How to get more referrals to your dental practice

This week on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor, the founder of Dental Profit System, will be talking about how to get more referrals to your dental practice.

You can watch the video or you can also read the transcript below.

Transcript: How to get more referrals to your dental practice

Well, hello entredentists. Angus Pryor here, creator of the Dental Profit System, co-author of the Amazon crushing book The Better Business Book, bringing you this week’s Marketing Monday. The weekly show designed to boost the marketing at your dental practice.

Now, at the moment, we’re in the middle of a series looking at internal marketing. Today I wanted to talk to you about referrals because in terms of internal marketing, it’s hard to go past referrals. Now, just as a reminder, we talked about the fact that the price of bringing a new client into your business can be in the order of seven times, seven times more expensive to bring a new client into your business than to better serve an existing one. It’s really worth getting this internal marketing working, isn’t it?

Now, in terms of referrals, it’s not complex. I mean, for any business, mine included, the idea of getting your existing clients to refer their friends and family is a pretty straight-forward concept. The number one way to do that … We need a drum roll, don’t we? What’s the number one way to do this? You’ve just got to ask. It’s fair to say that a lot of people in business struggle with this. Struggle to ask for referrals and I suppose there are a few reasons.

Part of the reason is that people go, “Well, what if I ask and someone says no?” That can be, I guess, a bit threatening, but I guess what I’d say to you is, “Do you know what the answer is if you don’t ask?” The answer’s no. So, if you want more referrals and you don’t ask, the answer’s no so you really do need to ask. I think the main message I would make around asking is that you’ve got to do it in such a way that it seems natural and easy for the client, and it’s more about them, rather than it being all about you and what your needs are.

Basically, in a dental context, that means as the chair pops up, you’re checking to see how the client’s experience was and then talking about how you can help others, their friends and family, to have a similar positive experience. Now, if you’d like to get a hold of a script that we put together, which kind of steps out, you know, exactly the way to ask, then either just write script, just type that in, script, or you can message me and I’ll send you one, because I know this is something that dentists do struggle with.

The second thing I wanted to talk to you about in relation to referrals is that for a lot of dentists, they really struggle with this and it’s because we’re afraid of this. I mean, it’s something that I experienced over time. Once upon a time, I used to be a sales manager and in a sales context, my team would sometimes struggle to ask for the business. You know, talk to someone about such and such and then go … they just forget to say “So, would you like to order?” The reason that we often don’t do this stuff is because the fear of rejection.

Now I need to tell you about our guy, I don’t know if you’ve come across him, Jian Jiang and some of you Chinese speakers, you’re welcome to correct my pronunciation. Clearly, a guy with imaginative parents. He was a guy in the US that figured out that that fear of rejection was costing him and his business. So, what he did is he created for himself 100 days of rejection therapy. He figured out that the reason he wasn’t bringing in more business was because he was afraid of being rejected and he thought, “Well, how am I going to get over that fear? How am I going to get over the fear of asking for referrals?”

So, he literally did 100 different things, kind of crazy stuff that he was expecting to be rejected for, but ended up not being rejected for most of them. That was what was so crazy about it. Look him up, Jian Jiang, 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. I want to challenge you to do something to step out of your comfort zone because if you could have a little win with this challenge then it will make it easier asking for referrals.

Here’s the challenge, I don’t really care what you do, but this is a really simple one. It does involve you spending some money. I’m going to ask you to spend 10 bucks, but maybe it’s five bucks, I don’t know, 20, knock yourself out. What I want you to do is to go up to a total stranger, shopping centers are good for this, and basically say words to the effect of, “Hey, look. I’ve had a really great week and I’m just wondering if it would be okay if I gave this to you. No strings attached, I just want to give it to you.”

Now, I can tell you some of you straight out are going, “What the heck?” Like, “Who does that? What if they reject me? What if they think I’m strange or whatever?” The curious thing is, every time I’ve done this, and I did it just a few weeks ago at our local shopping center, it feels great when you’ve done it. You know, your hearts beating a little bit fast when you go and do it, the immediate reaction from most people is, “What?” I’d really like to give you, you know, $10.00 or a 100 bucks, or whatever …”

When you go and hand over 20 bucks or whatever it is, most people are incredulous. Like, what the heck are you doing this for? But, two benefits from this, one, it would help you get out of your comfort zone and work past that fear of rejection and secondly, for whatever reason when you give stuff away, sometimes you feel so much better. I would say I felt the richest in my life moments after I’ve just handed over some cash to someone. That’s your homework, get 10 bucks, 20 bucks, go and find a total stranger and just say, “Hey, I’ve had a really great week, would I be okay if I gave this to you? It’s kind of me giving back, no strings attached.” You’ll be glad you did.

Otherwise, for me, Angus Pryor, see you next week on Marketing Monday.