132: Beyond Donuts: How to Build Referral Relationships that Last

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

You're listening to Home Health Revealed, where the business of home health comes to life. Hosted by Hannah Vale, each episode brings real conversations with the leaders, innovators, and experts shaping the future of the industry. From reimbursement and technology, to leadership and growth, this is Home Health Revealed.

Hannah Vale (0:17)

Hey, welcome to Home Health Revealed. I'm Hannah Vale, and our speaker today has spent more than three decades, and he gave me permission to say that. Three decades helping health care organizations grow. Before becoming a nationally recognized consultant and trainer, he built referral relationships, led sales teams, recruited talent, and helped health care providers grow from within. But today, as founder and president of Optimum RTS, he works with the organizations across the country, strengthening recruiting, sales, and business development by sharing strategies shaped through firsthand experience. Please join me in welcoming John Dalton. John, it's great to have you.

John Dalton (1:00)

Great to be here. I'm so excited. Thank you for welcoming me.

Hannah Vale (1:03)

Yeah.

John Dalton (1:04)

Welcome. Welcome.

Hannah Vale (1:05)

Oh, goodness. I'm really excited to get to talk with you about this topic, because I think a lot of agencies have questions about this, best ways to go about it, best practices. And within your experience, you have seen good and bad ways to approach this topic. I'm very interested to see and hear what you have to say today. Many agencies still rely on lunch, cookies, dropping things off in the office, brochure drops. These tactics often fail. They don't create the meaningful growth or relationships that agencies are looking for by doing these activities. When leaders talk about building lasting referral relationships, what does that look like beyond receiving those occasional referrals or having that salesperson just make routine office visits?

John Dalton (1:51)

Well, again, thank you so much for having me here today. I'm so happy to be able to share information.

There's nothing I really like more in my career than helping others grow and get better at what they do. This is a topic that I cover regularly when I'm speaking at conferences. It's like, do not let your salespeople become the donut man or donut person, because that's what they really feel is the key to sales, is how do I entice my referral sources by giving them gifts?

What I liken it to is Pavlov's dogs. We all heard about Pavlov, and when he rang the bell, the dogs would start to salivate, and they knew they were getting dinner. What we're doing when we're bringing donuts first, is nobody is rung the bell, and the offices are using your sales staff as a perk of working in their office, because you get free lunch. So I stopped all of my sales reps when I was actually running sales teams for Home Care Hospice and Infusion, from doing that, and really use it as a reward after the referral comes in. Lunch does not build a relationship. What builds the relationship is having knowledge of your industry, and being able to offer something to that office that is going to make their job easier. And donuts just isn't that.

Hannah Vale (3:18)

Which that brings me to my next question. Referral sources do need to know who the right patient is to send. But how can leaders coach sales representatives to clearly describe the right patient so that the referral sources immediately recognize who to send, they come through the door and they know, ding, ding, ding, this is the person I'm gonna call?

John Dalton (3:41)

Sure. We have to look at each individual referral source that we're working with. When I am doing my fractional sales management sales training with my reps, the process usually will go like this. We'll go to a hospital, I can go to the medical building next to the hospital. Each door that we walk into, we stop beforehand. We say, what type of doctor is this? It's a cardiologist. Great, they work with patients that have vascular and heart issues. Perfect. What are the symptoms of that? Well, someone that has CHF might be weaker. What services could they need if they're weaker? Well, they could use physical therapy. Perfect. Let's walk into the doctor's office.

From there, we start looking at the patients that they would see on a daily basis.

Have you seen a patient come in today or this week that has an exasperation of their CHF? It is weaker and you're worried they might fall and end in the hospital.

That's the patient I'm looking for. So if we paint the picture for the exact type of patient we're looking for, it makes it much easier for the referral sources to be able to go ahead and identify the patient. What I see salespeople typically doing is they're going out, they're just saying, hey, Hannah, how are you doing? It's really great. Thanks. I'm John from Choose Your Home Care Agency. We provide skilled nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy in the home. If you have a referral, think of us.