Real Talk on Referrals: Strategies for Success with David Posner
Want more insights into developing effective referral partnerships? 🎙️ Tune in to our latest podcast episode featuring David Posner, founder of 3Point Care Consulting and a healthcare sales leader with 20+ years of experience. He shares expert strategies for building referral pipelines and turning conversations into action.
If you're looking to build strong referral partnerships, lead with real-world situations that your potential referral partners face daily. Show them how you can make their job easier by providing solutions. Here’s how:
🔸 Elder Law Attorneys:
"Do you often work with solo agers who don’t have family nearby? Ever find yourself dealing with tough medical or financial decisions on their behalf?" 💼 This is where a care manager comes in—assisting with legal decisions, coordinating medical care, and providing ongoing support for solo agers in need.
🔸 Assisted Living Directors:
"What do you do when a resident’s family calls every day with concerns, or a resident stops engaging after a rehab stay?" 🏡 Care managers can step in to manage family dynamics, coordinate care, and keep everyone informed, easing the burden on your staff.
🔸 Hospitals:
"What happens when a patient is ready to transition home but doesn’t have local support?" 🏥 Care managers ensure a smooth transition, coordinating home care, post-surgery follow-ups, and everything in between.
💬 The key to building these relationships? Ask what they do in specific situations, actively listen, and provide examples of how you’ve helped in similar cases. This approach builds trust and positions you as a valuable partner.
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Transcript
[00:00:04] Ariadne: Welcome to the CareCraft podcast presented by Panacea. I'm really excited today to be joined by David Posner. He's a sales leader and a healthcare advocate with over 20 years of experience in the industry. He's led sales for home care, care management and healthcare software companies, helping them exceed their goals, grow sales and meet the company's revenue objectives.
So right now he's currently leading his own consulting company, 3Point Care Consulting, advising healthcare organizations on sales and business development. He has an MBA from George Mason University and is also a referee at Big Three, a professional basketball league and a TEDx speaker for healthcare and leadership.
So thank you so much for joining us today, David.
[00:00:52] David: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to get started.
[00:00:56] Ariadne: Yeah. I'm excited to have you on today to talk specifically about building a referral pipeline with healthcare professionals and facilities. You know, a topic that's come up on a number of previous episodes of the podcast is really referrals.
And a lot of people talk about, you know, attorneys and other individuals that might be sending them referrals for care management services. Okay. But today we're really focusing on other healthcare professionals and how that might be a bit different. So before we jump into it would love to just understand a little bit more about your own journey and sales and, and specifically healthcare sale.
[00:01:33] David: Yeah, well, it actually started about 20 plus years ago, pharmaceutical sales. So I, I came up through a pharma rep carrying the bag and knocking on doctor's doors and providing lunch and, and all those goodies transition to medical device. And then I got a call from a recruiter one day and says, Hey, have you ever thought about getting into senior care and healthcare?
And at the time, I, at the time I sold a Alzheimer's medication, so I knew a little bit and he, he convinced me to, to get out there to home care and, and be executive director of a branch out in, in DC ran a Maryland, DC, Virginia branches. For a company called Live Home, which is no longer around and basically dove into senior care right then and there and learned all about home care and home health and hospice and work with that company for about a year and a half, got promoted over all sales reps throughout the country.
And then unfortunately the company basically folded its doors outside of California, got recruited to another company that did homecare. com where I was there to kind of help them get started in their sales process. So they never had an outside sales. And so I was able to kind of help them develop a team, start them off learning how to visit facilities, communities, hospice, how to power partner up together.
At this time, I also partnered up with and met Steve, the hurricane who is a guru when it comes to home care sales and learned a lot from him as far as, you know, how to, how to speak differently to a deal when, versus an ed versus admissions team. And so learning all of that helped the company go from zero to about 10 million within four years.
Then switched over to staffing side of it. So got to start working with C level executives. on how they're working with all of their, their community partners. And then most recently left, left the staffing world and went back into care management with ElderTree and from there I was again, brought into just develop a sales team.
