Expand your practice with the smart referral plan.
Referrals are one of the best ways of finding new clients. A referral is a person who comes to you via mouth publicity of a satisfied client or partner. The referral already has a certain amount of confidence in you since a person he or she trusts has recommended you. At the same time this new client is aware about your payment plans, schedule structure, and the advantages you bring to the table. In other words, he or she doesn’t need a lot of convincing to come on board. However, it is surprising that only 29% of business will ask their customers to refer their business or product.
What drives referrals?
Building Referral Communities
You can build referral networks by connecting with people who share the same values as you and want to help you because you want to help them
Getting Referrals from Customers
Satisfied customers are usually willing to refer another customer, unfortunately this easy route is hardly utilised by the best of businesses.
How to Build Referral Communities and Partners?
You have to first identify partners. Make a list of people or businesses that cater to similar customers as you. They could be physicians of other specialties or other healthcare stakeholders. Of course, they shouldn’t be direct competition. Inquire if they would like to be part of your network group and promote each other for mutual benefit. Whoever responds positively you can explore the relationship and set the framework to move forward.
How will your partnership function?
Set guidelines and discuss the finer points of the partnership. Once you agree how the partnership is going to work, then you need to share the kind of referrals you are looking for. You could also discuss what kind of patients you are looking for and if something needs to be done before passing on the reference. You and your partner may need some training to shortlist the right customers for each other.
What kind of a Partner are You?
You may have different kinds of partners. Those who share profits or promote your services for commission; Partners who are willing to promote their products and share the data; Partners who are willing to share content on their social networks. If your partners are in related fields and can be your customers, they are the best people to be in your network. You could also chalk out an action plan you think is best for each other. For example. You could have weekly or monthly targets and agree to the commission.
Using Networks Communities Effectively
Your networks have to be correctly aligned to work like an efficient machine. Once you get the initial agreements in order, you have to nurture your contacts. You have to constantly engage with them and find out how they are doing. Their first priority is of course their own business. Your job is to stay on their minds so that at every new opportunity they remember that they could share that with you.
Staying in Touch
Connect with your network at every opportunity and just to say hello when you have none. Use every means available including email, social media and snail mail. It is therefore important to understand how important it is to align mindsets and target audiences because you will have to invest time and effort in the relationship. You can also meet them or partner with them at online and offline events. Offline includes trade shows, seminars, and conferences. Online events could include webinars, podcasts and live online events on various social media platforms.
You can set targets for yourself about the number of people you'll add to your network. Of course the more the merrier, but you could start with say 50 a day on various social media networks (Facebook and LinkedIn) and grow upto 500 through the week.
Set aside some time for each person or body of persons in the network to discuss any action plan or the way to move forward. Here you are just reconnecting and engaging and not selling because without meaningful conversations you cannot expect partnerships.
Creating and Using Sales Funnels
Your efforts should help your partners to buy from you or open doors for you. Whatever the route it should ultimately convert into sales. Introductions will include data i.e. name, email, phone number. Once you contact the prospect you can nurture the relationship further into a customer.
An automated sales funnel is really helpful so that you don’t have to remind someone to send emails or other messages. Modern CRMs can be programmed by timing or even based on the actions of prospects. Which means your communications to prospects can be timed according to their convenience, on their preferred channel and each action from their side can trigger another action or communication in your automated Relationship Manager.
Cross promotions
When you are cross promoting you have to be clear what you are promoting for your partner and what your partner is promoting for you.
You need the following setup while cross promoting.
1. A page where prospects can come and enter information
2. A Thank you page where you start a relationship with the prospect
3. A sequence of value add, information, and education that prospects will appreciate you as an expert in your field and get ready to buy from you.
Your networks should generate enough leads for you since you have been working closely with them. The better part of this plan is that this is not expensive. That is the advantage of being promoted on some other credible person’s network. When you create lead magnets (assets that you can give for free, including information, free checkup etc.) for these prospects they will easily give you their names, phone numbers and email addresses.
Once your referral machinery is working smoothly then retargeting them on social media becomes easier and more economical. Here too automated systems are highly effective.
Getting Referrals from Customers
Once prospects become customers, you can follow a similar game plan to get references from them.
Give Your Patients the Attention They Seek
In a world where everybody is seeking attention through various means, patients who come to you because of a medical need, will appreciate if the people they come in contact with are empathetic to their situation and willing to help. This is the time patients will be satisfied that they are getting not only medical attention, but also much needed human attention. Mistakes, errors, cancellation of appointments happen everywhere, and most patients are aware that even doctors and medical staff are human, but where special attention, they believe they deserve, is given to patients they will go out of their way to refer other patients. Staff that is trained to build a rapport with the clients are a big asset to the business.
Making Things a Little Easy
Sometimes a doctor is unable to attend to a patient, because the patient lives far away or the patient is travelling or the doctor has an emergency situation and has to cancel a scheduled appointment. This kind of situation although not frequent are not rare either. However, a seemingly negative situation can be turned into a positive experience when the doctor compensates his or her absence by reaching out through video conferencing. This kind of gestures make the patients believe that their doctor not only provides them a service, but actually cares.
Similarly, reminders to take prescription and dosage so patients do not forget to take their medicine and reminders about their next visit is given to the patient, it will greatly help them.
At the same time scheduling, cancellation and rescheduling of appointments together with billing are not an easy procedure in many clinics. Patients will acknowledge any help to make this procedure easier and smooth.
Giving the Right Information at the Right Time
New and existing patients are on a lookout for answers and information about their symptoms and illness. They appreciate whoever provides the information and such information is usually circulated among their group. It is best when the information is provided by a qualified person or medical body. In such a situation when all queries are answered to satisfaction whether it is an existing patient or potential customer, they will gladly forward the reference of the answering body.
How do you Get Referrals from Clients?
The best way to get a referral from your patients is simply to ask for it. You can create a referral team by looking at all the opportunities you have to connect to patients and optimizing your referral process.
A simple board asking for referrals in the clinic should be enough to remind your patients about referring the people they know, who could benefit from your services. Similarly, a trained staff who builds rapport with patients and asks for referrals during interactions can also be helpful.
Holding events, workshops and camps are another way of attracting new clients. A feedback form can be a great way to get names and numbers. You could also include an enquiry form regarding their medical condition to give you a better picture.
Building referrals at every opportunity.
Having an automated system that helps your staff do the repetitive tasks can also help in getting referrals from patients. Ask for referrals at the end of the message whenever you send reminders about appointments or taking medicines. Similarly, every good experience by the patient can be followed up with an invitation for feedback. Such a message can also be followed by a request for referral.
If you have your own online portal, you could provide the information regarding your specialty which can be referred to by existing and potential patients. Coming from a qualified source the information will be gladly forwarded to other needy friends and relations automatically creating referral sources. Landing pages and forms can collect data from curious patients who land on your website creating new prospects.
Much of the continuous efforts to get new referrals can be automated because they are repetitive tasks. Other than that, all physical interactions can simply be cordial and satisfying experiences making happy customers who are willing to pass on any referrals they have.
