How to Ask for Referrals

Overview

Do you know how to ask for local referrals when you're building your practice?

This is a question that I get fairly often, and I believe one of the quickest ways to build your local practice is by reaching out and speaking to other local health professionals. This may seem obvious at first, but it’s something that some practices fail to do, and it can lead to major issues for their growth. Today, I'm going to take you through a process that I did myself when I was building my practice that proved to be extremely effective in the early stages of its growth. Hopefully, you can learn something from this and can start growing your practice even faster than before. 

Step One

The first step is going to be to make a list of potential referrals. If you’re not functioning as a primary care doctor yourself, a good place to start would be with local primary care doctors. My specialty was an integrative, lifestyle, functional approach, but I did not do the typical primary care things like the screenings, the pap smears, etc., so I was not in competition with local primary care doctors. So make a list of possible referrals, such as gynecologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, chiropractors, speech pathologists, athletic trainers, acupuncturists, and really anybody that would potentially work as someone who could provide services that your practice can’t. Most local practices aren’t all-encompassing, so you will likely need to refer them out for certain things, and this can further develop your relationship with these other practices. Having these contacts can really help patients by creating a network of caregivers who can each address different issues they may be having. This also creates a sense of reciprocity with other practices, as when you refer a patient to them, they’re more likely to refer one to you in the future. To sum up, just begin to gather data on who in your area it would be good for you to refer patients to and to have patients referred to you from.

Step 2

After establishing connections with several other practices, it’s time to begin to narrow your focus to one specific practice. So, for example, let’s say you identify one practice, a primary care doctor, Dr. Smith. After identifying a practice, just research a bit about them and try to determine what makes their practice unique. From there, you would reach out to them, either with a phone call, an email to their office manager, or you could even stop by in person. What I typically did was I reached out with both an email and a phone call, and I would ask to speak to the manager. From there, I had a script that I would go into that would roughly say, “Hi, I'm Dr. Matteoli. I'm a board-certified family physician, but I specialize in functional medicine, and integrative medicine. I don't function as a primary care doctor. I noticed on your website that you work with (list a few names of practices they’ve worked with to show that you’ve done your research), and I'd love the opportunity to learn more about your practice. I believe what you offer really complements my approach to patient care. Is there a good time to have a conversation about your practice or who may be a good referral for you?” From there, you wait and see what their feedback is. Some may be interested in exploring that possible relationship and that’s great, while others may not, and that’s fine too. If you are able to talk to the provider, or make an appointment, or even just move along more with the manager, then you just ask them for more details about who they work with and who might be best to refer to them. That line of questioning works particularly well with specialized practices like PTs, OTs, acupuncturists, etc. While talking with them about this, it's really important to actively listen and then repeat back to them so they know that you're understanding what they’re saying. It’s a good idea to take notes. Doing this well would look like saying something such as “Ok, so you work with this type of population, so a good referral for you would be someone who has this type of disease.” Being clear about how you can benefit their practice is very important to getting your foot in the door.

After you’ve shown how you can help them, you can then begin to ease into talking about the types of patients you see and how they could potentially help you. Say, for example, in your practice, you deal with a lot of people with vague symptoms or symptoms that sometimes can be more difficult to treat in the conventional world without a focus on lifestyle changes. You could say something like, “In my practice, I see a lot of patients with migraines, and chronic fatigue, and a lot of times they've done the complete workup in the conventional medicine space, and they've seen the specialists, and they're at a place now where they're able to manage their symptoms with prescriptions. And so, what I'd like to offer you and what I specialize in is working with patients on their lifestyle with more of a deep-rooted approach towards addressing the cause of an issue. So if you have a patient who, let’s say, is a 43-year-old woman who has been having migraines for the past 10-15 years and you feel like you've done everything you can possibly think of to help. You’ve referred them to everybody you could possibly think of, and they're on multiple medications, and they keep looking to you for another option. If you have someone like that, please keep me in mind because that is my ideal patient. That is who I work with, and I'm not in competition with you because I don't function as a primary care doctor. I'd actually really like a primary care doctor that I could refer back and forth with, to ensure that my patients are well taken care of." If at that point they seem interested, you could then offer to drop off some more information about your practice. And then at that time, you could also offer them a Foundational Self-Assessment or initial consultation with you, either complimentary or half off. The more that these other allied providers know how you work, the more comfortable they're going to be referring to you. Offering that assessment where you go through their bloodwork, and you discuss how you integrate that lifestyle component to healing, and demonstrating what value you can provide really goes a long way in solidifying your relationship with them. 

Step 3

Once you have that conversation, you drop off some additional information for them to learn about your practice. For health professionals, I would especially recommend including a CV or resume within a folder that you drop off. In the information you send, you should include a letter on letterhead where you re-visit your conversation. This would be re-stating in broad terms the topics you covered, and asking them to contact you if they want to move forward. Leave them some business cards as well as the Foundational Assessment postcard, which is included in the Incubator Course. The Foundational Assessment postcard, to put it simply, discusses what the Foundational Assessment is and what they can expect from it. This allows them to see the next step ahead of time. Giving them this card lets them know that if somebody's interested in your practice and they know that they want to continue with you, the next step would be to schedule this. The Foundational Assessment is a key part of treatment so it’s important to include. 

Step 4

After dropping off your information, wait at least a week, but not more than two, then contact them again to follow up. This would be a good time to start brainstorming together and think of ways your practices could collaborate. Privately owned practices are especially open to this, since they're also an entrepreneur and they are also trying to create a good environment for their clients and patients. One thing that I do is that I do community talks where I speak about different common health issues and how to deal with them. If that’s something you’re comfortable with it’s great for your practice’s image and can help get more patients. While working with these other practices, you can come up with more ideas of things that you can do to improve both their practice and your own. 

Don't Be Discouraged

Those are the main steps to building relationships as a new practice. The toughest part of all these steps has to be the initial phone call. Don’t feel discouraged if nothing comes out of that first call. I probably called 30-40 different offices and I probably had under five that I created a rapport and a good referral network with, so it’s fine if you're not for everybody. Not every provider needs someone with your specific skills, but I’m sure the ones who do need you will really appreciate you reaching out. Just remember to be solid in who you are and who you treat and how you treat them and be comfortable and confident in that. 

Start That List!

I hope this will be helpful to you. This is one of the best ways that I have seen to obtain new patients as well as to create a really beautiful network, not only for you, but also for your patients as well, which is very good overall. Now, go on ahead and start with that list. Take that first step, make that first phone call, and make it a point to reach out to a few different offices a week and see where it leads. 

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