DEBRA MILLER
DIRECTOR OF COACHING
Not all referrers are the same. Some GPs only refer occasionally—maybe a dozen or fewer cases in a year—while others may refer 10 times as much. Your top referrers, based on number of cases referred, are foundational to your productivity. The loss of a top referrer can have a significant impact on your practice success. So, when a key referrer starts to make noise about retirement plans, it’s important to pay attention and act. Here’s three things you should always do:
1. Know as soon as possible
The most challenging scenario arises when there is a lack of foresight. A GP approaching retirement diligently strategizes their exit from the profession well in advance. They are not likely to suddenly close shop and walk away. It’s also unlikely that they will quickly sell their practice and be gone on the first day that the new owner takes over.
In many GP transitions, a buyer comes in first as an associate for a few years to establish and stabilize their cashflow before the sale provisions of the agreement are triggered. Even a straight-up buyout (without an existing associate) will typically require the selling doctor to remain in the practice for a period (often 1 year). This is designed to facilitate the transfer of patient goodwill to the new doctor.
The arrival of a new doctor in any of your GP referrers should be taken as a sign to investigate what is going on. This is why it is important that you have good social relationships with your referrers where you can interact about more than just patient cases. Lunches can go so far, but it’s best to be at a social level with your top referrers where you are enjoying family barbecues, couples’ dinners, sporting events, golf outings, fishing trips, and similar things together.
But even if you don’t have that level of social relationship, regular monthly visits by your marketing coordinator in the GP practice should keep an eye on anything happening. The marketing coordinator has a vital role to keep a conversation flowing between your practice and the referring practice, and that can serve as an early warning system when potential changes are coming.
2. Build a team-to-team buffer
When the new doctor comes into the GP practice, most often they will be a younger doctor. Even if they have purchased the practice outright, they’re not going to upset the apple cart right away. They are going to take care of their cash flow first, focusing on patient and team relationships to get established.
A strong team-to-team relationship between your practices gives you a buffer that protects your referral relationship for a while. The new doctor is unlikely to have any specialist preferences right away, which means that they will usually follow the practice’s established pattern of sending referrals to your office.
When your marketing coordinator has established a strong team-to-team relationship, the GP team will continue to recommend your office to their new doctor and to patients. If your marketing coordinator isn’t doing this now, the (pending) arrival of a new doctor makes it essential. The goal is to be the top-of-mind choice for any endo referral.
3. Drive the doctor-to-doctor connection
Ultimately, every referral relationship is based on some kind of doctor-to-doctor connection. Obviously, clinical trust is the foundation of a referral, but the referral relationship can be influenced by other factors such as likeability, helpfulness, common interests, and friendship at a professional and personal level.
When a new doctor is coming into a referrer’s practice, your goal is to connect with them in a genuine way as soon as possible. One way is to ask your existing referrer to make a powerful introduction between you and the new doctor. That means more than just a handshake introduction in the hallway. Ideally, get together (all three of you) for a dinner or some kind of out-of-practice meeting where your current referrer eases the initial conversation and can explain why they prefer to refer their endodontic cases to you. If you have a good relationship with your referrer, you should be able to ask them in advance to do this for you.
If that kind of introduction isn’t possible, nothing is stopping you from reaching out directly to the new doctor, either by phone, by dropping into the practice, or by approaching them outside the practice, such as a local dental meeting. A positive mindset, emphasizing your likeability traits, and using humor or creativity can break the ice quickly. Likewise, expressing a desire to support their success in the community quickly puts you in the ally column.
Once you are in a one-on-one conversation, your goal is to find a common interest that lets you invite them to the next one-on-one opportunity. That could be to meet for coffee, have dinner at your favorite restaurant, or come to an event. As a specialist, it’s always helpful to have “two extra tickets” to the next concert or sporting event.
Here’s the key point to remember: If you can meet one-on-one with a new doctor 2 or 3 times in short order, they probably know you better than any other specialist in your community (assuming the new GP is a relative newcomer to the area). That’s a big win for you.
Seamless transitions
A new doctor taking over a top referrer’s practice can be a seamless transition that maintains the referral relationship. The advantages you have (an existing doctor-to-doctor relationship with the selling doctor, and an existing team-to-team relationship) need to be leveraged early and effectively to establish the new doctor in your referral base while your existing referrer is phasing out.
This same principle of relationship building can be applied to more than just your top referrers. While you may not have the same level of favoritism with a less frequent referrer, the team-to-team and doctor-to-doctor relationship building can still occur, with the potential to enhance and strengthen referrals to a higher level.