How to Build Relationships with Referral Sources that Actually Lead to Getting Clients | FP 53

Share this content
How to Build Relationships with Referral Sources that Actually Lead to Getting Clients | FP 53

What are some top tips on how to foster a good connection in order to send and receive referrals? How can you maintain a successful referral system? What are some important things that you should do once you have received a referral?

In this podcast episode, Whitney Owens speaks about how to build relationships with referral sources that actually lead to getting clients.

In This Podcast

  • Where is your ideal client spending their time?
  • Consider working with warm connections
  • What do you say when making a connection?
  • What to say when you meet?
  • The importance of showing gratitude for the referrals that you receive

Where is your ideal client spending their time?

This could be a physical place such as a restaurant, library, or park or it could be in a digital place such as specific websites or an online hub.

  • Make a list of 5 to 10 different places where this person spends their time.

If your ideal client is an anxious mother, consider the places she would go, perhaps at local schools, yoga studios, the doctor’s office, and so forth.

  • Now, identify the actual places, such as three specific locations within your town.
  • Also identify places that connect with your practice such as insurance-based practices that have similar structures to yours.

Consider working with warm connections

Instead of cold calls, warm connections are made through friends and colleagues where the specific connection that binds you to the ideal client is either them, or you, and your friend can actually introduce you to the person.

Everything can be a connection for your practice. You need to always be telling people about the work that you do because people need to know about it.

Warm connections will get you far. It may feel intimidating at first, instigating that connection and asking, however with practice this becomes easier.

Make it natural and do not feel that you have to be professional and tense all the time throughout the initial meeting, because it is like any other conversation – you are simply getting to know somebody else to, and making a connection.

If you are not able to make a warm connection, then there are other options you can try:

  • You can look them up on online, find their email address, and pop them an email
  • Reach out to somebody over social media
  • You can reach out to people over the phone as well

Do the natural thing that works for you.

What do you say when making the first contact?

  • Introduce yourself.
  • Let the referral know that you would just like to get to know them. Making it about the connection with them instead of just the business aspect first.
  • Tell them you want to be able to refer clients to their organization. Some people will say ‘yes’ and some people may not respond, but keep reaching out and trying your best regardless. Make it about caring for them as well as fostering a relationship for them to help your business too.
  • When someone responds positively, you offer to get to know them more such as meeting in person, taking a walk together, and so forth.

Get creative in getting to know somebody during COVID.

What to say when you meet?

  • Be yourself, get to know them. Ask about what they do. It is good to give more than you take in these relationships.
  • When they ask about you, respond sincerely and talk about your practice, your passion.
  • Consider how you can provide guidance to this person.
  • Be creative if you can – if they are sharing a struggle with you, offer a solution in the long-term of how you could be able to them.
  • It is important that once you form a relationship, try to keep it going. You can keep building the relationship over-time, every three to six months pop them an email or meet with them.
  • It is a battle at the beginning but over time as people come to know the work you do, they will send through referrals.

Once you have a new patient and you know where the referral came from, phone up the person who referred them and thank them for the referral.

The importance of showing gratitude for the referrals that you receive

When appropriate, follow up with your referral source and get into contact with them to show your appreciation.

When you show gratitude, do not make it all about yourself, make it about them. You can also consider a small gift. Not a big gift per referral either, just something small every now and then to show that you appreciate them and your mutual work relationship.

Useful Links:

Meet Whitney Owens

Photo of Christian therapist Whitney Owens. Whitney helps other christian counselors grow faith based private practices!Whitney is a licensed professional counselor and owns a growing group practice in Savannah, Georgia. Along with a wealth of experience managing a practice, she also has an extensive history working in a variety of clinical and religious settings, allowing her to specialize in consulting for faith-based practices and those wanting to connect with religious organizations.

