What’s up, everybody? It’s Steve, The Hurricane, here and for today’s episode of “A Drink With The Hurricane,” we’re going to be kicking off a four-part series on getting referrals. Cheers?
So it’s been awhile since I’ve talked about getting referrals. I’ve talked about growing your census, I’ve talked about operations, I’ve talked about recruiting and retention, but I wanna get back to the bread and butter of what I’m known for, and that is sales and marketing. And so in this first part, I wanna talk specifically about social workers and getting referrals from social workers. Now it’s been eight years since I made my very first “Drink With The Hurricane” videos, and I’m so excited and blessed to have been able to serve thousands of people all around the world, helping them grow their census, revenue, and profits.
And there is one thing I can tell you when it comes to social workers and your ability of getting referrals from social workers. Social workers refer who’s going to get the job done right. That is the key. Meaning, if I’m a social worker and I’m referring you a patient and you don’t sign that patient up, I’m not gonna refer you again. If I’m a social worker and I’m referring you patients and you mess the cases up, I’m not gonna refer you again.
If you come into my office or send me a video or you meet me at a networking event or something of that nature and you tell me and say the same thing that every other home care company says, “We have the best caregivers, we are this, we are that,” I’m not gonna refer you business. So what is it that social workers are looking for that makes them send us referrals? And I’ll give you the answer. It’s one word and one word only. Trust. Trust. Social workers refer who they trust will get the job done right. So the follow-up question should be, “Well, Steve, how am I gonna get a social worker to trust me?” And it’s really easy.
You have to be able to share intimate details about your operations. Every social worker that I ever worked with, after I left the business, ’cause remember, I used to be a marketing rep and then I owned a home care company myself, and when I was getting millions of dollars in referrals every single year, I asked my social workers, “Why did you refer me as much as you did?” And they said, “Simple, we trusted you to get it done right. We knew you would do it, you had our trust.” And I said, “Okay, well, how did I earn your trust?” And they said, “Well, we knew how you ran things. We understood your processes. We understood your plans of care. We understood your nurses that you had on your staff. We understood all of your specialty programs that you did that separated you from your competitors. You did caregiver training.
The way that you hired and onboarded your caregivers, the way you started up your cases.” Everything that I did, I just went through seven different things, I just listed ’em out. They referred me so much and they trusted that I would get it done right because they knew my operation very well. And the processes that we had in place in my company, Care Choice, were ones that logically made sense to the social workers, which is why the social workers started referring me. Then I took care of a patient and they referred me again, and they referred me again. That’s how I quickly developed trust. So when you think about what’s happening in the world, we’re still in COVID.
COVID’s not going anywhere anytime soon. You have processes in place. You have procedures for interviewing and onboarding caregivers and orientation. You have processes for starting up a case. All of these things are information that social workers need to know to feel comfortable with you and your company. So you make sure that you get an appointment, a phone call, a Zoom call, take a social worker out for coffee, get a lunch and learn, and yes, you can still do lunches. Don’t tell me, “Oh, nobody will do a lunch and learn.” You’re not doing it right.
If you need help, call me. I’ll train you with any of our programs and whatever and we’ll help you get that part of it done. We do this with all of our clients. Because we had a good year, 2020, helping our clients get in amidst lockdowns and shutdowns and everything.
But the key remains, if you make sure you are properly communicating your procedures, your processes, to your social workers, they’re gonna trust you, they’re gonna refer you, and that’s the first step in growing your referrals. So if you need help, hey, we’re here to help you. We’ve been doing this for a long time. We have literally helped thousand of businesses around the world in six different countries. I want to help you grow your business. Pick up the phone, shoot us an email, and let’s help you blow away the competition.