So work with them as far as their CRM, how they put an information in. What are their current referral sources? Where is there an opportunity for more? I know we're going to talk about elder law. We're also going to talk about community. So with Care management, I really got to see a lot of different types of referral sources that are out there and available.
And partner with them and work with them develop a team develop marketing And got them about 12 to 15 percent growth got them to about 10 million within six months, so I'm really excited about that and Now I'm taking everything that I've learned and sharing it with with those that are that are out there And i'm excited to take it on this new journey of helping home care, hospice, home health, assisted livings, care management companies grow their sales team and really begin to scale and help leadership teams, you know, become better leaders and a little bit of HR, referee background. So I'm going to share a little bit with the conflict management and how to have those tough discussions.
[00:04:35] Ariadne: That's awesome. So you've certainly seen a lot of flavors and also it sounds like a lot of companies really just getting started and thinking about, you know, their sales and what does that team look like or that function looks like.
So yeah, super excited to dive right into it then. So, you know what, one of the last things you were touching on was actually the differences that you were seeing and all the different types of referral sources because care managers work with so many partners and and touch so many aspects of an individual's care.
So, can you explain some of the main differences that you notice specifically between health care individuals and non health care referral sources?
[00:05:15] David: Yeah, I mean, the easy and most obvious difference is availability, right? So, you know, as a salesperson. Regardless if you're selling home care, hospice, home health, or care management services, you can go into an assisted living, go into a skilled nursing facility.
You can go into a hospital at any time meeting with a financial advisor, trust officers, wealth advisors, elder law attorneys, estate planners. This is a little bit more, a little bit more work, right? So a lot of times you're either going to have to set appointments. But one of the best ways I've found is just networking.
You know, one of the great things is, I've built up a great network. And the nice thing about the healthcare community is there's usually a lot of events going on that can help you partner up. But if nothing else, I just started by going to some estate planner association meetings, elder law attorneys meetings, trust officer meetings, because they all have different associations and just went in as a guest and just started talking to them and seeing what they knew about the healthcare space, the senior care space.
Are they currently working with them? Who are they working with, where I might be able to have opportunities. And once I was able to kind of break in and get to meet some of them, you know, sat down for coffee, sat down for breakfast, sat down for lunch, and just kind of went through, you know, what we're able to provide.
And so, yes, you're, you're not able to simply just kind of walk in like you could for, you know, on the healthcare side, but the other big difference between healthcare referrals and elder law referrals or let's, you know, financial, let's call them advisors, advisor type of referrals is the quality, right?
So a lot of what we're talking about especially on the home care side and the care management side, we're talking about private pay. And so they have it right. All of their family members, if you're working with elder law attorney, a trust officer, wealth advisor, you've got money. That's the benefit.
The negative, unfortunately is the volume. The volume is much more going to come with the hospitals, rehabs, and assisted livings. So as far as differences, You know, if you're trying to build your business off of volume, it's going to be on the health care side. However, if you're looking for higher quality type of clients that are most likely going to last longer because they're not so sick, they're not so ill.
That's where the advisors really start to come in and really help can really help put a company in a great position.
[00:07:40] Ariadne: So when you say volume, right, like that, what I'm hearing from that is that you might get a lot of referrals that aren't really a good fit. Like, are there things that you could do as you are approaching that referral source and developing that relationship over time to try to, you know, refine what their understanding of your services are and get to a better quality lead?
Or is it really, you know, you just, you know, Take it all as you can get it and then, you know, sort it out on your side.
[00:08:11] David: Honestly, it's, it's a little bit of both, you know, so depending on what stage of the business you're in, you might just take whatever you can get and just kind of work through it. If you're just trying to get referrals, you're just kind of starting out.
But one of the things I always talk about with my teams is the importance of qualifying an account. So when we talk about qualifying an account on the healthcare side, What that means is it's going in and asking important questions as far as if we're looking at a facility or community, you know, what is their bed count?
