Today's episode of Lactation Business Coaching with Annie and Leah is called "Working with Referral Sources." Having referrals works both ways: it is a priority to service your clients when you are not available and it is also important to cultivate a relationship with others to become a trusted referral for their own business. Annie and Leah share their own personal strategies to gain referral sources, as well as help colleagues to position themselves to become the go-to referral of their area. They also discuss the ethics of a referral relationship and how easy it is to become unethical because of the freebies that some people give you. "When we go and meet with referral sources or we're putting ourselves out there, I know sometimes it's intimidating so we might just kind of tense up and not really be ourselves and kind of be very stiff and maybe just give the answers you that you think the other person might want to hear. And there really is a lot of drawbacks to that because one, I think people read that. You know, they can tell when you're not being authentically yourself.” In this episode, we will cover: -Receiving and sending referrals (colleagues, birth workers, physicians, hospitals, NYLCA) -Cultivating relationships with new referrals -Maintaining ethics with referrals -Keeping communication open -Annie’s Tech Tip: Schedule your emails -Leah’s Marketing Tip: Be who you authentically are to referral sources If you like what you heard today, please check out our Lactation Business Coaching Deeper Dive Memberships: https://learn.anniefrisbie.com/lactationbusinesscoaching You can email us questions and comments at hello@lactationbusinesscoaching.com.
Today's episode of Lactation Business Coaching with Annie and Leah is called "Working with Referral Sources." Having referrals works both ways: it is a priority to service your clients when you are not available and it is also important to cultivate a relationship with others to become a trusted referral for their own business.
Annie and Leah share their own personal strategies to gain referral sources, as well as help colleagues to position themselves to become the go-to referral of their area. They also discuss the ethics of a referral relationship and how easy it is to become unethical because of the freebies that some people give you.
"When we go and meet with referral sources or we're putting ourselves out there, I know sometimes it's intimidating so we might just kind of tense up and not really be ourselves and kind of be very stiff and maybe just give the answers you that you think the other person might want to hear. And there really is a lot of drawbacks to that because one, I think people read that. You know, they can tell when you're not being authentically yourself.”
In this episode, we will cover:
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About Us
Leah Jolly is a private practice IBCLC with Bay Area Breastfeeding in Houston, Texas.
Annie Frisbie is a private practice IBCLC serving Queens and Brooklyn in New York City and the creator of the Lactation Consultant Private Practice Toolkit.
Many thanks to Stephanie Granade for her production assistance, and to Silas Wade for creating our theme music.
Annie: I'm Annie.
Leah: And I'm Leah.
Annie: And this is Lactation Business Coaching with Annie and Leah where we talk about the smart way to create a compassionate and professional private practice.
Leah: Let's dive in.
Annie: Hey Leah.
Leah: Hey Annie, how are you today?
Annie: I'm great, how are you?
Leah: I am doing well. Definitely doing well.
Annie: I always enjoy our chats and I'm so enjoying our deep dives with our Patreon community. So if you're interested in learning more about that and supporting our podcasts so when you become a member of our community, you actually make it possible for us to keep on offering these podcasts. So if you're enjoying them and you want us to do more of them, join our community. If you join it, the $20 a month level, you've got access to our monthly deeper dive calls, which is just so much fun. So we hope to see you there. And before we get into the content of this episode, which is all about our referral sources and working together with them, Leah, what is your motivation for today?
Leah: So I am wanting to motivate you to be authentically you. When we go and meet with referral sources or we're putting ourselves out there, I know sometimes it's intimidating so we might just kind of tense up and not really be ourselves and kind of be very stiff and maybe just give the answers that you think the other person might want to hear. And there really is a lot of drawbacks to that because one, I think people read that. They can tell when you're not being authentically yourself. And two, you're trying to build a relationship with your referral sources and at some point you're going to not be able to keep that facade up and they're going to be like, wait a second. When we first met, I got this vibe from you and now I'm kind of getting this vibe from you. So it might be helpful before you go meet with somebody or reach out to somebody to just kind of loosen up, relax a little bit and just be you because you're awesome and they're gonna know you're awesome. And the only person who can do you is you. So just take a minute and really put yourself out there as your authentic self and it really reaps rewards.
Annie: Oh, I totally agree with that. I mean, I just think that's really great to think about who you are, what vibe you want to put out and not try to be somebody that you think will impress the other person, but just you really want to make sure they know who you are. So I love that. Thanks Leah.
Leah: So let's dive into getting to know our referral sources and how do we maintain and keep relations with referral sources. So where are some of the places that you get referrals from and maybe places that you are referring to?
