Ep. 6: Three Ways to Get More New Patient Referrals
Don’t just wait by the phone or blindly hand out referral cards and hope you’ll get some patients coming in. There are three proactive things you can do to be in control of the number of word-of-mouth referrals you see.
Topics:
1:59 – Patient acquisition costs: how much are you spending per new patient?
5:11 – Gaining control over the number of word-of-mouth referrals you receive
9:55 – The stats: How many referrals should you be seeing?
16:33 – Who should ask patients for referrals?
20:19 – How to get patients’ family members scheduled
27:37 – Getting at “two-for-one” with new patients
31:05 – Should you use referral (or “Care to Share”) cards?
Links:
Receptionist & Scheduling Coordinator Training Courses- https://ddssuccess.com/
The MGE New Patient Workshop - https://www.newpatients.net/
Learn more about MGE - https://www.mgeonline.com/
Listen to full episode :
Questions From This Episode
What are the three ways to actually get more new patient referrals?
One, ask existing patients whether anyone in their household is currently not seeing a dentist and schedule that person on the spot. Two, when a new patient calls in, ask whether other household members need a dentist too and schedule them at the same time. Three, hand out a small number of referral cards to patients for friends, coworkers, or acquaintances outside their household.
What's the difference between a controlled and uncontrolled referral?
A controlled referral is someone you have some real influence over, a spouse, a child, a parent living nearby, someone whose dental care you could reasonably help schedule directly. An uncontrolled referral is a friend, coworker, or acquaintance you can only hand a card to and hope they follow up, since you don't have the standing to schedule an appointment on their behalf.
How do I actually bring up scheduling a patient's family member without it feeling pushy?
Ask directly and simply during checkout: does anyone in your household currently not see a dentist? If they say yes, offer to get that person on the phone right then rather than leaving it for the patient to handle later, since most people simply aren't thinking about the dentist once they've left the office. If a particular patient doesn't seem like the right fit for that conversation, skip it, this only needs to work with roughly half your patients to move the needle.
Who in the practice should actually be responsible for asking for referrals?
One specific person, not everyone. When a task belongs to everybody, it tends to belong to nobody, since each person assumes someone else is handling it. Whoever takes it on should be someone with a natural opportunity to ask, front desk, a financial coordinator, or a hygienist mid-appointment, role played on the conversation until it feels natural, and ideally incentivized with a small bonus tied to referral numbers.
What's a good way to actually hand out referral cards so patients don't just throw them away?
Give a small number, two or three, not a stack, and explicitly tell the patient what they're for and how a friend can use them. A durable card that survives in a wallet works far better than a stack of loose paper cards handed over with no explanation, which patients are much more likely to discard entirely.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: The best new patient is a referral. I think we'd all agree with that. They're already sold, they know who you are, they've been sent over by a family member or friend. So I'd ask you, how many referral new patients are you getting a month? If you're like most dentists, probably not enough.
Jeff: And here's what's even more disheartening: look at how many active patients you have. If you're the average practitioner, it's probably at least a thousand, maybe two thousand. If every one of your patients referred just one person they knew per year, you'd probably have too many new patients. So the real question is, how do you get more referrals, and why aren't you getting more already? We're going to cover three specific ways to get more new patient referrals in this week's episode.
Jeff: I'm Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host, and I'll be joined this week by Sabri Blumberg. Yes, we share a last name, we're married, over 30 years now. Sabri is our Deputy Chief Operating Officer and is in charge of all technical delivery at MGE, making sure every client gets the results they're expecting from the program. Sabri's going to walk us through these three ways to get more referrals.
Jeff: Before I hand this over, one thing worth flagging, since I hate it when a host keeps chopping in, but this one's important: referrals matter as much for acquisition cost as anything else. If you're doing any marketing, you're paying a certain amount per new patient. Sabri, wasn't it around 300 to 350 dollars for a postcard?
Sabri: Yes, 300 to 350 dollars per new patient for a postcard.
Jeff: And pay per click was around 422 dollars, and it can go higher, or lower if it's done well.
Sabri: Right, we've seen people mess up pay per click completely, advertising for Invisalign in a town four hours away at four in the morning, nobody's ever converting from that.
Jeff: But here's what's interesting about acquisition cost: if a postcard costs you 350 dollars to bring in a patient, and that patient refers one more person, you've just cut your effective acquisition cost to 175 dollars for that pair.
Sabri: Correct. If you want extremely expensive marketing, external marketing alone is exactly how you'd do it, that's all you're relying on.
Jeff: Referrals are what bring that number down.
Sabri: That's right. And there's a second cost too, you're also keeping your own collections depressed by not fully using the patient base you already have. It's like constantly cooking a huge meal and never eating the leftovers, you just keep making more food you're paying for and throwing part of it away.