Knowing the pains and difficulties surrounding building a private practice, she started this podcast to help clinicians start, grow, and scale a faith-based practice. She has learned how to start and grow a successful practice that adheres to her own faith and values. And as a private practice consultant, she has helped many clinicians do the same.

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Faith in Practice is part of the Practice of the Practice Podcast Network, a network of podcasts that are changing the world. To hear other podcasts like Empowered and Unapologetic, Bomb Mom, Imperfect Thriving, Marketing a Practice or Beta Male Revolution, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Podcast Transcription

[WHITNEY]:
If you’re listening to this podcast and haven’t yet joined the Faith in Practice Facebook group, I want you to go into your Facebook account and search for ‘faith in practice’ and join our growing community of faith-based practice owners. I jump in there and do Facebook Lives, there’s opportunities to be able to get information from other people, ask questions, and it’s a great community for faith-based practice owners. So head on over to Facebook and look for the Faith in Practice community. If you have a hard time finding that, feel free to send me an email [email protected] and I’ll make sure to get you in there.

Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host, Whitney Owens, recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week, through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow, and scale your private practice from a faith-based perspective. I’m going to show you how to have an awesome, faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

________________________________________

[WHITNEY]:
Well, today’s episode is a solo show with me. And I’m going to share with you how to get referrals and work with referral sources, and how to actually get clients from those referral sources. So I’m going to walk through the details of how I do that in my practice. If you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk a little bit about my practice. But my practice is in Savannah, Georgia. And we are a cash only practice, I’ve only done cash only practices. So particularly for cash practices, we know that you have got to have really good referral relationships because that’s where you’re gonna get a lot of your clients. So I’m going to walk through those steps with you today, and this is going to be episode number 53, and this is on how to build relationships with referral sources that actually lead to getting clients. All right, we want to actually get clients from our referral sources.

So the first thing that I want you to do, if you are listening to this podcast, you know, on a run or maybe in the car or something, then you might not be able to do this, but if you’re just chilling at your house, or sitting at your desk, kind of listen to this while you’re doing some work, I want to encourage you to take a second and think through some of this. And if you can write it down, that’s like bonus points, okay? So where is your ideal client hanging out? I do not want you to be spending your time and energy marketing to places that are not effective. So I want you to sit and think about where is your ideal client spending their time. Maybe this is an actual location, like a physical location, maybe it’s somewhere online, maybe it’s somewhere in print, they’re reading certain types of magazines, something like that. But consider that ideal client. And as I walk through this with you, I’m going to give you an ideal client and kind of show you how you could use this in your own practice.

So make maybe a list, five to ten different places, consider where this person spends their time. And then from there, I want you to think about actual places in a little bit more detail. So my example here is maybe your ideal client is an anxious mother, has young children, feeling overwhelmed, as most young mothers do. So where does the anxious, young mother spend her time? She spends her time maybe at a yoga center, maybe at the OBGYN office, they are at church, on social media, maybe Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest actually is one of the number one social medias for young mothers. You might find these young mothers at your children’s school. If you’re familiar with MOPS, which is through churches, its mothers of preschoolers, those are the places that this anxious mother’s hanging out. So I want you to think about your ideal client and the places where your ideal client would be spending their time. Or, if you work with children, you need to think about where – or teenagers – where their parents are spending their time, because those are the people that are going to pay for counseling.

So I want you to spend your money and your time on the locations where that ideal client is hanging out. So let’s say you’ve made this list. Okay. Now, I want you to actually consider how are you going to create a referral relationship with these places. You probably have some great places there that you’re thinking about. So how do you actually do that? I want you to identify who you’re going to actually reach out to. So you’ve got that list of locations there, or places. I want you to actually identify them. So maybe with the anxious mother, we’re thinking, okay, well, that would be an OBGYN office. Well, I want you to identify maybe three very specific OBGYN offices in town that you can reach out to, or maybe identify three churches that you can make a relationship with, or three yoga studios that you could reach out to. I want you to be specific because this podcast is not just about giving you a bunch of information, I want you to actually have a plan when you are done listening so that you can go and do this.