And then what is their census, right? Because if they've got low census, they're not going to have a lot of referrals for you. On the flip side, if they've got high, high census, or they've got a waiting list, that's going to be much more of an opportunity to work with you. Next question you want to ask is what type of families are moving into the communities or what kind of families are they getting from, from the hospitals and rehabs?
And so that will also determine as far as, are they getting a lot of you know, simple fall prevention or is it much higher need Parkinson's, dementia, that. So understanding that the different types of families that are coming in there is, is also helpful. And then walking them through, you know, One thing I've realized is a lot of the social workers and discharge planners, you know, they don't think anybody can afford home care or care management services.
It's, it's, it's really tough because what I've, I guess, come to realize is a lot of people think that whatever I make, that's what you make. And a lot of social workers are honestly the most underpaid, underappreciated overworked job in all of healthcare. And because of that, They don't think people can afford our services.
So walking them through how, you know, what type of services we can provide and the different variety. So if it's home care, if it's, if it's care management, you know, one, what are your minimums? One hours, four hours, eight hours, 12 hours, and then what you can be able to provide. What additional services you can offer to be able to make it beneficial for that referral source to offer you the payments.
But first and foremost, we need to be able to qualify the account. And again, it goes back to what are their numbers? Who are they current, you know, are they currently referring to care management and home care? If they are, what are they like? What are they not like? And then who are they working with? And is there an opportunity to get into the most important thing when you start out is just qualifying the account, getting to know the people.
And that's the other part of this is getting to know the entire team. A lot of salespeople just go in and talk directly to the discharge planners. Well, yes, the discharge planners can work, but they could be gone. That's, you know, they could be on vacation. So do you have somebody else that's going to fight for you?
And that's why it's really important to have, you know, those discussions about your services with administration. And the more people that know you and like you and support you, the more likely you are to get a referral.
[00:11:08] Ariadne: Going back to what you were saying a little bit earlier around one of the first ways you can kind of make that introduction is at these public events. And you know how you're saying it's really important to develop a relationship with the whole team. Like, what's do you find the best approach for that?
First interaction or trying to get that first interaction to actually turn into meeting the team because you know that that can be challenging in and of itself.
[00:11:34] David: Yeah, it's, it's a little like dating. Right, it's, it's, you know, people want to work with people they like, and that's what it's this is really comes down to like, do you make them feel warm and fuzzy, because let's be honest, you know, most people.
Regardless if they're in a community of their discharge, they've got referrals if they're working with families. They're probably already working with home care, hospice, home health care management type of company. So now it's a matter of, you know, can you build that rapport and can you build that relationship?
And, and part of it is, is doing your homework, right? So going on LinkedIn and learning a little bit more about them. But if we're talking about, you know, at the first networking event and the first time meeting them, just, you know the old adage is what is the number one thing people love to talk about?
[00:12:24] Ariadne: Themselves.
[00:12:26] David: Right. So just ask questions. Hey, what's your name? Where do you work? Wow. Why do you how long you've been working there? What made you get into elder law of all the different types of law? What made you get in there? Oh, have you been in this, you know, Washington DC metro area long, you know, where, where'd you come from?
What made you move here? Let them talk. And because again, like we just said, the more they talk, the more they like you because you're letting them speak. And it's probably the easiest way of building rapport. It's funny. I have a lot of my sales reps, you know, claim that they're introverts and a lot of care managers I work with as well, you know, introverts, they don't, they don't want to sell.
And so, you know, I say, don't feel like you ever have to sell, just go in and ask questions. You know, whatever you want to know, whatever you can do to get them talking, that's the best way. And again, then they'll start to warm up and if it works, you know, it works when they start asking you questions and they start asking me, Oh, what do you do again?
Oh, where, how does that work? Or you should come by for a meeting or, you know, and that's the last thing is, you know, if you're at a networking event, your goal is to walk away with meetings. Okay. So at the end of the conversation, regardless if it's going well or not, and you want to be able to have that in excess, you know, ask them, Hey, I'd love to, you know, pull you out for for coffee or for lunch one day.