Jeff: That's a good way to put it.
Sabri: And this connects to something we discussed before: if a new patient phone call is really what you're paying for with marketing, and you're not handling that call properly, losing three out of four calls, which is close to the national average, that's episode three, by the way, with Jeff Santone and myself, where Jeff talked about phone conversion and I covered how to actually convert new patients calling in, that's one way acquisition cost balloons. But then if you do get a new patient in the chair and don't fully use that relationship, making sure they're educated, showing up for hygiene, completing treatment, and becoming an advocate who brings in friends and family, that's how your true new patient cost quietly becomes unaffordable.
Jeff: And people don't usually notice that.
Sabri: No, because it's not happening, so there's nothing visible to notice. It's always harder to notice what isn't happening than what is.
Jeff: Fair point. So, with that in mind, what are the three specific ways to increase new patient referrals?
Sabri: Before I get into the three ways, I want to first define the different types of new patient referrals, because there's a referral that's a family member, someone who actually lives with your patient and is, to some degree, under that patient's influence.
Jeff: Under their control, meaning like a spouse could just handle it.
Sabri: Exactly, if I'm married to someone and they don't have a dentist and I do, I can just say, I'm scheduling you an appointment, and that's completely reasonable within a household. Then there's a separate category: friends and acquaintances. Say I have a close friend whose child is the same age as mine and just started orthodontic treatment. I'm not going to call her and schedule her daughter's appointment, that's a different kind of referral entirely. I'd just tell her, hey, we just started with this orthodontist, we're really happy, you should check them out.
Jeff: That's actually exactly how we found our daughter's orthodontist, a referral from one of her friend's moms.
Sabri: Exactly the example I was picking. So there are really two broad categories: controlled and uncontrolled referrals.
Jeff: Controlled being household, some degree of influence, uncontrolled being a friend or acquaintance you can't just schedule for.
Sabri: Right, and my favorite is the controlled referral, because with any statistic you're managing, whether income, referrals, or production, you want some real ability to influence the outcome. If my only lever on a referral quota is sitting by the phone hoping it rings, I probably won't hit that number reliably.
Jeff: Let's actually name the three ways first, since you're starting to get into them.
Sabri: Fair, go ahead and keep me on track.
Jeff: Before we do, I want to mention something you told me about a new client. They described themselves as a family practice, said they got tons of referrals since they see whole families. You had them pull their actual numbers, and if I remember right, out of 1,000 active patients, there were 800 households.
Sabri: That's correct.
Jeff: So only 200 of those patients shared a household with another patient. They weren't really a family practice in the way they assumed, that's actually a pretty statistically normal ratio, roughly eight out of ten patients you see only have one household member as a patient.
Sabri: Right, and there's another number that matters here: the average American household has three people in it.
Jeff: So with 1,000 patients across 800 households, if they were really capturing full households, they should theoretically have over 2,000 active patients.
Sabri: Exactly right. And there's one more relevant statistic: only around 40 percent of the US population currently has a dentist. Another 20 percent has seen a dentist within the last two years but doesn't consider that person their dentist, they saw someone, but there's no ongoing relationship in their mind.
Jeff: So somewhere around 50 to 60 percent of the population isn't actively under a dentist's care at any given time.
Sabri: Right, so if a household has three people and one is already your patient, there's at least a 50 percent chance the other two aren't seeing anyone. Could be a spouse, could be a child, plenty of people also have parents living with or near them.
Jeff: This is genuinely a metric worth pulling: total active patients versus total unique mailing addresses in your system. If you've got 2,000 active patients but only 1,600 addresses, that number should really be closer to 3,000, you're leaving referrals on the table.
Sabri: Exactly right, and it's such an easy fix. Most of the dentists we talk to already bill themselves as family dentists, even if they also do cosmetic work, so it fits naturally to make getting the entire household under care an explicit goal, and to just say that directly to patients: we want to make sure you're healthy, but also that your whole family is getting the care they deserve.
Jeff: Okay, so let's actually name the three ways now.
Sabri: The first is what we were just discussing: talking to existing patients already under your care and making sure any household member or close family nearby gets scheduled, that's way one, controlled referrals, where I could literally call and say, I'm scheduling you an appointment right now, they have an opening Thursday at 4.
Jeff: What's way two?
Sabri: New patients calling in. If you're running external marketing and someone calls in new to the area for a cleaning, during that new patient intake call you're already asking things like how they found you and when they last saw a dentist. A lot of these callers just relocated, and if they moved, their family likely moved too. So way two is asking that new caller directly whether their family needs to be scheduled at the same time.