Annie: Well here in New York City, my main referral source is my colleagues, the other lactation consultants. So we're all on our own and if I can't see a client, I need to find somebody who can, and so really maintaining those relationships and being a positive and productive member of our community ends up being beneficial for me from a business standpoint too, because the more invested I am in my colleagues, the more likely they are to refer to me. And also just when we go to these trainings together and continuing education, I look around and I see, okay, they're all here, I'm here. So now I know a little bit more about what you know and that's really great. So that's a main one for me. What about you, Leah?
Leah: So here in my area, I get quite a few referrals from birth workers, relationships that I've built over many, many years. Those tend to be some of my biggest referral sources.
Annie: Yeah, same. When I was first starting out, I went to a couple of in-person meetups with childbirth educators and doulas just to get to know them personally and to put a face to the name, and that definitely yielded referrals for me, especially at the time when I was growing my practice. And also it's nice to know what other supports are out there because we get questions like do you know a doula or do you know where can I get cut childbirth classes and people reach out prenatally so also I can send people back to them.
Leah: Definitely. And I think second to that would probably be physicians, whether that's paediatricians, OBs, or tongue-tied providers. That's probably the second highest referral source that we have. Do you get very many MD referrals there in New York?
Annie: We get a few paediatricians who will refer to lactation consultants and they'll have their list of who they send people to. They know that you serve the area and yeah, the tongue tie providers are always the good ones anyway for sending client families back to the community. I mean, I think we all wish they would. We could get to them first, do a little prep visit before they have the procedure done. But at the very least, at least here in New York city, families are just won't wait. They're so impatient and so they just jump right to it and so they are getting our names from these good providers afterwards. So yeah, they can be really good sources. I don't get a lot of ... I want to say maybe have never gotten a referral from an OB. I have gotten from a home birth midwife, but not from an OB. We don't have freestanding ... we have one freestanding birth center in New York City and I don't travel down there.
Leah: Gotcha. Yeah, we don't get a whole lot of OB referrals, which I think is really interesting because they're seeing the family usually at ...well here now there's been a big push to do like a little bit earlier postpartum check-in, like around two weeks.
Annie: Oh, that's nice.
Leah: I know, which is awesome because the waiting six weeks just always felt not right to me. But yeah, I don't have a lot of the OBs then turning around. There's a few though. Definitely a few that I can think of off the top of my head, but not as much as the paediatricians. Definitely not as much as the paediatricians. Do you ever get referrals say from like Body Workers or any other allied health care professionals?
Annie: I have, but I actually find that flows more me to them, that they're going for body work because a lactation consultant recommended them. They're not often going because the paediatrician recommended it and then the body workers is like, Oh yeah, you should get lactation help. And if it's physical therapy, they're not referring back to us at all, and the SLPs are not referring back to us at all. We don't have a good referral network with them.
Leah: Yeah, same, same. We don't get a lot of again the body works. I haven't had a few because I think chiropractic care is pretty popular down here. So I've had families that are already going to the chiropractor before they even see me and that might be where they heard about me. Not commonplace though. Definitely not commonplace. And again, the PTs, OTs, SLPs - not getting very many referrals. Maybe...gosh, I can only think of a handful over my whole eight years that I've had that direction referral. Definitely me out to them sometimes but not a lot back the other direction.
Annie: I think that's just the nature of how our profession is perceived, which is that lactation is something that belongs in the hospital and so by the time they are at home and their baby is a couple of weeks old and things are going on, they're not often connecting that to feeding or feeding problems that happened, or if the family doesn't want to breastfeed then we're not going to get brought in to that situation. I do find I get a lot of traffic from hospitals though. Not all of them are baby friendly. I mean definitely the baby friendly ones are giving out those names, but even some of the ones that are not are, and it's funny cause when I became a La Leche League leader, I was using just my personal email address. So there's a bunch of hospitals here that have my personal email address, and so I get emails to my Gmail and I don't even know who to ask to change this, but I also don't want to mess up this referral source either, but I don't know what to do. So then I just switched to my professional email and write them back there.
Leah: Gotcha.
Annie: What's it like with you in the hospitals in Houston?
Leah: Yeah, a lot of them actually just give the ELCA or USLCA website link. Go here and you can find one, which is kind of problematic because that link doesn't always weed out who's actually private practice and who's not, and then the exact area that they serve so that can be problematic. Our Houston area lactation consultants and educators association - it's a mouthful - they have a referral list as well. So some of the hospitals actually send that out instead. But yeah, we definitely are on some of the hospital referral lists, but I think some of them are trying to go away from specific people referring to and try to give this more generic.