When are you free? Now, here's here's a pro tip. You know, a lot of times I've got to check my calendar or I've got to, you know, check with so and so. Well, everybody these days has a cell phone and most of us keep our calendar on our phones. So. Hey, well, I'm available at Thursday at 9 a. m. for coffee. Would you mind checking your calendar to see if you're free?
Yeah, okay, let's do that. And so you walk away because, let's be honest, after a networking event, we get back to our computers, we've got hundreds of emails. The last thing I want to be able to do is, is look through another email and try to get someone to, you know, commit to a lunch when they're like, oh, well, I've got all these other things to worry about.
[00:14:34] Ariadne: Yeah. That's a great tip. I think it is so crucial to also just keep one thing from your own to do list, right? Because you leave from the meeting and you, you know, have hundreds of emails you have to catch up on. So what, what are specific things that care managers should highlight in those first conversations that you've seen from your previous experiences that really help a potential referral partner understand what they do, understand the value that they would bring to that?
Particular organization.
[00:15:04] David: Yeah. So again, it gets back to, you know, building their experience and understanding them, right? So if you're working with an elder law attorney and you're trying to be able to kind of partner up with them, ask them how they get business. You know, are they getting from Google from radio?
Are they going to the hospitals? Are they getting them, you know, court cases? So try to understand how they're getting it and have them. One of the things I always ask is walk me through your process. You know, how does a family come into you, you know, what are the different services you offer? And then, you know, do you work with care management?
When would, when do you think you would bring in a care manager and you let them kind of talk and, and bring up different examples. Oh, well, you know, if a family is just moving in from out of the area, I usually bring in, or if they've got a lot of challenges and issues, I'll bring in care management. So you let them talk and then you offer your, what I call case studies.
And one of the best ways to sell in general is by example, instead of going up to someone and say, got any referrals for me, you know, give them an example. So I'd go up to an elder law attorney says, Hey, I'm just curious. You ever worked, you work with a lot with solo agers, you know, people that don't have a lot of family.
What do you do in that case? Would that be an opportunity for care manager? Yeah, probably. Could you ever have a situation where someone's coming from out of town and they're, you know, they're moving in to be closer to the sun and they're finding an assistant living or whatever it might be, but they're moving into an area to be closer to their children.
But the children are probably busy, but they want them close by. Remember those situations? Yeah. All the time. Great. Would you use a care manager? I never really thought about it. Yeah. Well, we can help with setting up with doctors so we can get them trust officers. We can get them the right assisted livings.
You know, we can find solo agers home care to work with or, or the best assisted livings in the area. So one of the things to be able to do is you find out how much they know. And then you bring up examples of where you're able to kind of fill in. So it might be medical proxy, right? Especially with elder law attorneys and money managers saying, Hey, you know, do you, do you do medical proxy?
Do you do health care POA? And I'm like, ah, we've tried it. We don't really like it, but You know, we do as a care manager, most care management companies do. We do, we can be able to, to be there. We'll work directly with you and, and be able to offer that types of services. So kind of letting them know by example, different situations is usually what I found the best way to kind of build up the report, give them examples and then say, look, if you have anybody right now, I'd love to just do a trial basis so you can get more comfortable with us.
[00:17:55] Ariadne: How do you, or what are the case studies that you normally use in more of a context where you are talking to that discharge planner or the individual, you know, at a medical facility?
[00:18:06] David: Yeah. So if I can use one that's I've done at a particular facility, you know, one of the things I do as soon as I get to any organization is I say, you know, look back the last six months and see if you've had anybody at this hospital, this rehab, or this assisted living and use that as a perfect example. But let's say you've never gotten a referral and you're trying to break in to a new skilled nursing facility and hopefully you've had at least one case. But again you'd go into there and say, Hey, I'm just curious, what are you?
And so again, I, I use just actually we'll use assisted livings cause I'll give you five right off the top of my head. So I'd go up to assisted livings because a lot of times assisted livings don't like care managers because they think they take away from them. You know, one of the things that, you know, we can talk about later is, you know, where's, where's the disconnect, but a lot of assisted livings think that care managers are there to oversee them and, and, and worry about them.
