Anne: Welcome to the Dental Entrepreneur, the future of dentistry podcast. I have my very special guest, my dear friend, uh, and colleague, we've known each other for so long and he writes for every edition of Dental Entrepreneur and he is the master mind behind, uh, tech in the dental industry.
He has been in this industry forever, knows everybody in the industry and everybody knows him. And, um, you know, he just has such a great reputation. I just love working with him. And let me tell you about him, Travis Rodgers. Travis was the first to build an electronic referral in the dental industry in 2003, now called OneClick Referral.
He was the first to build an integrated and automated word of mouth referral system. He is also the founder of the Referral Academy, which trains dental teams on how to manage referrals better. He is widely known as the referral guy in the dental industry. Please help me welcome my dear friend, the famous, the only Travis Rodgers.
Hello, Travis. How are you
Travis: doing? Well, thanks for having me. Happy to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is, you know, how to dominate dental referrals. And, uh, I guess around the same time, this will hit the, uh, the article will hit as well. So people can read more about it, but everybody knows that, well, I mean, a big topic right now is the economy, right?
And, uh, people spend so much time in expensive marketing and, uh, doing, you know, paid ads and things like that. That's the best way to get your favorite patients and with the most revenue, um, which we'll talk about in this podcast is through. Really nurturing and better managing referrals. And that's, um, you know, if you're a GP or you're a specialist, they both apply, you know, word of mouth referrals, as well as doctor to doctor referrals, working on, um, you know, helping people manage the specialist traveling into the GP's office and all those types of things.
So, you know, been doing this for, yeah, uh, 20 years. And, uh, first product was called record link back in the day, my brother in law in orthodontist came to me and I was working at IBM. He said, Hey, I want to do a build a tool to better manage my, my referrals with all the GPs that I work with. And that's how it all started.
Anne: That's so cool. Well, you know, you and I were talking about before. we got started. The gold is in the follow up, but honestly the gold is right in front of you is it as a dentist in your practice. And I think so often we do throw a lot of money out there because we don't want to be bothered with anything.
We want somebody else to take care of it. And, and instead of just like plowing and fertilizing your own garden, uh, that's the most, uh, that's where you're going to really, uh, get the biggest crop, if you will. Um, Of patients and, and, uh, and avatars, the exact patient, um, that you're looking for because, you know, one of my mantras, and this just rings true right now, I just popped in my head is good people find good people.
So if you've got a good group of patients, wouldn't you want to have all their friends and their family, their neighbors, uh, to come to you because, you know, like minded people follow like minded people.
Travis: Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this in some of you for a long time, so we've been to some retirement parties.
I'll kind of start with the story. You know, the other day I went to a retirement party. The guy was relatively young for a dentist retiring and, you know, good looking family. They're up on stage. They were smiling. They're happy. You could tell he had done well, right? And, um, you know, at the end of the, not to go into all the details, but at the end of the ceremony, you know, and it was a big room filled with mostly patients, you know, people that he considered friends, although they didn't really hang out outside the office.
And, you know, that's why I do, I love the, I love my dentist because there are a lot of, you know, Um, patients in there that were saying, I love my dentist. And I asked him at the end of his, his, uh, retirement party, after his speech, I said, you know, how did, what was your secret? And he kind of smiled at me, got a little choked up.
And he said he grew his practice almost a hundred percent by referrals. And, um, you know, to me, that's sort of the, the story that everybody wants to tell, because, you know, when those patients, those referred patients, those are your favorite patients. I mean, there's a lot of stats that we've tracked over the years where, you know, people say that 4400%.
People are 400 percent more likely to buy when they're referred over. So that word of mouth is, is very powerful. Um, 90 percent of people trust recommendations from people that they know. So, you know, that increases treatment acceptance. Um, and referred patients are 16 percent more profitable than non referred patients.
