58. Steal My System for Tracking Referrals

In today's episode, I'm sharing a simple yet powerful system you can use to keep track of new referrals. This is the 3-step process I WISH I had used when I was first starting out in my private practice. Don't make the same mistakes I did--press play and get started now!

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Transcript

This is Your Speech Path: Mindful Time Management for the Busy SLP. My name is Theresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnt out and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in.

[00:00:00] Hey podcast listeners. Welcome back to the show today. We're talking about. Systems specifically a system designed to walk you through how to track referrals. So if you are a new private practice owner or you have a private practice and you're in a stage of growth, or you're looking to refine your systems and processes , , this episode is going to give you a quick, simple overview of how to track your leads.

And if you're not currently in private practice, but you've thought about dabbling, or maybe you have dreams of starting to see clients on the side, then this episode is for you. I wish that I had done this when I first started out. In fact, let me just sort of walk you through a... memory lane, let's say, of how this has shown [00:01:00] up in my life.

So when I first started my private practice, I remember checking my phone constantly looking for new leads, new referrals, anyone that might possibly be reaching out for speech therapy or auditory verbal therapy. Anytime I'd get a call from an unknown number, I would hold my breath and answer and hope that it was somebody who had a child with hearing loss and needed an SLP. And. Looking back, what I wish I had done at that time was set myself up for success by creating a very simple system, similar to what I'm going to walk you through here today, because it would have been the perfect opportunity to do that.

I didn't have a ton of clients at the time. I was just getting started. And time was on my side. I had [00:02:00] plenty of opportunity to create this, but instead I sort of waited until the point where I was finally getting referrals. The phone was ringing, the emails were coming through. And that's when I decided to try and set up a system. The only problem was that was when I had less time, because there were cases that I was now treating.

 I had clients I was working with. And so the opportunity had almost passed. And at that point, what I was doing. I was scrambling to piece together some way of tracking these moving parts. When it really wasn't all that hard and overwhelming if I had just taken the time upfront to do it. And really that is, I think an example of any system in general, where you do need to invest a little bit of time upfront in order to get [00:03:00] things going, in order to get the system created and running, but it will pay off on the backend.

Right? It's going to save you time on the other side of things. It's just that sometimes that initial investment of time and energy is a little bit unappealing or unattractive, and so we often sort of push it off and say, "Oh, I'll do this later" or, "I don't really need this now, so why bother?" Right.

Well, trust me when I say: it's a perfect time to do this. Okay. It will save you energy. It will save you stress. It will save you time. It will probably also save you money because if you have a system like this, it's going to give you a very clear way to track clients or potential clients and avoid anybody falling through the cracks. Okay?

All right.

So what I'm going to do is give you an overview of the system that I created and how I used it. And what I [00:04:00] want you to do as you're listening, or as you're watching is ask yourself, "Which parts of this can I implement and which parts of this might I modify?" right. What, if anything, might I change so that it works for you?

Okay. So very, very simple system. Okay. I'm going to walk you through it right now. Let's dive in. Number one, the very first step that you want to do is to create some sort of tracking sheet. For me, I use Google Sheets, and outline the following information. And this might look a little bit different depending upon your circumstances, but here's the information that I tracked on my Google Sheet. Number one was parent or caregiver name. Number two was the child's name, number three was the child's date of birth. Okay. Number four was the date of contact. So when was this individual reaching out to me? [00:05:00] And then number five was how were they reaching out? Did they reach out via email? Did they reach out via text? Did they reach out in some other way, phone? Right phone call or some other way. So tracking that method of contact. Number six is the family's concerns, the details or the reason for their call. Number seven is the referral source. How did they find me? And number eight, next steps.

All right. So some of those components are very self-explanatory, but a couple of them I want to circle back to and just highlight a few key reasons why you should be-- and I use the term loosely, "should be,” but why you would want to track this information in particular, right?

Child name, caregiver, name, date of birth. That's all pretty obvious. Now the method of contact was something that I did not originally [00:06:00] track. And it was something so simple that you can do that will save you time. The reason why is what I found was that as I was growing, people were reaching out in different places.

Some people would send me an email. Some people would actually send me a message on Facebook. Some people would reach out by phone. And every once in a while, and, and actually this started happening more and more in more recent years, people would reach out via text for the very first time. Right? First time I would hear from them would be a text message.

