Careswitch FAQ | How can I get traction in my efforts to build referral pipelines?

Here’s an overview of some of the different areas you should think about—as well as telltale signals that each area might be what’s holding you back.

Note from Connor at Careswitch: This piece draws heavily from a recent interview on our podcast, Home Care U, with three-time home care marketer Gabrielle Pumpian who currently works as Chief Development Officer at Cheer Home Care in California. You can listen to the full episode here; we’ll also link a list of related resources at the end of this article. While this was written by our team, we've credited her as the author because her knowledge formed much of the subject matter.

Before we get started: working through the different areas of the referral marketing/sales process requires us to hit some points that might sound painfully obvious. Give the obvious-sounding ones some earnest thought anyway—struggling sales processes often come back to fundamentals.

#1: Make sure you’re properly pre-qualifying accounts and doing your research.

It’s easy to sink a referral marketing program simply by wasting too much time on accounts that aren’t ideal anyway.

By the end of your first conversation with any given referral partner, do you actually know how often they refer home care clients?

A few other tips for proper qualification:

Use CMS.gov to understand the demographics of the local area served by the potential partner and how it compares to surrounding areas. You may or not end up deciding to work with the partners serving the areas with the highest concentrations of seniors (hint: you probably will), but if you’re choosing to work with partners in areas with lower concentrations of seniors it should be a deliberate strategic decision (pursuing a strategy of winning a larger number of these accounts because of lower competition for them, etc.)
Draw on your existing network of partners to understand who they work with, who they don’t work with, and why.

Signals this may be your problem:

Right now, you can think of several accounts you’re actively pursuing that you don’t know how often they actually refer home care clients
You have great relationships with several partners who look great on paper but aren’t sending you referrals

#2: Set goshdang appointments—don’t just drop in.

Some marketers will be rolling their eyes at the obviousness of this—somebody else is reading this right now and thinking that it feels unrealistic.

It’s possible that getting your foot in the door with a particular account might at some point require an unscheduled drop-in for whatever reason, but you’re almost always going to be have a more productive meeting if you’re respecting their time (and owning the value of your own time and presence) by scheduling ahead.

Frequently unscheduled drop-ins can erode your credibility, strain your relationships with partners, and waste your time.

Signals this may be your problem:

Most of your visits are drop-ins
Your working relationships with referral sources feel superficial and forced
You often sense annoyance from the people you’re trying to meet with
Most of your struggles are focused on getting past gatekeepers

#3: Have a deep understanding of your agency’s differentiators and be very practiced at articulating them in a variety of potential contexts.

One of the most critical determinants of success or failure in home care marketing is whether or not you:

1) have a clear differentiator

2) clearly understand its value to your potential referral sources, and

3) know how to articulate its value to them effectively

This not only fuels your initial talking points with potential referral partners, but also determines the types of counter-questions you should ask if they’re already working with other agencies or otherwise don’t seem interested in partnering.

As Gabrielle thoughtfully points out in the previously mentioned interview, questions like “It makes sense that you prefer referring clients to XYZ agency since they charge less than many agencies. Since lower-cost agencies tend to turn over caregivers much faster, do you know if they have a way to keep the churn from impacting clients’ experiences?” can quickly open the door for you to help them consider benefits you can offer they hadn’t previously considered.

Examples of factors that might be a differentiator to referral sources:

Specialty programs
Quantitative proof of high client and caregiver satisfaction
Advanced training for caregivers in particular areas
Low caregiver turnover (consistency in caregivers for clients)
Communication processes between your team, the partner’s team, families, and any other important stakeholders

Note: It’s very possible that this question results in some organization-level soul-searching. Newer agencies often secure their first few clients on the strength of personal relationships but struggle to scale because they haven’t deliberately identified areas to invest in organizationally to produce concrete business differentiators.

Signals this may be your problem:

You’re having to burn through a high volume of qualified potential referral partners to find ones willing to refer to you
You don’t feel effective at persisting with partners who already have home care partners and don’t see the need for another
The vast majority of your professional referrals come from a few sources with whom you have some kind of preexisting personal relationships

#4: Audit your follow-up and communication processes—hard.

Nothing gives you stronger fuel for productive future interactions with referral partners and nothing kills referral relationships faster than your agency’s follow-up.

Some questions to ask:

Do you know how a given referral source prefers to receive follow-up on referrals and clients?
What does your agency’s process look like for reporting on a client’s progress to a referral source? (The uncomfortable question: do you have a process?)
Are you fully leveraging the chance to close the loop on referrals as a way to prove credibility and ask for more referrals?

Many types of referral partners have specifics on how they want communication, documentation, and follow-up to happen. Referencing geriatric care managers as an example of this, Gabrielle told me:

“They’re very specific with how they like communication to happen. They often like to have copies of the care plan, develop a care plan with our staff, have certain protocols for how they need to be communicated with throughout a case, and want care plans emailed to them monthly. . . It’s very important to understand these things if you want to keep your credibility with them.”

Jesse Walters, CEO of Hillendale Home Care in the San Francisco Bay Area, addresses the communication/follow-up challenge by pairing both a marketer and a client care manager on any given referral account, giving them co-ownership for the relationship, and treating it as a book of business to which both employees have performance-based compensation tied.

Signals this may be your problem:

Your referral sources often seem to slow down after providing a few initial referrals
You don’t know how your referral partners prefer to receive client updates and follow-up
You aren’t sure what the conversations look like when someone fomr your agency’s office is updating a partner on a client’s progress

#5: Make sure you’re asking for referrals clearly enough, often enough, and confidently enough.

As Gabrielle told our team, stay out of the dreaded Friend Zone—a situation in which you have a great relationship with a partner but aren’t getting any referrals from them.

At some point, it becomes time to have the break-up conversation, where you make it clear that the relationship isn’t something you can justify continuing to put time and effort into unless it’s a reciprocal relationship that is producing referrals.

And because humans hate feeling like we’re bugging each other, at the end of the day it’s all too easy to focus so much on building relationships that you fail to keep the goal of receiving referrals at the front and center of your efforts.

Signals this may be your problem:

You have great rapport with a number of well-qualified accounts that aren't sending you referrals

Further resources

If you’ve gotten this far, maximizing the value you’re getting from referrals partners is obviously important to you. Here are some other resources we’ve got on the topic:

Home Care Owner FAQs