Annie: So that's something that's happening here, and our local chapter of USLCA (NYLCA) we decided that this was something that NYLCA should do for the members, and so we created a referral network through NYLCA where we have a Google voice number and if somebody needs a lactation consultant, they text that number. We have a non-LC admin who answers it. So the person who answers it is not potential conflict of interest of wanting the consult, because we talked about maybe we'll all volunteer and take turns, but what if it comes in and my neighbor needs a consult but I can't take it cause I have to give three names that are not me.
So we decided to hire somebody to do that. And so the techs comes in, they have a templated response that goes back to the family. Then our admin posts to our WhatsApp group and says, this came in from the referral line, here's the neighbourhood, and then the first three people who respond with availability within the next two to three days - preferably one to two days or same day - gets sent to the family and here are your three names, and then the family has to then reach out individually to them. And we have it all boiler plated out so the admin just has to copy and paste the response so that it's very clear that we're not involved with them, that this is just providing the name and number and that has exploded for us. I mean, our WhatsApp group is so busy with requests and so now we're like, well let's just give this to the paediatricians. That's easy, instead of deciding who goes where. it's so easy, and then it also really helps build awareness of NYLCA and awareness of lactation consultants. So that's been amazing. I have been really happy with that as a member benefit for being a part of the NYLCA chapter.
Leah: Yeah. And I'd encourage other chapters to be doing it as another way to promote our profession as well. You know, just really giving it a good boost in visibility. So what are some of the ways that you've worked to cultivate the relationships that then allow for these referrals in both directions, you to them and them to you? Are there some specific steps that you take, Annie, for that?
Annie: Well, I think it's always really important to make a meaningful connection, and so when it's somebody new, first of all, it's not enough to just say, Oh I heard my friend likes this person, this LC that I love likes this person. I need to feel like I can trust them, and so have a conversation with them, have an email, ask them hard questions and be prepared to answer her questions myself so that there's a mutual understanding of what we're in this for.
Leah: Definitely. And I think if it's somebody who works hands-on with the parent or the baby, I think it's really beneficial to see if you can go with one of your clients or if they allow you to come and just watch them work. So if that's like a body worker, SLP, sometimes they'll let you come and shadow and just kind of see how they work. Make sure it jives with somebody that you'd want to refer to. It gives you a chance to look around their office space if that looks good. You really want to consider all that because when you make a referral, it's almost like an extension of you and your practice, not 100%, but you know what I mean. It's like you wouldn't want to then send to a place that that you're not 100% sure of.
So I think it's great if you can either go with one of your clients or ask the person if you can shadow, and then be willing to accept that the other direction. You might have somebody who wants to refer to you, but they want to kind of see the work that you do. I think also word of mouth is so huge for people wanting to refer to us, so in that direction. So I used to always encourage, and I still do, my parents will say, Oh, this was so helpful. I love this so much. I'm so glad that I came and saw you. I'd be like, you know what helps me so much is if you could talk to your paediatrician about the care we had today and how helpful it was to you and just let them know so that they might be able to refer another family my way that needed help as well.
Annie: Oh, I love that. I mean, it's a little scary to ask because it feels a little salesy, but you need to have confidence that if they're telling you you did a good job, they're not gonna have any problem telling anybody else.
Leah: Yeah. And most of the time they're so eager. They're like, Oh my gosh, yes. Do you have business cards? I'm going to take business cards to my paediatrician’s office because everybody has to know about this, and so I've never had anybody look at me weird or give me pushback. But it's a great way to start to build that referral network because those paediatricians are listening to how happy their clients are and the OBs as well and other professionals are listening to how happy their clients are. And that's a real assurance to them that they're going to be sending out to somebody who is going to be doing a good job.
Annie: And when you're cultivating these referral sources, you do want to make sure you're being ethical about it. And the best way to do that would be to read Elizabeth Brooks' book, Legal and Ethical Issues for the IBCLC, and this is essential reading. She has a chapter that is all about how to keep yourself from having a conflict of interest. She talks in the book about somebody gives you something. Something like breast pumps is a really big one. If you get a free breast pump, even if you got a free breast pump from 10 different companies, the fact that it was free gives you a warm feeling toward the company who gave it to you and can make you less ethical. When it comes to deciding is this breast pump actually right for the family that I'm recommending it to? And the same thing goes for your referral sources. So you want to keep yourself really ethical about it. You may have heard of something called a kickback, which is not only unethical, it's also illegal, and that would be if someone approaches you and says, Hey, I love that you're a lactation consultant. If I send people to you, you give me a percentage of what they pay you and if you do that, I will send people to you. That is a kickback.