So one of the things I'll go up to a care a DON and simply say, Hey, I'm just curious when you have a family member or resident here, that's. Okay. So if you have a patient that's acting out physically, sexually, verbally against another resident or staff, what do you do? And by asking, what do you do?
You're not saying I want that type of patient. You're asking what is their protocol and it might be, well, we give them new medications or we send them to the hospital or, and then you're able to offer your advice. Well, what do you think about bringing a care manager in here who can manage that situation?
Okay. Hey, DLN, just curious. Do you have that family member that calls you every single day at three o'clock just to make sure their mom got water or another complaint their mom has, but the daughter's going to have to call you and you know, every day at three o'clock, you're going to get that call or they're stopping in and just happen to do a, got a minute with you.
Do you have those types of families here in the community? Yes. Every deal and every AL assistant living coordinator will say yes. What do you do? I answer their questions and try to shoo them out as quickly as possible, right? Well, how about utilizing care management? What if you said to that family member, Hey, I'm really busy.
I love working with you. I love talking to you, but there's a company out there called ABC care management that can actually help you. They can kind of walk through what's expected. They can offer a whole bunch of things. And a lot of the questions that you have for me. They can help with. They can make sure mom's getting water.
They can make sure this and they can, and we have a good relationship with them and so on and so forth. So that's where if you go in and talk about, you know, those types of case studies, you know, what do you do when is a great way of, of being able to bring up those different types of situations, family members that come home excuse me, residents that come from a rehab.
You know and are not coming out of their room. They're not, they usually come down to bingo, but for what, you know, but they've been in their room for the last two weeks since surgery. What do you do there? Hey, that's a great opportunity for, to bring in care management. So those are some examples of how I use case studies to, to talk to different facilitators from referral sources.
[00:21:15] Ariadne: Yeah, those are some great examples. I was curious, where do you think the disconnect comes from, you know, between care management and assisted living?
[00:21:24] David: Yeah. So, you know, I think the toughest thing for, for care managers, this is different than home care is a lot of people think that they can do what care managers do, right?
If I'm a, if I'm a home care agency, why would I want to bring in a social worker or nurse to oversee my care managers, my caregivers? I do that or I have a lead caregiver. Why would I want to bring them in? Same thing with assisted living. Why would I want someone to look out for my residents? I look out for my residents.
So that's a lot of times where you get a lot of pushbacks and hospitals. Well, I don't want to bring in a care manager because they're just going to try to tell me what to do. Well, those are the things that these care managers are fighting. And so it's really important to be able to one, address it and be able to, to overcome that.
And so being able to go up to a home care company and say, listen, we're not there to oversee it. We're going to make your life easier. And I can give you example after example of how care managers have gone in. They've helped train caregivers. So if a family member has Parkinson's. We're on hospice and they're not comfortable with end of life or they're not comfortable with you know, the shakes.
Care manager is probably a lot better at going in and teaching them and showing them, Hey, here's some different, here's some red flag situations that this is when you would need to call 9 1 1, or this is a situation where this is just going to happen. This is part of sundowning, whatever it might be. And so they can teach them.
On the assisted living side, you know, we just talked about the example of those pesky families that are calling every single day. We can go in and be that, that buffer, that liaison, that, that, to be able to, to kind of help. And even in this hospitals, being able to say, look, we're not here to overstep and oversight.
You guys are doing a great job. We're just here to make sure that we're advocating for the family members in the best way we can. So understanding where they come from and then being able to, to redirect and show them examples of how we can help.
[00:23:32] Ariadne: Yeah. So, ideally, relationships with referrals are a two way street, right?
You get some referrals, you, you know, maybe provide some back or, or there might be other ways, you know, what are some of the ways that you've nurtured those relationships over time and, and opportunities that you can provide that value back as well? On
[00:23:54] David: the care management side, it's a lot easier because There's a lot you can very easily be able to send a family to an assisted living or hospice or home health or of the law attorney or money manager.
