You want to create a mystery with referral sources and get them referring, but you want to be careful not to tell the referral source how you do what you do.
Exactly how would you do that and still get him interested in knowing more about your facility or actually starting to refer to it?
Well, here’s how: As a Physical Therapy example, what if you had the opportunity to talk to an orthopod about your “Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Rehabilitation Program.”
Let’s say your ACL Program is really good. It gets people on their feet fast and back to functioning in record time. During the meeting the referral source asks a question about your ACL Program. He or she seems quite interested, but how you handle it determines whether or not the referral source will actually refer ACL patients to you or not.
Let’s say you tell all. You tell the referral source that your approach is very advanced. Your philosophy is to be present in the operating room so that you have a greater understanding of the procedure (serious sucking up time) then afterwards you stay in the recovery room and, as soon as the patient wakes up, you get them on their feet. You tell the referral source that you would work on weight shifting, emphasizing co-contractions and… blah, blah, blah.
The referral source just looks at you coldly and says, “Not with my patients you won’t!”
Well, in this case, because you’ve gone on to explain it all in some detail you’ve create the potential for a major disagreement with the referral source. Even if he had been previously sending you patients and you results were stellar you can bet he is not going to be sending you his ACL patients. And, because there is a disagreement on how you specifically treat his ACL patients, the result of that is that he like you less.
Referral sources that don’t like you won’t refer. But, what if the referral source had heard about your great results and someone other than the clinician actually went to his office? The Referral source says to the non-clinician, “Can you tell me about your ACL Program?” And this non-clinician just says “It’s like magic – I have no idea how it works, these patients just come in, they can hardly walk and in what seems like no time at all they are running on the treadmill and doing all kinds of things. I don’t know how the program works, I just know it works!”
The referral source can AGREE with RESULTS, and thus he will like you and your facility and referral sources who like you WILL refer.
The motto here is: “NEVER TELL THE REFERRAL SOURCE HOW YOU DO WHAT YOU DO!”
Remember, if you can get the referral source to talk to you about what you are talking about there is more interest.
This also applies to how we successfully market and promote a practice overall, not just in face-to-face interactions with referral sources. In putting together promotional pieces for referral sources to read you must never tell how you do what you do, but MUST CREATE INTEREST AND A DESIRE FROM THE REFERRAL SOURCE TO KNOW MORE.