And so what happened for me was that there were so many different sources of. input, I guess if you will, or sources of information, different places that that information was coming in that it was very hard for me to remember, "Where do I have to go to follow up with them?" Right . "Oh yeah. Where did they reach out to me? Was that in my [00:07:00] email and, I, no it was...a Facebook Messenger, right. I would for so long would be trying to remember that, I would just keep that in my head or not keep it in my head and then have to go search for it. And eventually I said, okay, this is something that we can easily solve by including a column for this on the spreadsheet.

So definitely encourage you to consider tracking the method of contact. The other piece that I want to mention here, when I said I would circle back was the referral source. This was another thing that I did not track right away. And. Wish that I had. It is, especially for those of you who own the private own, your private practice.

And you're looking to grow. Just simply asking them when they reach out to you. How did you find me? Can give you a ton of information about what you're, what marketing is working, what marketing is not [00:08:00] working, and where you want to invest a little bit more time and money and energy into, so you can start to identify patterns.

Are they, are most people finding you on Facebook? Are most people finding you through word of mouth? Is there a specific pediatrician's office that refers out to you often and that way you can also reach out and maintain connections, maintain relationships, share notes of gratitude or, you know, express your, your gratitude for, and your appreciation for people referring to you, so on and so forth.

Right. Having that information in the same spot as all of this other information can be really, really useful. So don't over, don't overlook that that was, would definitely be something I would encourage you to consider tracking. All right. And then the third piece that I wanted to just circle back to on that spreadsheet is "Next [00:09:00] Steps." What do I mean, when I say next steps? What I mean is what do you have to do next?

Or what are they doing next in order to close the loop on this referral? So not every referral, not every inquiry that you get is going to actually become a client. Those of you who have been doing this for long enough, you know that, but those of you who are maybe just getting started, you might not have learned this lesson yet.

And it is a difficult one to learn. Okay. Nothing has gone wrong. It doesn't mean that you're not fabulous. It just means that there are going to be, statistically speaking, more people that reach out, than there are people who will sign on for services. And so it's really important to have those very clear next steps outlined because in my opinion, it will help to increase those who do become clients.

It will help increase that number. I can't tell you in the beginning, how many [00:10:00] referrals or potential inquiries, potential clients I got that I did not closely enough track and lost track of, or lost sight of. Was I supposed to reach back out to them or are they supposed to reach back out to me? When did I say I would follow up or we didn't even have a follow-up plan in place? And. Some of those may have been ideal clients.

They may have been families that I could have served and they were lost for whatever reason. And one of those reasons is that lack of followups. If you have that very clearly outlined in your spreadsheet, it's all right there for you, you know exactly what you need to do next. All right. So that is the spreadsheet piece of this system.

That's just the first step of this system. Now, we're going to talk about the next step of this system. And this is incredibly easy. Incredibly quick will not take you time. [00:11:00] But it could also be incredibly effective and that is to create some sort of a template, whether that is an email. Or a phone call sort of script or outline of you know, guideline for your phone call conversation, or maybe even a text message depending upon how you, how your potential clients are reaching out to you and how you follow up with them. For me, it was usually an email after, regardless of how they reached out. I would always send some sort of an email.

So there was a paper trail or an electronic trail. To track that conversation and see where the client was in the process or the potential client was in the process. So I would encourage you to create an email template and save it for repeat use, and there are different ways that you can do this. But basically the way that I did it was with the very first several inquiries I would write

[00:12:00] the email back. And then after I sent it, what I would do is copy and paste it into a Google doc. And it was just a doc for me. I would take out any identifying information and use that as a basic outline to guide what I would say to families in follow up emails. I also would encourage you to ask yourself, is there specific documents, links, or resources that you are sharing with potential clients?

Now I'm talking about potential clients. I'm talking about even clients who say they want an evaluation and you're, you know, starting that process. So, you know, things like your intake forms, or I had a form that I would share with families about how questions to ask their insurance provider to support them in getting reimbursed.

So stuff like that, that I would often need to pull and attach in an email. I would [00:13:00] have those very accessible. And so think about what that would look like for you. Is that going to be a link to a portal where they're going to access all of that electronically, or is that going to be attachments that you are, you know, documents that you are attaching in the email, however that works for you, but think about the things that you're doing repeatedly for potential clients and ask yourself, how can I make this easy enough to repeat without having to start from scratch time after time? All right. So step one is the spreadsheet. Step two is your templates

and useful links or docs that you need. And then the third and final step that I'll share for this system. And this one's important is to schedule the follow-up. Now. I would say that this was probably the piece that took me the [00:14:00] longest, because. Took me the longest to implement, not to execute, but it took me the longest to start doing this myself. And again, wish I had done it sooner because what happened was. I would be prioritizing the other tasks in my practice, that in my opinion, misguided opinion were more important because they had deadlines or. People were waiting for them. And I would prioritize those over the followup.

