“You never know until you ask!” This is never truer than when it comes to asking your best and favorite patients to share your team with their family and friends. Patients like Mrs. Wonderful, who always arrives early and pays her balance with a smile, and Mr. Geterdone, who cheerfully accepts his treatment plan and not only schedules treatment but keeps his appointment. Patients like these are the rule, not the exception, when the dental team is genuine, caring, and committed to excellent customer service and dentistry. And the best part is, it’s as easy as saying three little words – Please & Thank You!
Referrals.
Yep! It’s that easy!
Who knew that some of the first lessons we ever learned would still be the most important in our day-to-day interactions? (Mom did, obviously!) Now that you know the three words, it’s time to ask yourself three questions:
- Does your practice have guidelines or scripts in place to make it easy for the team to ask for referrals?
- Do you rehearse these scripts regularly in office meetings to help make it sound natural and sincere?
- Do you make it a point to ask each patient to invite their family and friends to your practice?
If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then we have a problem. Our practice depends upon our patients for sustainability and growth. Asking patients to share our services with their family and friends is yet another way that we can show them how important they are to us.
It can be something as simple as,
“Mrs. Wonderful, we always enjoy it when you come to visit us at Dr. Floss’ office. Seeing your beautiful smile just makes our day. Won’t you please tell your family and friends about us so that we can have more patients like you in our practice? Thank you!”
Or perhaps,
“Thank you for allowing us to help you with your dental treatment, Mr. Geterdone. If there is anyone you know who is looking for a dentist, please tell them about our practice. We love to help our patient’s family and friends.”
Practice doesn’t make us perfect, it makes us prepared.
Scripts don’t have to sound forced and generic. They can be as natural as a conversation between two friends, if we will just take the time to make these invitations a part of our everyday dialogues.
As a team, get together and create the verbiage that works best for your practice and then role-play at every team meeting. Eventually it will become second nature, and before you know it you will have a practice full of your ideal patients.
Please be sure to send thank you cards to your patients for their referral!
I almost forgot – Thank you!!
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