I want you to identify places as well that are similar to you maybe in the way they think about things or in the way that they do their payments. For example, if you’re a cash pay practice, you might want to work with places that are cash pay, maybe there’s a holistic doctor’s office that only takes certain insurance or doesn’t take any insurance. And maybe that would be a good place, they work with women. We have found that we do a lot of marketing with private schools, private Christian schools in our area because people are paying for private Christian schools. So sometimes they’re able to pay for counseling as well at a Christian practice. So consider that. If you’re an insurance based practice, go to places that take the same insurance panels that you do, and make relationships with those. So that is what I want you to do first, is really identify where these places are that you’re going to go and create these relationships.

The next thing I want you to do is consider having a warm connection. So maybe you’re kind of going through this list thinking oh, well, I picked that because I have a friend who sees a doctor over there. Well, maybe that friend can somehow give you a warm connection, meaning you’re not just going cold call, they can actually introduce you to the person. I have a great example for this. I have a dear friend whose children and my children are friends. And so one day she told me, oh yeah, my son made a new friend at school, his mother is a OBGYN in town. And of course, immediately I get excited because I want to make a connection. This is just a side note – everything can be a connection for your practice; you need to always be telling people about the work you do because people need to know about it. So as soon as she said this to me, I was like, oh, well, can you get me connected to her? Because I bet she’s got a lot of women at her practice that are needing some counseling, right? And of course, my friend was happy to do it. And she sent a text message to me and her. And then this doctor, I said, can I jump on the phone with you for a few minutes? I did try to actually meet with her in person, which we’ll talk about that later in the podcast, but she was unable to. So we did a quick phone call. And I just talked about how are things at your business. And she ended up telling me about her needs for mental health services for her patients. And we were able to make that connection. Now she refers to our practice. So that’s considered a warm connection. So if you know someone who already knows someone, use that to your advantage.

Another connection I made when I first got to Savannah was my husband was doing youth ministry and I said, oh, well, you need to connect with the other youth ministers in town because I work with teenagers. That’d be a great connection. So that’s what he did. And he went and had coffee and he said, hey, if y’all are ever needing anyone to refer to, my wife is a therapist in town, and then that led to someone saying, oh, she needs to connect with our member care coordinator. And if you’ve listened to the podcast before, Meg Procopio was on several episodes ago, and she is the one that I connected with. So she did the member care at this church, we made that connection and now we get tons of referrals from there. So warm connections will get you really far. And don’t be nervous about that. I know that you probably are because it can be intimidating to reach out to someone and say, hey, can you connect me to somebody? But people need to hear about your practice. People are looking for faith-based counselors out there and so you need to make it known.

So let’s say you get this name, or you get this text and you’re trying to make this connection. Make it natural. Don’t feel like you have to be, I don’t know, cold or distant or hey, here I am. Here’s my practice. Say, hey, how are you? Tell me about yourself. It doesn’t have to be so tense, like, it can really be natural, just like you make connections all the time in your practice with your clients. You get to know them. That’s what this is. You’re just getting to know somebody else that you can make that connection. Okay? If you don’t have that warm connection, though, how do you actually connect with somebody? So you can look them up online, you can maybe find their email address. So you could try that. You could reach out to somebody through social media, or maybe by phone. There’s all different kinds of ways. So whatever way feels most comfortable to you I think is good. I personally love phones. Even when people are trying to apply for a job at my practice, I’m much more likely to consider them if they give me a call and let me know that they’ve applied than if they don’t, but it’s all in what your comfort level is. And you want to make your referral relationships really natural. So do the natural thing that works for you when you’re connecting with people and just know that you are very good at building relationships. That’s what you do. And so people want to get to know you? Okay.

