Episode Details

In this episode, Barbara and Steve discuss:

• The 7 fool-proof tactics of referral marketing. 
• The power of having a book (no matter how short or long). 
• Referrals through presentations, both online and in person. 

Key Takeaways:

• You need to have a social media profile that represents you well for when referrals come to find out more about you. 
• Do a really nice and unexpected thank you. 
• Create first steps for new potential patients. Create entry points where people can get an idea of what you do and who you are in a low-risk way. 

“The key is in finding something, sticking with it, being consistent with it, and repeating it until you’ve mastered it more than having a lot of different tactics.” —  Steve Gordon

TRANSCRIPTION

Barbara:         Hey! This is Barbara Hales with Marketing Tips for Doctors. We have a great episode today. Steve Gordon is a best-selling author, the founder of The Unstoppable CEO, and the host of The Unstoppable CEO podcast.

He has written over 400 articles on marketing for service businesses. Through his firm, he helps service business entrepreneurs create leveraged marketing systems so they can spend less time on business development and more time on what matters most. And for you doctors and healthcare professionals out there, we will know what that is.

When he was just 28, Steve became the CEO of an engineering firm but he knew nothing about marketing or selling services. Twelve years later, after growing that firm’s revenue by 10 times, Steve started his second business consulting with businesses across 30 industries including manufacturing, professional services, and consulting to design sales, marketing, and referral systems for high-ticket and high-trust products and services. He’s here today to share what he’s learned throughout his journey to help you attract your ideal patients and clients and achieve the business goals you’ve been dreaming of. Welcome to the show, Steve.

Steve:             Hey, Barbara. Thanks for having me.

Barbara:         Well, as we all know, to grow a practice and have success, we depend a lot upon referral marketing. And I understand you have seven foolproof tactics for successfully doing this. Could you tell us a bit about it?

                                                     Referrals

Steve:             Yeah, I would love to. So the big challenge with referrals, I think it’s important to understand that first, the big challenge with referrals is that we’re going to our patient, to our client and we’re essentially asking them to do the most difficult thing in any business which is to identify a new potential patient and then to convince that person to come and see us.

That’s one of the reasons that in most businesses salespeople are paid so much because it’s a very difficult job to do and it’s a valuable job. And we’re delegating that or often just abdicating that responsibility to this unpaid and untrained salesforce called our patients or our clients. And so that creates some challenges when we begin to think about referrals.

And so in most cases, the way that we look at referrals, we’ll have two sources. We’ll have our existing patients and clients and we’ll have some partners, you know. So, there may