Referrals Run On Borrowed Trust: Eight Questions Your Colleagues Ask Before They Refer You
By Sue-Ella Prodonovich | August 2026
Key takeaways
• An internal referral is a bonus, not an entitlement. Your colleague lends you their standing and expects it back intact.
• Colleagues judge how you’ll treat their client by watching how you treat them.
• Being liked shapes who gets referred more than most professionals will admit.
• A fast ‘no’ protects the relationship. It’s the slow yes that does the damage.
• The prize is real. Heidi Gardner puts the uplift from cross-practice work at 5 to 12% of revenue.
Internal referrals are the cheapest growth your firm will ever buy. There’s no pitch, and no panel, and no procurement portal. A colleague simply says you’re worth talking to, and a door opens. Heidi Gardner, who wrote Smarter Collaboration (2022), puts the prize at 5 to 12% of revenue, available to most professional services firms simply by shifting the mix of work across practices.
Yet in medium and large firms, that door often stays shut. Once a partnership grows too big for everyone to break bread together, cross-introductions slow to a trickle. Partners will tell you the referral programme needs work, or that the incentives are wrong, or that everyone’s flat out. Few will tell you the real reason, which is that an experience let them down once and they haven’t forgotten it.
The cause is usually etiquette, or, as Billy Field sang in the 80s, just bad habits.
Before anyone in your firm refers you, they run a quick check. Here’s eight questions that could be top of mind, and what to do about each one…
A REFERRAL IS A BONUS, NOT AN ENTITLEMENT
Internal referral etiquette is the set of habits that make a colleague willing to introduce you to their client. It covers how quickly you respond, how you charge, how you communicate and how you share the credit.
On paper, referral programmes look simple enough. In practice, referrals run on borrowed trust. A referrer does more than pass on a name. They lend you their standing with someone they value. So your colleague isn’t only asking whether you’re good at your work - they’re also asking whether the referral will cost them a hard-earned relationship.
So, start by removing the entitlement mindset. Most firms expect their people to co-operate, and assume internal referrals will follow. But there is some tension and an Australian partner made the point with a shrug. “When I refer work to an expert in another firm they go out of their way to look after me and the client. They know I’ve got choices, so they prepare more … they are more respectful.”
WHY BEING LIKED DECIDES WHO GETS REFERRED
Most professionals will tell you that technical skill beats likeability, but the research says otherwise. Casciaro and Sousa Lobo (2005) studied how networks form, and how people choose who to work with, and liking did far more work than anyone expected…
“Personal feelings played a more important role in forming work relationships (not friendships at work but job-oriented relationships) than is commonly acknowledged. They were even more important than evaluations of competence.”
Their conclusion is blunt and useful. “If someone is liked, their colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence they have to offer.”
The reverse also holds. Colleagues will work around a difficult expert rather than through one, and a referral is the easiest thing in the world to withhold. Nobody ever has to explain why they didn’t make it.
If you’re competent but misunderstood, one remedy is unglamorous. Be seen. Regular exposure raises familiarity, and familiarity raises liking. Turn up on the floor, and to the practice group meeting, and to the odd firm social, and let people form a view of you that isn’t built on email alone.
TABLE: Where colleagues place you, and what it costs you in referrals (Adapted for internal referrals from Casciaro and Sousa Lobo’s competence and likeability matrix.
TREAT YOUR COLLEAGUE LIKE A GOOD CLIENT
Your colleagues judge how you’ll treat their client by watching how you treat them. So treat them as you’d treat a good client you can’t afford to lose. Ask the referrer how they want to be kept informed, then do exactly that. Copied on emails? Done. Included in milestone meetings? No worries. Consulted when a matter looks like heading south? Of course.
EIGHT QUESTIONS YOUR COLLEAGUES ASK BEFORE THEY REFER YOU
1. Are you hard work?
Possibly, and nobody’s going to tell you. This is Casciaro and Sousa Lobo’s research, made personal. You may be the best in the firm at what you do, and still be the person nobody refers. Difficult experts get used, not recommended. If two people in your firm can handle a matter, the pleasant one will get it, and your colleague won’t feel the need to justify the choice.
2. Do you charge like the rest of us?
Not if you bill for the time it takes to open a thank-you email. The relationship partner, meanwhile, is generous to a fault with their own value. Clients accept that different specialisations carry different rates. A tax controversy expert won’t charge like a compliance adviser, and nobody expects otherwise.
What clients won’t accept is one firm with two philosophies about money. That’s where trust in the firm, as distinct from trust in you, does its quiet work. Ask the referrer what the client has already been told about fees, and do it before you send the engagement letter.
3. Do you play with sharp elbows?
Call it sharp elbows or call it bad manners, because your colleague will. It looks like this. You approach the client’s other executives without telling the introducer, and you take days to own up to a mistake, and your patience with a slow introduction runs out so you ring the client yourself. Or you host a celebration at the end of the matter, and invite the client, and invite the deal team, and forget the colleague who referred you.
Asking forgiveness rather than permission is not a trust strategy. Once is forgetfulness, or urgency. Twice is a pattern, and your colleague will read it as being treated like a mug.
4. Are you too busy?
Capacity is a fair constraint but silence isn’t. Your colleague spends relationship capital the moment they make the introduction, and every quiet day spends a little more of it.
The signs are familiar to anyone who’s made a cross-introduction. The call takes three days to return, and the first meeting is re-scheduled, and then the work quietly lands with a junior, and the referrer hears about it from the client rather than from you.