And, you know, if you're a specialist, if you're an endodontist, oral surgeon, over 80 percent of your, your patients come through referrals. And what happens is about 34, 35 percent of the time when you're handed a piece of paper, that patient doesn't show up for the referral. And that's a lot of lost revenue on both sides.
And, you know, I guess the more. The more interesting stat is that less than 2 percent of dental practices use any kind of tool to track and manage referrals. And to me, that's the most alarming stat, which is like, Hey, you know, these are your favorite patients are the most profitable patients. Why are you not doing a better job of creating what I call a referral machine, which is, you know, constantly, Um, you know, collecting and better managing those referrals and ranking and tracking them and tracking your response time to them.
And there's a lot of things that people can do, and a lot of it comes down to training, you know, lack of training, right? I mean, most dentists are not, they have no formal sales training, sales teams don't have any sort of formal training. Um, and it is just a shift of their mindset to really get those referrals, you know, flowing and get comfortable with asking for them and comfortable and managing and knowing when to refer out, which is, you know, so much pressure these days for special for GPs to be super, super dentist, right where they do everything themselves.
And there's actually sometimes more money in referrals. Referring out and getting the specialist and getting the, the higher ticket items with the, the cases, um, and the restorative things that are coming back.
Anne: So, well, there's a couple things I wanna just, you know, hit on there, Travis, because it is so true.
First of all, if you. Are going to a dentist and you've been referred by a friend, family member, somebody you trust you automatically. I mean, that is half the battle of a dentist building trust with the patient. You're already there.
Travis: Yeah,
Anne: your friend says, Oh, you've got to go to, you know, my dentist because I love my dentist.
I love his work. I love the office right there. You have built so much trust more so than in your own. Oh, just going in blind. That's That is amazing that we just let that go and not even like, you know, um, dive into that referral and hang on to that. That's the little thread that the, the, the lifeline that, you know, your friend is giving you by giving you the referral that you just don't take that and, and build upon that because it's such a solid base, such a solid base.
And the other thing that I loved about, you're talking about tracking. So tracking can also save people's lives.
Travis: I remember Amber
Anne: Young went to her dentist, so she had her, you know, ended up going blind into a, it was a free, you know, thing that came in the mail. So that's how she got there. But the fact that the doctor that she went to had diagnosed her to, uh, with a spot, um, in her mouth.
Oral cancer. And if that doctor hadn't been tracking that referral, she would not have reached out to Amber again to say, get your butt to the oral surgeon and Amber would not be with us right now. And that is, again, I mean, it just, it just dawned on me when you were talking. That is another thing about referrals.
It's actually. It's, it's not professional to follow up with people that have come into your office with referrals. It just, it just hit me. So I just, that's, that's like,
Travis: yeah, no, that's a great story. I mean, Linda miles has a story to, you know, our mutual friend, Linda miles of Charlotte, her, her sister in law who did not go over for the referral.
She just was against, you know, a lot of different stuff and ended up passing away because of it. You know, referrals saved lives. That is definitely, I mean, that's another topic that, that I do actually speak on. Um, and you know, you really need to have a tool, um, to be able to do that, to be able to make that successful.
Right? I mean, you can't the, the, all the communication, all the reminders, you know, it's too much of a burden on a practice to have to continue to follow up with that patient. Did you go over and, you know? You know, you know, making sure that they did. So it makes it important to have a series of text messages and emails that are automated that ensure that that referral actually went over and then we want to ideally have that happen right as they're walking out of the GP's office.
So if it's a GP to specialist referral in particular. The notification, I mean, they're hot, right? When they're walking out, right? So every second that goes by, that's why we track in, in, in the one click referral, we track the time to follow up. Um, in other words, how fast did that specialist call or text or follow up with that patient to book them?
Um, because we know every second that goes by, they're more likely to go out and, you know, Google oral surgeon in their area or ask another friend or something like that. And most of the time, the GP and specialists have that connection. And that that uh, you know trust with each other that they've also built so it's not just patients referring over That you that are trust, you know that have built trust It's also the gp has trust in certain specialists that they like to work with Because they know they're the best in the area.