So, you know, get finding those and identifying them is probably the most important. And that takes, and that's on intake. You know, a lot of, you know, companies I work with do a quick intake just because they're trying to get in the door. But it's really important to ask some of these. Do you have a trust officer?
Do you have a will set up? Do you know that like 85 percent of families that move into an assisted living don't have a will set up? Like you're going into an assisted living. I'm just shocked the number is that high. And every assist living I talked to, like, yeah, we can't believe it either. So there are opportunities, but those are the obvious ones, right?
The obvious ones is, is, Hey, I got a family that needs home care. I'm sending out. Where's the other options? Well, that's where I, again, one of my specialties is. It's really about partnering up. How do we do that? Number one going and co marketing together, you know, going out to different facilities and communities together.
You know, if I have a great relationship at ABC hospital or ABC hospital, and you have a great relationship at one, two, three hospital, well, let's, I'll take you to mine. I'll show you around and vice versa. And now two people are much better than one because. You know, when you see two people show up to meet with the case management office, it's a lot harder to say, ah, just come back later when it's two, they're like, all right, well, it's two.
I get two for the price of one. So I'll take you. So co marketing is a, is a great way. The second thing is, is networking events and, and doing panel discussions. One of the things I'd love to do was just set up panel discussions because you could do it on assistive living. You can grab an elder law attorney or a money manager.
And you can have a hospice or home health like be the microphone and set up and, you know, set up, you know, the different questions and panels. And the benefit is you've got all of those people referral sources promoting it to their spaces. So what a great way is just doing panel discussions because you can power partner with so many things.
Another way is obviously lunch and learns being able to partner up for lunch and learns to be able to talk about how complimentary services are. You can do the same thing at trade shows, be able to partner up and share a booth if there's a cost aware of it. But there's lots and lots of different ways to be able to partner up to really make it beneficial.
And the more you do that, the more it shows that you people like you. The one thing I hate to say this, but it's unfortunately true. And that is. You kind of want to be on the marketing side. You want to be the popular guy. You want to be the people that people want to go and see and like and hang out with.
And the more that you're seeing with hospice groups and care management groups and home care groups and assisted living groups. The more you've gotten validated that, Hey, this is a good enough company to, to work with. And it really skyrockets it. So for a lot of those new companies out there, a great way to really break into this business without having to wait, you know, the six months it takes to get a referral from the hospital is partner with someone and get them to be able to, to open doors.
[00:27:23] Ariadne: Yeah, that's awesome advice. When this is actually a Issue that has come up on other episodes as well. And I'm curious your take on it. How do you act in situations where you might be sending a decent number of referrals to particular individuals and you never get anything in return?
[00:27:44] David: This is super, super common. So number one really depends on what is the flow, right? So hospitals are going to have the most rehabs, a little bit less for the assisted livings. And then same thing on. you know, home health is going to be having a lot more referrals than home care. And then hospice will have a little bit more on the least.
So knowing what to expect. And part of that is going back to your original question. You've got to qualify. So number one, you know, when you're working with a partner, understand how many referrals I should be getting from that partner, either a week or a month. And that can be home health or hospice.
You can just ask, Hey, I'm just curious, how often are you referring? And you can ask. Somebody else, you can ask a competitor. Hey, I'm just curious. I know you don't refer to us, but how often are you referring in general to home care? And if that hospice company says that they're doing five referrals a week to home care in general, then you know that your power partner should have given you at least five a week.
Just throwing numbers out there. So let's say you find out that that number is five and you're getting two. And you're sending them all of your business, but you're not getting any in return. So, and I'll say this up front. I'm from, you know, D. C. I'm from, you know, the Mid Atlantic. So my next statement might get a little Northeastern, a little bit more rough.
But it works. And so it's, it's all about asking, asking the right questions in the right way. And so just the way I, well, let me let me back up one more thing. The other problem a lot of times with referral sources is they don't know what a good referral looks like. So it's really, really important to kind of walk through a situation and say, just curious.
