With February being the month full of love how are you showing appreciation to your referring offices?
Show me the love!! Or wait…I guess show the referrals the love! I know you appreciate everything your referring doctors and their offices do for you – but do they know that? It is so important when you rely on those referrals to ensure that those offices know how important they are to you. So what are you doing to show them your appreciation?
Let’s chat about 2 parts to referring office appreciation:
- Showing appreciation to your referring office staff
- Showing appreciation to your referring doctors
Showing appreciation to your referring office staff
The quickest way to a dental team’s heart is through their stomachs!! Sending treats with a thank you note is a great way to show your appreciation. Its always nice to be able to send lunch to a team as well. Reaching out with food and a note to the team shows them that you want to give your thanks, as well as you have taken time out of your day to think about them.
What your team can do on a daily basis to show the referring offices how much they matter?
By getting your team involved you accomplish a couple of things – 1. You take the pressure off you 2. You give the team ownership in making the referrals matter. Some of the things that your team can do to show the referring offices appreciation – learning the admin teams names, and roles. This is huge! However, your team can best keep track, have them do this. Get your team to build a relationship on the phone with the offices, take an extra 30 seconds and ask how their day is going. When your referring office calls you want to make sure they are not dreading the conversation, but rather looking forward to talking to your team.
Showing appreciation to your referring doctors
As the specialist, the referring doctor wants YOU and your time more than anything. And – I know what you are thinking, “Amanda, I don’t have anytime to spare to go and see my referring doctors” I get it – we all need extra hours in our days to get everything done. You’re also thinking, “how can I leave the office to see the doctors, when I have patients and a completely full schedule. And staff that needs the hours?” I completely understand! Taking an afternoon off can hurt production and driving around can take up so much time. So here’s my suggestion – what can you do from your office that will take a very little amount of your day but still allow you to connect personally with the referring doctors? What about sending an email with a personal follow up on a patient? Or a personally written note on that report you will be sending out anyways. It sounds small, but it really is the small stuff that matters.
Of course face to face time is incredibly valuable and very much worth every minute of your time. There are great ways to be able to accomplish this, however I do believe this is something that needs to be personal, and reflective of you as the specialist. Theres no sense taking a referring doctor golfing if you hate golf!
This is my challenge to you and your team – look at each office as an individual relationship. Take time to get to know each of your offices. Just like with any relationship you need to invest time and energy to making it grow.