So you’re going to reach out to someone to build a relationship. So you’re going to be yourself, you’re gonna be the awesome, authentic counselor that you already are. But then you’re also wondering, what do I actually say in that email? What do I actually say on that phone call? I need step by step. This is what I hear from people. So I’m going to give it to you. This is what I do. I introduce myself, Hey, my name is Whitney Owens, I’m the owner over at Water’s Edge Counseling. And then I say that I want to let the referral know that I’d like to just get to know them, that I’m not necessarily going in there and promoting my business, even though I am going to; I’m trying to get to know them. So I might say something like, you know, I own this practice, I’ve heard really great things about your office, or, you know, one time I had a patient that came and saw me from your office – you wouldn’t disclose details, of course – and I would love to just get to know you. I’d love to come get a tour of your office, I’d love to hear about the work you do at your office, how did you start your business, yada, yada. You’re making it about a connection with them and not about yourself at first because that’s gonna align people more. And then you’re going to tell them that you want to be able to refer to their organization. I want to get to know you and I want to get to know the work you do so that I can refer clients to you.

So I found this, especially with doctors, that I might say, hey, I have clients that come in that are needing a new doctor in town, or I might have a woman come in that has a need to see an OBGYN, so let me get you connected. So here’s my example here. Hi, my name is Whitney, I’ve been searching for an OBGYN to refer young women to in need of medical evaluations, or who are pregnant and having postpartum symptoms. Is there any way we could connect to get to know one another, and I can learn about your business, and we can have a mutual relationship? So that’s what I would say in an email or on a voicemail. And, you know, honestly, some people are gonna say yes, and some people are never going to respond to you. And that’s fine. You just do the best you can with the people that do respond to you and make those relationships. But you make it really about caring for them as well as them helping your business too.

So you’ve sent that email, you’ve made that phone call, and you get a response that says, that is great, I would love to get to know you. Alright, so now you’re going to offer more like getting to know them. So can I stop by your office and get a tour, get to know you? Now, during COVID you’d have to figure out if that’s appropriate or not. I think you can be creative in getting to know people during this time. So let’s say you’re trying to connect with a church and you want to get to know this pastor, hey, can I stop by with a cup of coffee, and we take a walk around the block at your church, or sit outside and you know, maybe the church has a little area to sit outside? I don’t know, they have little gardens and things. Or maybe somebody, you say, hey, can I come at lunchtime and do a walk around the block with you or bring you some lunch and we sit outside? I just think there’s a lot of ways that you can be creative in getting to know somebody during COVID. Or maybe you offer to do a zoom meeting or a phone call and that’s okay, too. You want to do what is in their comfort level.

So when you are going by, just asking them what they would like, hey, would you like coffee? Or would you like lunch? Or where can I order that from? And making sure that you’re getting something that they actually like and enjoy. You don’t want to give them too many questions because then they might feel uncomfortable. But saying, hey, I plan to stop at Starbucks on the way to your office, can I pick you up a treat? What would you like? Being kind of directive in that way. You also, if it is in person, I think a really great thing to offer, if it’s a bigger staff, is to take lunch, but also to offer to do a presentation for them based on what their needs are. So for example, we connected with a pediatric office here in town and the doctors were having a really hard time doing quick mental health evaluations because they only have fifteen minutes between appointments and sometimes they were having kids coming in with cutting or suicidality, and they didn’t know, do I send them to the hospital? Do I get them to a counselor? How does that work? So I brought lunch in with a couple of my other staff and we did a quick presentation on how to know when to refer out. I had a flyer, I had phone numbers for places to refer out to, and how to know when you need to send them to a hospital. And then I let them know that we will take their clients, we’d love to work with them if they can refer them, we’ll try to get them in as soon as possible if they’re needing an immediate assessment. Because these doctors aren’t necessarily trained in all these things and you can help them by being available. And in the same way, we also refer to this practice. If I have a teenager that comes in, or maybe they’re new to town and they’re needing to connect with a pediatrician, we refer to them too. So we have a good working relationship there. We’re mutually helping one another.

