With referral-based marketing, we often discuss several opportunities to get out there, interact with others, and give presentations to potential referral sources whether it’s to another physician or to the community.  We have an entire referral outreach marketing program dedicated to getting you or a subject matter expert (SME) from your office in front of potential referral sources! However, are your presentations ready to go?  Physician schedules are busy as it is so we want to make sure that we take every measure to be prepared in the chance that we are given the opportunity on a whim.  Today we’ll discuss preparing such presentations so that they are readily available when you need them.  There is no need to create a new one with each opportunity that comes your way, so building basic and general templates is extremely useful and can save you a lot of time and trouble later on.

General Referral Marketing Pitch

The first type of presentation you want to create is a general presentation that represents your practice and your services.  This presentation should be tailored to any audience (physician or not).  Provide a brief overview of your specialty and help educate your audience about what types of conditions you treat.  You can also include other ancillary services you provide as well as practice information such as phone, address, website and even hours of operation.  Remember that for physicians and the community alike, there is often a misunderstanding about what you exactly treat and educating them can help open their eyes and can lead to patient referrals.

Physician Referral Marketing Pitch

Another type of presentation that is useful to create is similar to the general one, but this time, can be specifically geared to referring physician.  With this presentation, you still want to review what conditions you treat and different services you provide, but you also want to stress how you can be helpful to their practice.  Highlight which types of patients you can treat and make sure to present yourself as an extension of their practice that provides the patient with top-notch, comprehensive care.  Include details about protocol that they might benefit from whether it’s a consult note or same-day appointments for their referred patients.  Lastly, include any other pertinent information such as insurances you accept or other ways that convey to referring physicians how easy it is to work with you.

Specific Service Pitch / Grow Your Patient Referrals

Lastly, you want to build any other presentations that focus on a specific area of your practice that you’d like to grow.  If sports medicine is your focus, build a brief presentation that shows why you are an expert in that field and why referring physicians should feel comfortable sending certain patients to you.  Or, for the community, choose a topic that is common and important and educate the public on the importance of prevention or treatment methods.  For example, if you are a specialist that deals with many diabetics, educate your audience on the importance of monitoring diabetes and important things they can do to stay on top of their health and prevent serious implications.  By utilizing these specifically tailored presentations, your audience will not only learn a lot, but they’ll remember you as the expert of that topic.