Use the Lessons We Learned to Improve Your Marketing Game Plan!
Super Bowl 50 between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos was the game to watch to determine the champion of the National Football League’s 2015 season. All eyes were on superstar Cam Newton also known as “Superman”.
With the football on the ground and the Carolina Panthers’ season hanging in the balance, Newton, the NFL’s newly crowned MVP and most physically imposing quarterback, needed to prevent the Denver Broncos from seizing control of Super Bowl 50.
So what does all of this have to do with your referral marketing program?
Well, if you’re like me and as obsessed with referral marketing programs as the rest of America is with football, then it’s obvious! Considering that almost no one is as obsessed with referral marketing programs as I am, I should probably go ahead and lay it out.
Here goes…
LET’S START BY TAKING A LOOK AT THE OFFENSIVE PLAYBOOK.
After the game, Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib said “They really have a simple offense. They come out in a bunch of different formations that they shift around, and they run one or two plays out of them. If you can figure out the formations, what they do is really simple.”
That’s an awful lot like the gameplan we use to market our physicians. There aren’t really a lot of technical plays involved in what we do. We follow a simple plan to acheive our results.
What’s the key to our game winning play?
We visit the RIGHT people, and deliver the RIGHT message, the RIGHT number of times. That’s a pretty simple play, right?
Why does such a simple play work? Because the key to change is more of the same. If you resist the monotonous, then you’ll miss the winning results that you could have had. The ROUTINE is what produces the results.
SO WHAT ABOUT DEFENSE?
After the game, cornerback Chris Harris said, ”We’re that good. We’re that dominant. People were saying this team would roll over us. I don’t know what film they watched. We said we were one of the best teams in a long time, and we backed it up. Defense wins championships.”
You heard the man. His team won and he said that defense wins Super Bowl championships. So what role does defense play in a referral marketing program?
You have to defend the referral trends that are in your favor. You have to protect your referral relationships. Send thank you notes to your referring offices with your marketing rep. Make sure you have a persistent, consistent presence in those offices BECAUSE… your competitor wants those referrals too. And they are their’s for the taking. Be proactive and defend them and don’t let them have them. Don’t let your opponents get that ball!
What do you do once you have your offensive and defensive plays figured out?
SCOUT OUT THE COMPETITION
You face your opponents everyday even though you probably don’t actually see them. Right? You have to set your mind to compete in the referral marketing business and you have to know WHO and WHAT you are up against.
Don’t take my word for it though. Listen to cornerback Chris Harris again.
After the game, Chris Harris said, ”They thought they were going to come in and run the football and throw it all over the place — what?” They hadn’t watched us live. And it’s a shock to the system.” He added, “Cam was scared to throw it. He looked blind. He couldn’t figure out where to throw. That’s what pressure does, man.”
Football teams spend countless hours scouting out their opponents so they know what they are up against.
Do your homework and learn your competitive information, too.
How do you learn competitive information about your opponents? You have to do your homework and send someone from your office into the referring offices and ask them who they refer to and why.
At Lexicon Medical, we train our reps to conduct a mini-interview during our first visit to the office of a new potential referral source. The basic questioning sounds something like this:
“Do you typically refer out for these conditions?”
“How many times a week do you generally refer out for these conditions?”
“Do you have one specific specialist that you like to send all of these patients to?
“Is there a reason why you like sending these patients to this specialist?”
“Can we add another physician to your list of specialists you normally refer to for these conditions?”
You may feel uncomfortable asking these questions, and if I were a physician, I would feel the same way. That’s why I don’t recommend you being the one doing the questioning.
As a physician, you are our MVP and we aren’t going to send you around doing the scouting. That role is reserved for your marketing rep.
Once you have your offense, defense, and scouting figured out, you’ve gotta have a plan. I’ll say that again, a little differently.
GO FORWARD WITH A PLAN, NOT JUST A HOPE.
Have you ever heard the saying, “God is in the details?” Make sure that your marketing plan has details, too! If you are going to do something, set a plan of HOW you are going to do it. When you have a plan, you don’t have to be worried.
Winging it is scary.
After the Super Bowl we learned that the Broncos had a plan.
“If Cam Newton would have touched that ball, I was gonna hit him right in his face, and I wasn’t the only one,” Ward said. ”We were hungry for that one. We saw that ball and it was like hyenas on an antelope.”
Okay, so that’s not a very nice plan and we’re going to leave that one out of your referral marketing program.
Let’s try this one instead:
You need to know WHO you are going to be calling on and WHY.
You need to know WHAT you are going to say.
You need to ANTICIPATE what they are going to say.
You need to know WHERE they usually refer their patients and WHY.
And you need to know WHAT’s next.
AND FINALLY, YOU JUST GOTTA KICK BUT!
Do any of these sound familiar?
“I would start my referral marketing program BUT I just don’t have the time.”
“I would start visiting other physicians’ practices BUT I just don’t feel like going.”
“I would say thank you to my best referral sources BUT I want to do something special for them and I just don’t know what I want to do yet.”
We all have excuses for why we think we can’t get our marketing program off and running. But no more excuses, Player!
It’s time to get out there and kick some BUTT!
What will you add to your offensive playbook? How’s your defense for the referrals you’ve come to rely on? How well do you know your opponents? Do you have a plan to “kick but?”
Doses of Parker 