If you have a solo ager that's having trouble with whatever, you know, what do you do in that situation? Well, we do, we take care of it on our own. Well, have you thought about bringing us in? Cause we could be a good compliment for that. So making sure that them and their team. So part of this, if you're a partnership, you should have a lunch and learn presentation with their team, because most likely it's not the sales and marketing person's going to give you the referral.
It's going to be the, the, the social workers. And the dns, but let's, okay, so you've had a lunch, you've discussed it, they know what you're looking for, and they're still not giving it to you. Well, then it's a matter of, like I said, here's my Northeastern statement, and I'll say, Hey, I'm just curious if I have a family that needs needs your services.
Let's say it's a hospice company and I've got a family that's just got diagnosed with, with hospice. Would you like me to talk about the services and talk about hospice and tell them all the great things that hospice can do and then give them your number and then have them call you or would you prefer to call them and you talk to them about hospice?
Well, they're obviously going to say, I want to talk to them about hospice, right? And that's, say, exactly, you want to talk to them about hospice. So in response. If you've got a family that's at all interested in home care, don't talk about home care. Let me talk about it. I'm not going to talk about hospice, please don't talk about care management services.
Let me do that because I can probably describe my services better than you and I would never try to talk about the hospice the way you could do it. So kind of giving them that revelation of saying, Hey, look. You know, because most likely what you're hearing or what they've heard in the past is, Oh, I just talked, just gave your number out to so and so I just gave your number to so and so family.
And I always say, okay, well, what's the name of that family in case. So the way, the other way to do it is go back to them and say, awesome. What's the name of that family? Now, the response you would probably get is, well, they don't want to talk to you just yet. Let me talk to them first. And so it's either a ghost referral, meaning they're just trying to be nice and say, Oh, I've given your number out because they check a box.
But let's say it is a real family. Then I'll say, just give me the name of the family so that if they happen to call me, I'll recognize it. And I was like, well, it's the Adams family. Awesome. So now I've got a name. And so now I know that they truly exist. The next thing I'll say to my referral source is simply, I'm just curious.
Help me understand a great line that salesperson can utilize is help me understand, because you can literally say the most negative thing in the world. If you, as long as you say, help me understand in front of it, it's great. I'll give you a fun example. You can go up to anybody and say, it's like, help me understand why you pick that shirt today.
Like you hate that shirt. Like, why would you pick that shirt today? But help me understand why you would pick that shirt. It just sounds so much lighter, sir. So in this case with the, with Adam's family, I would simply go up to him and say, Hey, so help me understand when I should expect a call or when I could call that if I don't hear from them in 24 hours, would you be willing to give me their phone number then?
Or can I get their contact information now? And I'll wait 24 hours. And if I don't hear that way, I can reach out because the last thing I want is for that family member to lose my contact information. And now the referral source might say, well, they're not going to lose it. I'll keep it. It says, yeah, but don't you think this is important that they talk to us?
Of course. Well, how long should I wait? Silence. Let them answer the question because they understand what you're trying to do. And they also understand that the family shouldn't wait. Well, give them 48 hours. Awesome. I'll give them 48 hours. What's their phone number again? And so that's, you know, those are a couple of the ways that I would approach, you know, if I'm not getting referrals, if I'm giving and not giving, I know other people would say it's, you know, it's really gotta be tick for tack and you hold them and all that stuff.
I don't think it's that I think it's much more letting them understand where and when it could be a referral.
[00:33:54] Ariadne: Yeah, that's great advice. And at what point do you stop trying? Whether it's, you know, you feel like you're, you're being annoying or you, you know, done all the education, maybe multiple times, you just feel like, you know, it's, it's not working out for some reason.
[00:34:13] David: So again, it goes back to understanding it. And if, if I really think that they're just blowing smoke up my hole, then yeah, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give them probably 60 days Right if i've given you, you know and that's at the 30 day mark or probably at the two week mark i'm going to say Hey dude, i've given you four referrals and I haven't gotten any back Help me understand what I need to do differently and well, it's you know, we got We got low senses.