Leah: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Annie: And you don't want to offer that to somebody else and you don't want to take it from somebody else. This is very different than having some kind of contractual relationship, say with a home birth midwife where she's providing lactation services to her clients and she's paying you to be her client's lactation consultant. Like that's out of their fee that she's getting paid from the family. That's totally different. This would be secret on, behind the person's back and it is not right to only send clients to people that are being nice to you or giving you things. So the easiest way to prevent yourself from that kind of conflict of interest is just don't take free things from your referral sources. I like to try out all the different chiropractors and body workers. I go and I get a treatment from them and I pay for it so that I can know what it feels like to be their patient, but I pay for it.
Leah: I definitely think that's a huge consideration and you can kind of easily slip into like, Oh well they just offered this or offered that and yeah, it's a slippery slope into Okay, are we not being ethical now? I think it's also important to make sure that you're, you know, not just giving one place, Oh this is the only place that I know. You want to really cultivate several referral sources in each category a so that you really have a nice list of not just one person, cause that can kind of get a little dicey unless there's literally only one person in the whole area who does that one thing
Annie: But if there is just one person in the area who does this thing it is even more important to do something you need to be doing with all your referral sources, which is monitoring those outcomes. And so really getting feedback from your clients about, well how did it go? How was your experience when you went to this person? I ask all of my clients when I see them for their post-frenotomy visit to tell me how the visit went.
Leah: Yes.
Annie: I want to hear all about it and it doesn't matter if that person is on my referral list. If my client had a negative experience with them, that's important to me and I need to hear that and it might mean needing to have a hard conversation with my referral source and saying, Hey, I know we've got this thing going but didn't work out so well for this person. Let's talk about it.
Leah: Definitely I think that is so important and something that I do as well on really all my referrals. If it's a body worker or a frenotomy provider or something like that, I definitely ask for feedback from the family and it's actually been really helpful in weeding out some that I thought were, Oh this is a great referral source in my mind, but then come to find out the patients were not feeling as great about it and so it definitely helped me weed out some places that I wanted to remove from my referral list. Now I think it's important that you check in with the people that are referring to you frequently as well. I think it's helpful to just get in front of them if possible at least once or twice a year. Even if you guys are having like pretty frequent referrals, I think it's helpful to just maintain that line of communication and it also allows you to let them know about things that might be changing for you. So if you've got something new that you're offering or now you're accepting insurance or you've got a new location, that kind of thing, but it's also finding out if anything's changed for them, and making sure that you are aware of changes that might be happening.
Annie: So not just getting feedback on how their clients feel about you, but also making sure that you're marketing yourself.
Leah: Yeah, definitely. I think that's really important. I know referral sources are a big part of where we get our clients into our practice and so I think this is a really important topic and something that you want to keep higher up on your list to be nurturing and taking care of over the year. You might think about quarterly, even just having a moment like, okay, who do I need to check in with? Who am I going to be reaching out to? Who is lacking on my referral source? Oh, I have no SLPs if I needed one, so like you need to be cultivating that and making time for that.
Annie: Definitely.
Leah: Well this has been a great talk and something that I think is so useful for us as IBCLCs and allied healthcare professionals. And as we wrap up today, what is your tech tip for us, Miss Annie?
Annie: So you might be thinking, okay, how am I going to communicate... when do I have time to reach out to my referral sources? Because a lot of them may be only in the office during business hours, but maybe I'm sending my emails on Saturday night at 11:30, you can let your email provider schedule your emails. So if you write it on Saturday night at 11:30, schedule for it to be received on a Tuesday at 11:00 AM. So not Monday cause everybody's on Monday I got a million emails, but on Tuesday they're feeling pretty good about it. I got through my Monday stack. Oh look, it's Leah. She wants to connect. Cool. So scheduling those emails means that you can write them when it's convenient for you, but you're not going to worry that it's going to get buried if you send it at a very strange time, or make you look like them thinking you're a vampire because you're sending emails at two o'clock in the morning. So schedule your emails to make yourself look like you can get it all done.
Leah: Well that was a really great tech tip and I always forget about those scheduling. I know that it's possible and you forget about it. So what a great reminder and it's specifically for nurturing these referral source relationships. This is huge. Thank you so much Annie, and it's been so great talking to you today. I look forward to our next visit.
Annie: Me too, and I look forward to our deeper dive this month. So hope you'll be there. Patreon.com/Lactation Business Coaching. Bye.
Leah: Awesome. Bye.
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