Okay, what do you say when you actually are meeting with them? So maybe you’re doing a one on one meeting, and you’re trying to figure out what to talk about. You’re gonna be yourself, you’re going to get to know them, ask about what they do, the kinds of things they do in their office, how did you get into this line of work? Is this your business? Do you work for someone else? How do you like it? What are the mental health challenges that come in? So you first get to know them; you always want to give more than you take in these relationships. And then after they’ve had a chance to talk about them, they’re going to ask you about you, because that’s just how it works. So I want you to talk about yourself, talk about your practice, talk about why you became a counselor, the passion that you have in your field, the types of clients you like working with, and then even talk about how they actually get better in working with you and the success you’ve had in your practice. And then I want you to take the extra step here, consider how you can provide guidance to this person, how you can give them a little nugget within your specialty. So maybe they say, you know, one of the struggles I have… I’m not coming up with a great example at the moment but maybe one of the struggles I have is someone comes into my office and they’re feeling anxious, and I don’t know what to do about it. Well, then you can say, well, one thing that’s really effective is just deep breathing. And you could tell them, I have clients count to four, in and out, counting to four, and they don’t have to be perfectly trained in this, just give them an idea of something they can do. And they can do that quick activity with their patients in the office. And then that calms them down when they’re doing their breathing and then they can make a game plan moving forward. And so if you can give some kind of advice to this person to show that you’re skilled, and you know what you’re doing, they’re gonna be a lot more likely to want to work with you moving forward.

Now, it’s also really cool if you can be creative. So they might be sharing their struggle with you, whatever that is in the mental health way in their office. So maybe they’re saying I don’t have time to do an exam with them for mental health because I’m already doing the physical exam, and I really just can’t possibly calm them down or get them referred, or whatever that is, or I don’t know what to do. So maybe you offer a solution more long term in how you can help like I was talking earlier, well, hey, you know, if you refer to us, we will see your client within twenty-four hours. Maybe that’s for a school in your area, maybe a private school that kids need to be assessed before they can return, hey, if you call our office, we’ll get that person in ASAP. Or give them an amount of time you’ll get them in within. That would be creative. Maybe the OBGYN with the anxious mother that we’ve been talking about, they say, well, I really don’t have enough time to educate my patients on postpartum depression – that’s what the OBGYN is telling you – because I have other things I need to be doing. So maybe you create a flyer, and it goes in the lobby, that symptoms of postpartum depression, that way people can read about it and know about it before they see the doctor, or after, and it has your contact info on there. Okay, maybe you’re working with a church and the pastor says, well, the most common problem I have is couples don’t know how to communicate, and they can come into my office and I can teach them some tips. But I don’t have time to really do couples counseling. Well, hey, I’ll come in and teach a course during the Sunday school hour for eight weeks for couples to learn how to communicate. They would love it. And then you’re being creative, you’re offering to meet a need, and that helps the relationship move forward. And it helps them too.

So like I said before, I want to remind you, you always want to give more than you take. You’re always giving to these relationships. It’s important that once you form this initial relationship, that you keep the relationship going. A lot of counselors that I’ve talked to feel like well, hey, I reached out to that place, and it’s been a month or two months, and they haven’t referred to me, that must not have worked. That is not the case. They’re not thinking about you all the time. But when someone comes in their office, and they’re depressed, then they’re thinking about you. You might only get one or two referrals from a place in town and that’s the whole year, you know, because maybe that’s all they have or need to refer to. Just because you’re not getting as many referrals as you would want does not mean the relationship’s not important or that you shouldn’t keep investing in it. I think back about when I was a solo practitioner, and I did a lot of time reaching out to people, and it was exhausting. But now as I look at it, I’m seeing we’re getting referrals all the time, like, it is a battle at the beginning, and you really have to work at it. But over time, as you develop those relationships and they see the good clinical work you’re doing, people are gonna keep referring to you. And so it is a building, as we build our client load, we build our referral relationships.

