https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlPx4lBOKbg

Welcome to the Podcast

If you're joining us on the Jameson Facebook page. I want to say welcome. And thank you for taking the time out of your day to learn and think a little bit with me on how to grow your practice in a healthy and fulfilling way. If you're not in the dental industry, I have a lot of connections outside of dentistry that this topic we're going to talk about today is not only for our dental friends and those in this profession that we call our own, but also for anyone that is leading or owning a small business.  

The topic for today is more of growing your ideal patient base by referrals. So for any of you, that are not in dentistry, insert “customer” or “client” where the word patient is, and this will definitely go across all industries in terms of how we can healthily continue to grow our businesses, our practices, patient by patient, client by client, drip by drip. In my opinion, in times like the one we find ourselves in at this point, it's crucial to go back to the basics on what are the pillars of a healthy business.

How do you grow your ideal patient base?

And one of the foundational pillars of your healthy business are referrals from those ideal patients, those ideal customers and clients that have allowed you to be healthy and stable up to this point at Jameson, we are a 30 year old company and we would not be where we are today without the continuous support and referrals from our clients. The same can be said for you. When we talk about this, I want you to think about coming together as a team and discussing how we can grow our practices, referrals in a healthy way. What can we be doing better? What can we be doing more intentionally? And what can we be focusing on starting today to ensure more referrals from our ideal patients tomorrow, we want more of that, right? At this time, I want to invite any of you that have not already subscribed to follow the Jameson files podcast you can do.

So at any of the outlets that you listen to podcasts—iTunes, Google Play, Spotify—we are there. And I invite you to go find us to subscribe and please share with your friends and colleagues if you feel like the information we share on a regular basis is beneficial to you. And more than likely it would be beneficial to others. So I'm practicing what I preach. And I'm asking you for referrals to help us grow our Jameson files community. Thanks in advance for doing so. Let's dig into some content. 

How do you get referrals?

When I think about referrals, and as I was preparing for this session, I was thinking about where we are right now, but also where historically these conversations have taken place with clients or lecture attendees, or  people in the profession that we are a part of. And what I often see happening is that we typically put band-aids on top of an issue in the hope that it's going to fix it.

And we never really get down to the root cause of why that particular system or process isn't working well enough for us or why we aren't getting the results that we desire. So it's important that we get real with ourselves about the areas we could be doing better. 

So if you have a goal for 2021 that you want to be seeing more new patients, you want to be getting more referrals from your existing patient family, then it's important that we do the work to refine our efforts as they are now for a better tomorrow. So what we're going to talk about today are four areas that I want you to focus on, refine, do better about, be more consistent in, and be more intentional with. I want you to ask. I want you to deliver. I want you to track. And I want you to appreciate. So let's dig in.

One: Ask

Let's start with asking. Often when I get in conversations with dentists, with practice leaders, and with business owners about the desire to see more referrals coming from those that already work with you or already consider you their dental home, we start thinking immediately about gimmicks. Well, a gimmick is a band-aid, people. If you aren't already getting the types of referrals you desire, chances are you aren't doing the basic necessities to get those results. 

Be Consistent

So the first thing I want you to do is to ask, are you really consistently asking your patients when they're with you to send their friends and family to your practice? Sometimes we worry that it might sound desperate. Sometimes we worry that it may be an uncomfortable ask. Well, the more you practice it, the more you become comfortable with those conversations, the more likely you'll be consistent in it, and the more likely your patients will indeed refer. Practice makes perfect. 

Practice

We have a team member here at Jameson that is also a practicing hygienist. I love to tell the story that she shares regularly—asking for referrals from her patients at first was very uncomfortable for her. But what she did was, she wrote out how she ideally would want to say it and put it on a post-it note and stuck it on her steering wheel. So driving to work every morning, she practiced the verbal skills that she needed to effectively ask and comfortably ask for referrals. That practice in turn made her more comfortable in the realtime moments with patients. And then they finally would start to become more of a habit for her. We had to take small steps to create those big habits. And so by doing those little things to remind yourself, little triggers to practice and get more comfortable, we'll ensure that you're more consistent across the board.

Daily Huddle

Consistency, consistency, consistency is key. So whatever little triggers and cues you can put into your day to day as a team are going to help you create these healthy habits of asking for referrals more regularly, talking about it in your daily huddle, determining who on the team is going to ask whom for a referral. When are those ideal beloved raving fan patients coming in, and who's going to be talking to them? This must be mastered. 

And this must also be talked about. We need to be making time for those conversations in your daily huddles—a great time. As you're orchestrating the most productive day possible together, that would be a great thing to orchestrate as well. Choreographing, who is asking your patients for referrals at the right times when they're with you in the practice, giving your patients the tools to talk about you, social media, and your online presence is a perfect opportunity to use those raving fans and those amazing dental stories to help you gain more attention from your community.

Testimonials and a Digital Presence

Having those raving fans that are already referring to you by sharing their testimonials and video, using before and after stories, and using these stories and videos in your website, on your social media platforms—these are very connective and meaningful, real life experiences that your potential patients out in your community are going to connect with. I see a lot of our clients doing amazing, amazing before and after stories and using video testimonials to really strengthen the trust level of their practice within their community. And this can be said for any small business using your clients and customers as the story. 

It’s the real life connection that people are looking for when they're trying to make decisions for themselves on who they want to go to for their dental home. On our marketing team, we use video, we use photography. We use this all the time in our digital presence for our clients because that is such an emotionally connective piece.

So thinking through your ideal patients, those amazing stories and, and getting permission from them to use their story in your communications efforts can be very, very powerful. So when you're doing this, making sure you're giving cards to friends and family members that they can share, giving them to your patients, posting on social media, having as many of your team members that are comfortable in doing so, promoting your business, asking at appointments, it's going to start to be more and more important and giving your patients the tools to talk about you. 

Ask for What You Need

What is it that you're wanting from your patients? We want to make sure that we are giving them the tools to talk about us. So whether that's wanting more referrals, whether that's wanting more reviews, whatever you're working for in the months ahead, start getting comfortable with asking your patients. They may not know that's something you need from them.

And if they love you, they want you to be successful. If they love you, they want you to have the grapes. Patients have their friends and family coming to you as well. So get comfortable with being uncomfortable practice, practice, practice, use your team meetings, your daily huddles, use your social media and external outlets to make room for yourself and make this a habit in your practicing days. 

Two: Deliver

So that's ask and the next one is deliver. If you aren't delivering an exceptional new patient-experience or overall-patient experience, it's going to be very difficult to hit any new patient or referral goals. Because if you're not delivering something exceptional, why would anyone want to talk about you? So it's time to take a good hard look at how you treat your patients from the get-go, creating an experience that's worth talking about. As Kim Blanchard says in his book, Raving Fans, one of the primary goals that you will have as a business, as a practice is to deliver everything that's expected plus a little bit more.

Patient Experience

So it's going to be important that you, as a team, really hone in and take a good long look at what your patient experience is like right now and how you can make it better and how you can make it buzz-worthy so that they do want to talk about you and share with their friends and family,