Marketing to Referral Sources
Most of you will agree that this is the main question every
specialist asks about marketing:
"What is the best way to attract new
referral sources to my practice?"
As is true with marketing a
GP practice, there is
no single or simple answer to this question. Whoever claims otherwise is
only after your marketing money. We should begin our quest for real answers
by first talking about the main source of patient referrals.
General
Dentist Referrals:
This is usually the primary source of referrals
for specialty offices. So let's take as many general
dentists as possible to lunch and build a killer practice, right?
We all know random lunch meetings are
probably the least effective and most time consuming way of attracting new
referrals. Now, you may tell me that you have been doing this for years
and it has always worked for you; I won't argue with that.
What I am saying is
that there are techniques and methods that you should use to narrow down the
list of potential
referral sources, before picking up the Yellow Pages and randomly calling
dentists to arrange lunch meetings.
You should first answer three
important questions about your potential referral sources:
- Who?
- How?
- When?
1. Who:
Effective targeting is only possible when your referral
sources are properly identified. A successful specialist knows his/her referral sources
personally. Of course if you are dealing with a large number of
referrers, it may not be easy to have a personal familiarity with all
of them. Even if this is the case, it should not prevent you form
maintaining close connections with at least your
frequent referral sources. We have designed the "Database"
section so you can customize appropriate marketing programs for each group
of GPs.
Strategies may vary, but the first step is to gather information.
Begin
developing your Database
as soon as possible. An important issue you should always keep in mind is
that you may currently be doing very well in your area simply because you have no competition. There are a
number of
cities and towns in this country that are experiencing shortage of
specialists. But as new graduates complete their programs, every year the competition for
referral sources becomes stronger. Therefore, if you are not ready when the
competition around you starts building successful practices and gaining
referral sources, you may experience a considerable big drop in your
income.
A specialist who understands his/her referral sources can
tailor his practice
to match their expectations.
2. How:
How a general dentist makes the decision
to choose you as the specialist to refer to is a very important question to
answer. A major part of the research conducted for the content of this program has
been based on general practitioners' perspectives concerning this
question. Additionally, the "Referral
Test" serves as a valuable tool in breaking down what your referrers like
and dislike.
3. When:
The last question is about timing.
You should be ready when your referrals are. If you are an Endodontist, you
have to be ready to see your GPs emergencies when they need you. If you are
an oral surgeon, you must be able to provide timely appointments to your
referrers' patients... and the list goes on.
Although a part-time schedule may be
convenient for you, it might not be the ideal way to market your practice (more
on this later).
When marketing your practice you have two
options: one is to spend a lot of money by randomly selecting a large number
of dentist and sending them all cheap gifts. Or, using our system, narrow down your targets and follow a marketing plan that fits your
practice's budget and needs.
Begin by writing a nice letter and designing an office
brochure for potential referral sources. Print a professional referral
card (try to avoid large referral forms). Your best bet is to use a fold-in card
that is the size of your business card. I can't tell you how many
general dentists I know who simply throw out those large three-copy referral forms that
are randomly
sent to them).
When a GP office receives a tasteful
referral
card with a nice brochure, there is a higher chance of them keeping it.
However you still do not want to send these marketing packages
randomly. As I said before, the first step is gathering information.
Once you have categorized your referrers
and prospective referral offices in your database, you can then formulate a monthly
marketing plan. You want to begin with offices you think you have a
better chance of success with. These include new practices, offices
that are not happy with their present specialists and offices that have
recently lost their in-house specialists. It is your staff's job to get
this information from different offices using the recommended communication skills.
No piece of mail should be sent to an
office without at least a phone call and a person to directly send it to.
As you have seen in the "Database"
section we have
categorized the GP offices into 3 groups, those who:
- Refer frequently.
- Refer occasionally.
- Don't refer.
Your obvious goal is to shift more
practices from the lower groups to the upper ones. Keep in mind that
although you are concentrating
on getting more offices to refer to you, you should be extremely careful not
to ignore your present referral sources (more about this later).
These are a few methods you can use to get more
information to complete your database:
1- If you accept HMO insurances, start
with those companies; call them and ask them for the "list of providers"
in your area. This is where you should start your marketing.
2- Next go through the PPO provider lists.
These will be bigger lists, but are still more focused.
3- The third step is to complete your
database using the Yellow Pages or other sources that list offices within a 0-10 mile radius of your practice (Obviously how far you should go
depends on the structure of your area; select around fifty practices at a time,
starting with the closest ones.)
Every month you will follow the database list
and take a "marketing action" for each office. This could be a phone call,
an introduction letter, a birthday card to a staff member or a lunch
meeting with an occasional referrer to boost the rate of their referrals.
The following month you evaluate the result of your
"marketing action" for each practice and follow up with another set of actions.
What you are doing is painting a clear
picture of your area for yourself. You want to know who is doing what and
where the potential referral sources are. You want to know the people in
each office and their names and birthdays (completing the office profile for each
practice may require a few conversations
with the offices, but if you do it systematically you will be able to finish
it after one or two contacts). Every
specialist sends
letters or gifts to GPs; the problem is that most of them do it once, and
then stop when they
don't receive a response. Others keep sending the marketing materials without changing their approach.
One general dentist I know told me about the countless calls
he receives for lunch meetings and the
letters and referral forms he randomly receives from specialists. He also
told me about a Periodontist who kept sending him marketing packages,
completely unaware that he had an in-house Periodontist who happened to be his best friend!
What a waste!
Usually the best person to conduct the
research for your database is your nosiest staff member. You want someone
who feels comfortable asking people questions, but knows how to
do it without sounding offensive.
Another great idea for any specialty
office is to hire a "Marketing Manager". Depending on the size of your practice
you can hire someone either part time or full time to be solely in charge
of marketing. This person is the equivalent to a sales rep from a reputable
company. He/she stops by the offices, takes the gifts or marketing materials to
them, delivers reports that need to be rushed and basically keeps in touch.
Your marketing manager can be a great resource for gathering information and reminding the
referral sources of your existence. He/she can also be somewhat of a
mediator in
solving misunderstandings or miscommunications.
If cost is an issue, you can hire
someone part time or even team up with other specialists to hire one person as
the messenger of your practices. You can also use an existing staff member
who has extra time to take over this task.
Remember that when it comes to marketing, possessing the right information makes all
the difference in the world. Put yourself in a GP's shoes. Which one of
these packages would you pay more attention to?
- A randomly sent package containing
marketing materials from a specialist you don't know, or
- A congratulations card with flowers
for the birth of your son or grand daughter from a doctor you don't
know?
Wouldn't the second package surprise
you? Wouldn't the fact that they found out something this personal
about you intrigue you to think about them and to call them to say
thanks?
This is how you want to market your
practice. Get the information and surprise people by knowing things they
don't expect you to!
One mistake a lot of specialists commonly
make
when it comes to
marketing is overemphasizing the importance of referral GPs as the only method of
expanding their practices. A smart practitioner sets up his/her practice so that
only around 50% of his referrals come from other doctors, while the rest
come
directly from patients or various other marketing sources.
In the "Income" section you will find a
more detailed plan for marketing to all your possible referral sources. |