So it’s important that you continue to build that relationship through contacting them. And like I said before, being yourself, however feels comfortable for you to contact people, but I encourage that you do it at least every three to six months. So that means any given referral source will hear from you two to three times a year. There are so many different options for doing this, okay? You can do it however feels comfortable and authentic to you. But here’s some examples of some things you can do. It could just be you send a quick text and say, hey, you’re on my mind. The other day, one of my referral sources, I saw their daughter had gotten married on Facebook, I sent a quick text, hey, saw your daughter got married, she looked lovely, congratulations. And that’s a contact, we don’t have to talk about business all the time, we just have to continue a relationship so that they know that I’m thinking about them.

Also, other ways to build that relationship, you refer to them. So you refer people to the practice that they work at. Get an ROI from your client. So if your client comes in, and they’ve been referred by an OBGYN to see you, get the release of information; this is so vital. Most clients will do that, especially if they got a direct referral to you from someone that they trust to you. Then call that doctor, take that time and say, hey, thank you for that referral. I’m looking forward to working with this client. Could you tell me more about why you referred them and what kind of goals you have for them that I could work on? We do this with schools too. A school counselor refers somebody, we get the release of information from the parents, we say to the counselor, thank you so much for referring. How can we continue to work with you to help this person? So our counselor might follow up with that counselor at the school every few weeks, hey, how are they doing at school, anything we should be aware of? Here’s some things I’m working on in therapy, what are the things you’re working on at the school to make sure you’re working together? I guarantee you, if that client gets better by working with you, and you’ve been in communication with that counselor at the school, the next kid that comes in that counselor’s office that’s anxious, you will be getting that phone call to get that new client, hands down.

Then another way to connect is adding people to your email list. Again, we can talk about this I guess in another podcast, but you want to have an email list going so that people can connect with your practice in that way and hear about the things going on. And so when they’re getting those emails, you’re front of mind. You can also maybe send out an email – we talked about the text, email or phone call when you know something big has happened. So maybe when COVID happened, you probably did reach out to some of your referral sources, or reaching out to a church and saying, hey, I know this event has happened that is a big impact in your church and I just want you to know I’m thinking about you. That’s a way that you can reach out.

So now we’ve talked about keeping that relationship going. And now what to do when they refer. Do everything you can to get the client to sign the release, and get that client scheduled. Or you get them scheduled then get the release. If you are establishing a relationship with someone, and you have never had them refer to you before, do everything you can to get that client in because you want them to see that you can do good clinical work. I remember when I was solo, doing this a ton where, you know, I tried not to work a lot of evenings but sometimes that was the only time a client could come in, so I made that evening work so that I can see that person so that I could follow up with that referral source. And that has really helped me get more clients. The biggest mistakes that I see from practice owners is they get a referral source and they refer them to them and then they don’t get the ROI, or they don’t follow up at all. And just so you know, even if they don’t want to send that ROI, you can still follow up and just send a note. We send a handwritten note to all of our referral sources that just say something like, hey, I always really enjoy working with you. Thank you for thinking about me. You don’t have to say anything about the referral or the client, but they’ll know when they see it because they would have just referred to you. And it shows that you’re noticing. People want to notice. I know that one of my pet peeves is when I send a gift to somebody and then I don’t know if they ever got it. You know that feeling? And so, you think, did they get that in the mail? Or did they get those flowers I sent? Not that I necessarily need recognition. I just hate that I spent the time and money if they didn’t get something. So same thing. These people are sending you referrals, they want to know that you’re taking good care of the people they’re sending to you and the only way they’re going to know that is if you follow up. Okay.