If you can’t take the matter, say so within a day and offer someone who can. A fast ‘no’ protects the relationship. It’s the slow yes that does the damage, and good work later rarely repairs it.
5. Will you record who sent the work?
Most firms have a system that records where the work came from. InterAction+, Introhive, a field on the matter opening form, or a line in the practice management system. Filling it in takes about thirty seconds.
Skip it and your colleague’s origination numbers don’t move, and the credit never reaches the partner scorecard. At many firms that flows through to remuneration.
Worse, you’ve put them in the position of having to ask, and asking for credit is just awkward.
So record it when you open the matter, not later. Then copy the referrer on the confirmation, so they can see it’s done and never have to raise it.
6. Will you take their client seriously?
One partner’s important client may be a minnow beside the clients you serve, and it shows. Your response is perfunctory, and perhaps a little judgmental (people always notice).
I once introduced a business advisory partner in an accounting firm to a commercial lawyer, then followed up on how it had gone. They resented the follow-through, then complained the project was smaller than they’d hoped. They haven’t heard from me since. Small matters are how colleagues audition you for large ones.
7. Will you outshine them?
You might, and your colleague has already thought about it. Relationship building is your superpower. Likeability, easy charm and instant rapport come to you free of charge. That can also unsettle a quieter or less confident colleague, who’s wondering what happens if the client likes you more than them.
So be their wingman. Power down the extroversion, and hand them the microphone in the meeting, and make them look good in front of their own client. Generosity here buys you referrals for years, and costs you nothing that matters.
8. Have they had long enough to know you?
Not yet. Lateral hires start with a credit rating of zero. Colleagues need time to learn how you work, what you’re good at, and how long you plan to stay. Personal trust is earned in months rather than weeks, and no amount of biography shortens it.
So make the first referral easy to say yes to. Ask for something small, deliver it visibly, and report back to the referrer before they have to ask. Do that twice and the third referral will find you.
WHAT CHEESES YOU OFF?
I’m collecting pet peeves for a follow-up piece on referral etiquette. The survey takes about three minutes, it’s completely anonymous, and there’s no IP tracking. Tell me what makes you think twice about referring a colleague, and I’ll use the best of them next time.
ONE THING TO DO THIS WEEK
Pick the last colleague who referred you work. Send them a short note on what happened to the matter, and what the client said about it. That’s the whole task, and it takes five minutes.
Referral etiquette isn’t a programme, and it doesn’t need a committee, and it won’t ever show up on a scorecard. It’s the ordinary courtesy you’d extend to a client you can’t afford to lose, applied to the colleague sitting down the hall.
Firms that get this right don’t talk about referral programmes very much. They’re too busy making cross-introductions.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is referral etiquette in a professional services firm?
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Referral etiquette is the set of habits that make a colleague willing to introduce you to their client. It covers how quickly you respond, how you charge, how you communicate and how you share the credit. Firms often invest in referral programmes and neglect the etiquette that makes them work.
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Usually because a past referral cost them something. The colleague was slow, or was dismissive about the size of the matter, or charged in a way the client didn’t expect, or went around the introducer. Partners rarely complain about any of this. They simply stop referring, and nobody has to explain why.xt goes here
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It matters more than most professionals expect. Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo (2005) found that personal feelings shaped work relationships more strongly than assessments of competence. Their line is worth remembering: if someone is liked, colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence they have to offer.
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Ask them at the start, then do what they asked. Some want copies of emails, some want a seat at milestone meetings, and most want a call before anything goes wrong. Report back once the matter closes, and tell them what the client said about it.
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Slowly, and by starting small. New colleagues need time to learn how you work and whether you plan to stay. Ask for a small referral, deliver it visibly, and report back before anyone has to chase you. Two of those, and the third referral arrives without being asked for.
WANT MORE?
If you’d like to discuss your Firm’s approach to referrals and business development email Sue-Ella or schedule a call.
If you’re a busy practitioner who wants to sound out ideas about referrals inside your firm, book a private consultation with Sue-Ella at www.bd45.com.au
References and further reading
Sue-Ella’s articles
• How Does The Referral Relationship Work
• Why Your Referrals May Have Dried Up and What to Do
• How to Repay a Referral When You Can’t Refer Back
External references
• Casciaro T and Sousa Lobo M (2005) Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks. Harvard Business Review, 83(6), pp. 92–99.
• Casciaro T and Sousa Lobo M (2008) When Competence Is Irrelevant: The Role of Interpersonal Affect in Task-Related Ties. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53(4), pp. 655–684.
• Gardner H K and Matviak I A (2022) Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work. Harvard Business Review Press.
• Gardner H K (2017) Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos. Harvard Business Review Press. The 5 to 12% revenue benchmark comes from Gardner’s “Money on the Table”, The American Lawyer, October 2018.
• Field B (1981) Bad Habits. WEA Records.
ABOUT SUE-ELLA
Sue-Ella is the Principal of Prodonovich Advisory, a business dedicated to helping professional services practices sharpen their business development and client engagement practices.
She works with law and accounting firms on Business Development strategy and support structures, leadership and professional-development programs, and designing client-listening initiatives.
She co-facilitates firm planning retreats and delivers public workshops such as Business Skills for Lawyers.
And through her BD45™ service, she assists individuals with their personal business-development plans.
Connect on LinkedIn or visit prodonovich.com.au
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