I call it the the bat phone directly to the best specialist in your area
Anne: I love that
Travis: you
Anne: know that makes so much sense too because it's like You know, you can just totally forget things you could walk out because you're still in a daze. If you have something going on in your mouth and you need to go to a specialist, you're kind of in a daze when you leave and it really, you know, you hate to say, I mean, people are adults, but we need help following up with stuff like that.
We need help. Remembering exactly who we're supposed to talk to where that referral paper is. Paper is this is this is just just took makes total sense. If you could automate it, why wouldn't you, um, do that? Because that way, you're ensuring that the work gets done. The referral goes through. I mean, that that's another layer is building on, um, with your, um, referring docs.
That relationship that is solid that they know they can trust that your office, your GP office is going to make sure that they follow through if they get a referral back and forth. They know that it's going to be taken care of properly and in timely in a timely method and we all know that if you. That you, that the sales cycle is 48 hours.
And after 48 hours, you might as well just forget it. Cause you've lost that sale.
Travis: Yeah.
Anne: And I hate to say people, you know, a lot of dentists don't like to say that we're selling, but we're, we're selling health is what we're selling. We're selling.
Travis: I mean, that's the thing, right? They need to change it from selling to, to really, to the care, right?
Sue. So, you know, it's, it's a mindset, um, a little bit of a shift there that, you know, you're not just trying to sell this patient, but you're, you're really serving them, you know, and serving them means, you know, referring them out sometimes and, uh, best serving them. It should be right. Um, but, you know, last thing and you brought up a point, and I think this is probably the last point that we need to make.
And, um, I know we want to, uh, you know, keep this short because the goal is to, you know, get people to read the article and take a look at, you know, more details in it. But, you know, a lot of practices have tried to implement referral programs. But, you know, the third T, so, you know, the, the three T's of, of, of our, um, you know, tracking, training, and tenacity.
I might also add tool in there as well for the four T's, but the number one most important thing is just having the stick to it iveness to stick to a program, right? The tenacity, where they've tried to implement a program, nobody stuck to it, nobody maybe was trained or confident in doing it. And these referral programs, they don't happen overnight, you know, I know it's everybody's favorite patients, but you gotta stick to the plan.
You got to have that tenacity. Um, and in the end, it's kind of look at like, okay, what are your best patients? You know, you gotta, you gotta really ask for it and you gotta manage it and you gotta. Stick to a program, stick to a process. That's why we like to take the people through the referral academy, which really gives them that confidence, um, in, in how to deliver it.
And some of our friends, mutual friends, Paul, Emily, Joanne majors are all part of the referral academy. Um, but tenacity is really, to me, the biggest, the biggest thing that, uh, you know, you need to stick to it and, um, That's, you know, I have a lot of other stories, a lot of info, but I think, you know, track, tracking, training, tenacity tools, um, taking, take, take a look at the referral Academy.
If those that are interested in kind of learning more about that as well.
Anne: Well, I hope that everybody that's listening to this will go to our next edition, which is coming out today is the first day of spring and our edition went out the last day of winter, the winter edition. And so it's going to be coming to your mailbox this week.
You know, look at it, read this article, and then, and then, then, then actually implement the tools that Travis is giving to you in this article, because Travis, I've worked in so many different offices, and I've never seen a referral academy or any. Any really program to maximize the beautiful referrals, the gold that you've been given to turn that into something really special and to complete a health of the patient is what we're all.
Travis: Yeah, saving lives, you know, and, uh, helping people. Right? So, yeah, they depend on
Anne: us. They depend on us. The three T's.
Travis: Yep.
Anne: Uh, the three T's again, I'm going to just say are tracking training and tenacity given to you by Travis Rodgers, winter edition, dental entrepreneur, the future of dentistry. Thank you so much for joining me today, Travis, as always, you're a special guest and a special friend.
And if you're listening to us, keep doing you. Thanks, Travis.