We got this the other part of this is understand again You've got to understand why right? We just went through August. August is probably the worst time in senior care because there's no surgery. So everybody's low. And so everyone's like my census, you know, I'm not getting referrals. Yeah. No one's getting referrals.
It's, it's low. So understanding why they're not getting your referrals, but if they can't give you a good reason and it's been 30 days, 45 days, and you've asked, then at that point, I'd be like, all right, cool. By the way, don't expect, and I would say at that point. Don't expect any more referrals from me.
Well, well, well, well, my next and then I'll go tick for tack. Next time you give it to me, I'll give it to you. Unfortunately, you owe me about four or five before I can release any. I've got to do what's right for my families and I've got to go back to the families that want to work with us on our services.
[00:35:41] Ariadne: Got it. Very interesting. What, what do you say or advise teams for how they should be measuring the success of their referrals and you know, their, their network in general?
[00:35:55] David: You know, that's the nice thing about the senior care market. It's constantly growing. And so there's usually a lot of opportunities to be able to, but the way I set up my teams a lot of times is I just come up with, you know, at the beginning of each quarter.
We have a set up a top 20 list and what is your expectation? What, what, what are your numbers you should get from each of those different accounts within those 30 days? And then excuse me, within those 90 days, and then from that point, tracking it, right? Where are you? Are you getting the referrals? If you're not, do you know why not?
If you are great, keep going at it and start to be able to, to match up. A lot of this is, is goes back to, to analytics. is, there is always going to be data to be able to back up your claim. And there's a difference. And, you know, when we look at referrals, again, if it's care management, if it's home care, you know, there's, there's three types of referrals that I look at.
I'm looking at who's going to, who's giving me referrals that who's giving me the most referrals. So that's number one, who's giving me the most referrals that last the longest length of stay. Okay. And then who is giving me the clients that are really paying a lot of money up front, right? So paying a lot of money could be hospice because those are 24 hour cases.
Length of stay could be much more on the assisted living side, whereas volume can come from home health, right? So if I'm a care management company, I want to be able to know Where those numbers are and be able to track it, you know, week to week, you know, month to month to make sure I'm hitting my goals.
And if, and if I'm not, again, why not? Did somebody move? Is the census low? What do I need to do to make sure that I am back in good graces?
[00:37:46] Ariadne: Super cool. I really appreciate, you know, the, the process that you set up for your teams. What's, you know, the, the final piece of advice or, you know, really the, the key takeaway that you hope listeners will have from this conversation.
[00:38:01] David: I think the biggest thing is this is a, this is a, an easily can be a volume business and a touch basis. You can't sit at home and wait for referrals to come in. There's too much competition. There's, you know, here in the DC market, I've got 10, 15 other care management companies, probably 400 other home care agencies tons of home health and hospice groups.
So you have to imagine that even if you have a good relationship, your competition is still knocking down your door and you've constantly got to be able to do the small stuff. drop by visits. Give them what I used to send cartoons because it was fun. We used to send them thank you cards. There's always holidays to be able to dress up or, or take advantage of and have fun, you know, and know your accounts, you know, some of their birthdays and other fun stuff like that.
But this is a touch business. This is healthcare is personal. It really is. It's, it's really personal. And so it's a matter of the biggest thing I can, biggest takeaway you can have go out there. this year accounts and build those strong relationships. And if you need help, you can always call me.
[00:39:15] Ariadne: That's a great ending.
I was going to say, how can our listeners get in touch to learn more about your work?
[00:39:21] David: Yeah. So LinkedIn, so David Posner on LinkedIn. You can also just send a basic email right now. So it's just deepposner1atgmail. com. And otherwise, you know, obviously reach back out to you and you can connect them with me.
But I'll also be I'm not sure when this is going to air, but I'll be speaking at the upcoming Lifespan Conference in Ocean City in September, and I'll be at ACCA, American Healthcare Association Conference in October. So if you're there, please stop by and say hello.
[00:39:51] Ariadne: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, David.
[00:39:54] David: Thanks so much for having me. This is a lot of fun.