wanted to tell you about.

So, I went to a book launch and I don't know if I've been to a book launch before.

Certainly, not for a book launch of someone who I know, but Luigi Prestinenzi, who has been a guest on this podcast many, many years ago, back in season two when we used to do seasons, episode 18, when he was at Sales IQ Group.

He was a guest on the podcast talking about sales skills. And he's actually launched a book with his business partner, David, which is called the B2B Sales Playbook.

And it was a free event at a very nice venue and the food was really good. So, already my expectations were exceeded.

But then when I got there, they gave us a free copy of the book, which I thought was nice. I thought they were going to ask me to pull out my wallet and pay for the book, which I would've happily done. But they were there for free.

And in fact, during the book launch remarks, David, the co-author said, “You can take as many books as you want. We want to get them out there.”

So, I took another book. I walked out there with two beautiful hardbound books on B2B sales.

But the real kicker for me, in terms of this event exceeding my expectations was a wonderful speech that was given by Luigi's son and daughter just about what their Dad meant to them.

And it blew me away, just what a good speech it was. As a parent, you couldn't help but think of how proud he must have been that his kids got up there and said that about him.

And a nice little touch is they had a competition for the most creative way to get the word out about the event and the book.

And I'm not telling you this story to be in the running because I think that there would be a lot of people with much higher profiles than me posting because it was a well-attended event with many influential people.

But it did really stick with me as a way to try and help them get the word out because it was just such an excellent event.

Now the third way that my expectations have been exceeded recently is, well, it comes off the back of an experience where I nearly wanted to cancel my membership in this club.

But then they ended up exceeding my expectations and now I'm a happy member and I'm a much more engaged member of this club. It's the RACV Club.

And look, they kind of let me down when I joined because I think that they gave me unrealistic expectations of a couple of the benefits of membership and the benefits of membership where my expectations were not met were the key reasons why I joined.

So, I kind of put the hammer down and said, “Right, you're not admitting my expectations. I want to cancel the membership, because I don't think that you can serve me.”

But they did come back to me a few days later and then they fixed it. And they fixed it some more.

And as a result of their attention to my issues that I raised, I'm actually now hosting a client event through them next month where I'm bringing together 10 commercial real estate principals to have a day of masterminding, which is going to be awesome.

So, they've exceeded my expectations. I've gone and then become a better member of the club.

But then I also decided to go along to the membership, the new members event that they had recently – and I was hoping I would win the raffle, which I didn't.

But I learned about a mentoring program that they have where more senior members of the club will mentor their more junior members.

And I'm probably on the cusp of like younger or older, but I thought, “You know what? I mentor a lot of people in my business. I think it's time for me to get mentored. It had been a while since I've had one.”

So, they've partnered me up with a mentor, and the mentor who I've been partnered with is just a fantastic match.

We've had one meeting so far and I'm meeting him for lunch again later this week, and I'm just really, pleased with how it's been coordinated so far.

So, the RACV Club has exceeded my expectations there.

And it's also my birthday coming up this month, and they just sent me a $50 gift voucher for my birthday as well, so a little cherry on top.

So, I've told you those stories because I think they're just a few examples, positive examples, of what happens when you exceed expectations.

I think it's always good to manage expectations, but one little strategy that you can try and deploy is to hold something back, right?

Even if it's a small thing, if you hold something back and it becomes a bonus or a surprise that you can give to people after they've already decided to work with you to give you their business, that makes them feel even better about their decision.

So, just to wrap up the episode, I wanted to give you three ways that you might like to exceed expectations for clients in your commercial real estate business.

And the first way to exceed your client's expectations is just to be really proactive with communication, to give them what they want before they even ask.

And I don't know if that's extremely difficult to do because when you think about it, we take clients through a journey of A to Z, and if they're up to L, then you know what's coming up at M-N-O and P, and you can anticipate that and provide it to your clients before they even ask for it.

So, it's as simple as sharing insights before a client expects them and providing real clarity on what it is that they can expect next in a process. Telling them things that they don't expect you to tell them about is exceeding their expectations.

The second way that you might like to exceed your client's expectations is to look for ways to add value beyond the transaction or beyond the scope of the service for which you have been appointed.

So become more of a strategic partner than just a person who's handling a listing or managing a property.

Simple ways to do this include connecting people that would be of use to your clients. That could be fit-out contractors or lawyers or accountants or mortgage brokers.

And it could actually be someone who has nothing to do with property, but you just believe would be a good introduction for you to provide to your client.

Another way that you can do this is just to share helpful resources that, again, your client isn't expecting from you.

And, I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but I'll tell you the story again because it's been a while.

Back when I was in Korea, one of my team members had a client whose baby was having trouble sleeping.

And the member of my team had gone through a similar situation with his son, and he had read a book by something like The Baby Whisper. (It could be lost in translation because it was a Korean book).

But he gave this book to the client to basically say, “This really helped me and my wife when we were trying to work through issues with our infant sons sleeping. It might help you.”

And that is adding value beyond the transaction, and that's really going to be something that is exceeding your client's expectations.

The third and final way that I think you can exceed the expectations of your clients is to take accountability and ownership for everything that's going on, especially when things don't go according to plan.

So, you can be the calm, confident voice when something goes wrong. You take responsibility for the delays the issues, even if it wasn't your fault, because you are the one who wants to ensure satisfaction and a smooth transaction for your client.

And you know, I'm not suggesting that we start indulging in scope creep. This is more just about the ultimate, I guess, result that we're trying to reach and doing what we can to help make that result happen and being responsible for it.

So, which of those three approaches to exceed your client's expectations could you adopt in your business?

Start with one. Your role as the leader is to empower your team members with real stories and real examples of how they can deploy the exceeding of expectations with their clients so that referrals and repeat business start to take care of itself.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.