And when I say follow-up, I mean, going back to that spreadsheet, the next steps. Right? When it's on me to follow back up with them and reach out and say, "Hey, just want to make sure you got this email. Wanted to see what your thoughts are about scheduling a first session or scheduling an assessment." So on and so forth, right. I would let those happen. I would, I would leave the time to do that when I had the [00:15:00] time.

Like, I wouldn't schedule the time for it. I wouldn't prioritize it. It would sort of be in the cracks of the day. If there were opportunities to squeeze that in. And I'm willing to bet it cost me clients. So. When you approach this, there are two different ways you can do it. There's lots of different ways that you can do it.

I'm going to share two potential strategies. Number one is to schedule the specific individual reach out or follow up in your calendar. So if you have, if you use Google calendar or some other electronic calendar, you can do it digitally, scheduling it for a set day and time. Or if you have a paper planner or a paper calendar, then that you use, you're writing it into your paper planner. But there needs to be a designated day and time that you're doing it.

That's one way you can approach it. If you approach it that way, ask yourself, "What information can I put into the scheduled event that I might need [00:16:00] to pull when it is the day and time to do this thing that will help me do it faster?" So for me, what that would look like was the name of the family, their phone number or their email, and a link to that spreadsheet that I mentioned in step number one, so that I could see all of the information about that particular potential client in one place and I wouldn't have to open the spreadsheet up manually.

I could just open up my calendar and click a button and then I could see the spreadsheet like that. It sounds really trivial, but trust me when it says, when I say it makes a big difference. So that's one way that you can approach it. The other way that you can approach this or the other way that I have approached it is by time-blocking.

I would block off a specific time, a specific block of time on my calendar, that would be [00:17:00] reserved for follow-up. And so I wasn't necessarily outlining who I was following up with, but I knew, okay, Wednesday morning, 9:00 AM. I'm going to- I see "followup" on my calendar so I'm going to click on the spreadsheet, open it up and say, look at that next steps column and see who do I need to reach out to? And go ahead and follow up with them that way. Now there's lots of other ways that you could do this

follow-up. I just wanted to share two specific ways that have worked for me. Again, that is scheduling them in your planner or your calendar as a specific day and time for a specific client or specific potential client. Or it could be blocking off a set chunk of time and following up with any potential clients who you need to reach back out to, but if you are not scheduling the time to do [00:18:00] that, I promise you, you are risking loss to follow up. And if you're looking to grow as a private practice owner, if you're looking to help more people, this is one way you do that: by following up. Okay.

So let me just walk you through that again. Very quickly. Summarize the next steps. And then we will wrap up. Okay. So in summary, number one was creating that spreadsheet with all of that information. And again, you can think about the information that I've shared and which, if any of that would you want to include, and which, if any of that, would you want to modify. Step number two is to create those templates. Create the template or templates that you need and easy access to the documents and resources that you need to share so that you're not recreating the wheel every single time.

You're following up with somebody. And then step number three is scheduling the [00:19:00] time for the followup. Okay. Making sure that it happens. So hopefully that is a simple enough system that helps you get started with this process. If this is something that resonates with you or something that you really feel like you need more of, I would invite you to schedule a free consult.

This is something I help clients with all the time. And what I do is walk you through not just what we went and covered today, but also looking at your unique systems and processes, if you have them, that you're already using in your business of how to work within those frameworks. And also getting to know what's going to work well for your brain and for your unique schedule.

Right? So really figuring out what's gonna work best for you because trust me, when I say [00:20:00] systems only work when you work the systems. If you're not working the system, it's not going to work for you. And I've seen many cases where people don't work the system because they're using a system that doesn't work well for their brain. And it's impossible to give you all a system that would work for every one of you who's listening. That is the beauty of working with a one-on-one coach. So the link to schedule a consult is always available in the show notes. Feel free to check it out. I would love to talk more about how I can help you. And walk you through what that might look like. See if we would be a good fit. That's it for today's episode, but next week is our final episode in terms of systems and what I'm going to be walking you through for that episode is sort of the next step of this. We're we're going to create a system that helps you track your intake. And that will [00:21:00] be really, really helpful, both for private practice owners and also for those of you who are clinicians that have new clients added to your caseload every now and then, maybe more often than you would like even. That system will walk you through how to manage all those moving parts.

So make sure you tune in to next week's episode so you can learn more about how you set that up and get going. All right. I will talk with you all next week.