A good and low cost way for you to get more clients is to do good clinical work. This is the best way to get clients. I had a child that I was working with. She had a hard time with swallowing pills, and she had anxiety. So through our work together, she was able to swallow a pill. That was wonderful. Well, the doctor that she worked with, she went back to her doctor, I don’t know, a month later, probably. And the doctor said, oh, yeah, I remember you went and saw that counselor. Are you able to swallow pills? Yes, I’m able to swallow pills. That counselor immediately started sending me tons of other kids, because she saw that someone got better working with me. So it’s really important that you do good clinical work not only for the client, but it is going to help you build your business.

So like I was saying, the last thing I want to talk about here is the importance of showing gratitude for the referrals that you get. When appropriate, get the ROI signed, and follow up and verbally tell the person that you appreciate that they sent somebody to you. And if not, like I said, send a thank you note, or some kind of way to say thank you for thinking about you. These notes don’t have to be terribly long or personal, they can be short, to the point, thank you, yada, yada. Now, it’s important with any way that you show gratitude to somebody that you don’t make it about yourself. Some people are promoting their business all the time that they forget about the other person that they’re reaching out to, you don’t need a thank you note that has your logo really big on the front, because that makes it about you and not about them. You can have a simple thank you note that has a beautiful picture, something plain, maybe it just says ‘thank you’.

And then you might even want to consider a small gift, right? It doesn’t have to be anything big. In fact, it shouldn’t be anything big because of the ethics within our practice. And you cannot give a gift per referral, you don’t want it to be like a kickback thing, right? You want it to be just something that you just appreciate them. And genuinely that is what you’re doing, you appreciate what they’ve done in sending you clients and in working with them, and you want to let them know that you appreciate them. So I encourage you to do a really small gift, it could be a $5, $10 gift, just once, twice a year, or maybe you do it surrounding a certain event. So like at the beginning of the school year, we take gifts to our private schools in the area. Well, I’m thinking about that now because of COVID, the private schools opened before the public schools, so we did the private and then we’ll do the public schools, to be able to say, hey, you know, it’s hard to be a school counselor. And it’s particularly hard with COVID. And so we wanted to give you a little something. We actually gave them very small plants, I think they were $5, where they could plant it on their desk and watch it grow throughout the year. And the teachers seem to really, I mean, the counselors seem to really appreciate that gift. You could do maybe a small coffee mug, or one time we did coffee mugs and we inserted those Viva instant coffees and so that way, when they needed coffee, they could just run and get it because we all need coffee, right? So think about small gifts; it could be candy, gift cards, like $5 gift cards, something like that. But like I said, with the thank you notes, it’s not about your big logo on it, it’s about something that they can appreciate, have at their office.

So I know that was a lot of information. I want you to take two or three things that I’ve talked about today and actually implement them in your practice. If you can reach out to one referral source and make that connection, that would be awesome. Okay, you’re gonna have to step out of your comfort zone a little bit, make that connection, or maybe reach out to an old referral source you haven’t talked to in a while, or maybe find out who your friends know, maybe what churches they go to, or if they have other friends that are professionals. Maybe you have a friend that’s an attorney. Well, you know what, attorneys are needing to refer to counselors. So I want you to make that connection. And then if you’re up for it, send me an email, let me know that you listened to the podcast and that you actually did what was asked with working with referrals. Even better, I would love for you to give me a review within whatever you’re listening to this podcast on, give me a review and say, hey, I heard the podcast and Whitney suggested this and she’s always giving me action steps and here’s what I did. Whatever feels most comfortable and authentic to you. Would love to get feedback from you guys because I love the podcast, I love talking with you, but what I really love is when I hear that it makes a difference in your life, and that you’re able to use the steps that we talk about to get more clients and to help more people. So I appreciate you taking the time to listen and learn from me. It’s an honor to be a part of your life. And I look forward to hearing about the ways that you make those great connections with referral sources.

________________________________________

[WHITNEY]:
Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also, there you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and group consulting, or just shoot me an email [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.