Jeff: And way three?
Sabri: The traditional referral card program, for the acquaintances, coworkers, and friends you can't schedule directly but can hand a card to.
Jeff: Those are the three ways. None of this is some hidden secret, people have probably thought about pieces of it before. So why isn't it happening more? Let's start with way one, which I know is your favorite.
Sabri: It is, ranked in order of favorite to least favorite for me.
Jeff: So if you walked into a practice and said, I want you to start getting more family referrals, what would you actually have them do?
Sabri: First, I'd talk to the doctor about who specifically owns this. You don't want it to be a free for all where five different staff members are separately asking the same patient the same question.
Jeff: That would get weird fast, why are you asking me this again.
Sabri: Exactly, it has to be one person's job. If everyone thinks someone else is handling it, nobody actually does it.
Jeff: Who's responsible when everybody's responsible? Nobody.
Sabri: Right. You assign one person, and usually there's a natural fit, someone who's been there a while and knows the patients well, or a newer person with the right personality for it, or simply someone with more natural opportunity to ask these questions during their normal interactions, front desk, an assistant, doesn't really matter which position.
Jeff: Does it matter whether it's someone up front versus someone in the back?
Sabri: Not really, because you're not asking every single patient anyway, you'd target a handful of specific people each day. What matters far more than their position is whether they're the right person for it and actually want to do it.
Jeff: You mentioned making it a game for that person.
Sabri: Yes, tie it to a small reward structure, five referrals gets you this, ten gets you that, fifteen gets you something else. There's a normal expected level of production for any staff role, but if you're asking someone to go above that and take on referrals specifically, it's reasonable to reward it. Even 25 or 50 dollars per referral is nothing compared to 300-plus dollars for an external marketing acquisition.
Jeff: So walk me through the actual interaction. Say I'm the patient checking out after my visit, and you're the financial coordinator handling referrals.
Sabri: I'd finish the normal checkout, insurance, payment, any questions, and then simply ask: Jeff, we're a family practice, which means we want to make sure not just you, but your whole household, is getting the care they need. Is there anyone in your household currently not seeing a dentist?
Jeff: My wife, actually, she used to see someone near her old office, but they moved and we never got around to finding someone new.
Sabri: Can you schedule an appointment for her right now, or would it help to get her on the phone?
Jeff: Sure, let's get her on the phone, I don't know her current insurance details though.
Sabri: That's fine, we can verify all of that and walk her through her benefits, same as we did for you.
Jeff: What if the patient says, I'll just talk to her when I get home?
Sabri: I try to gently steer away from that, since most people simply aren't thinking about the dentist once they've left the office. I'd say something like, you're welcome to talk to her tonight, the only thing is most people just aren't thinking about us once they walk out the door.
Jeff: Quick tangent, would you mention a new patient special during that same conversation?
Sabri: If it feels appropriate, absolutely, especially if they don't have insurance. You can say, let's get her on the phone and scheduled, and by the way, we're running a new patient special right now, she should take advantage of it.
Jeff: In our own household, you'd probably just schedule me directly since you know my schedule, and I'd find out later, you have a dentist appointment Thursday at 4.
Sabri: Exactly, that's precisely how that would go.
Jeff: With most practices seeing 10 to 20 patients a day between the doctor and even a single hygienist, you should realistically be able to schedule one referral a day, even doing it imperfectly.
Sabri: At 16 or 17 working days a month, that's 16 or 17 referrals a month, and using the 300-plus dollar figure from earlier, that's over 5,000 dollars in equivalent marketing value you'd otherwise be spending.
Jeff: We had a practice in Virginia start doing exactly this and pick up 30 new patients in a single month.
Sabri: Just from this, and their external marketing wasn't even fully set up yet.
Jeff: It's genuinely that easy. The only real requirement is that it belongs to one specific, motivated person who understands the underlying numbers, how many people are typically in a household, how many people don't currently have a dentist, why this actually matters.
Sabri: And then you role play it with them until they find their own natural language for it. These aren't my exact words to memorize, if someone parrots a script verbatim, it sounds unnatural immediately.
Jeff: This isn't a script.
Sabri: No. If you understand the basic concept, that there are likely people in a patient's household without a dentist, it doesn't matter exactly how you phrase asking about it. And role playing genuinely can't be oversold here. We worked with a client in New York whose new associate was struggling to connect with patients on first meeting, they spent a full hour role playing it until the associate felt genuinely comfortable, and it made a real difference afterward.
Jeff: An hour is a long time for that.
Sabri: It's time very well spent. Role playing lets someone find their own words and build real comfort, and as the session progresses, you can throw progressively harder scenarios at them so they're prepared for anything tougher than what they'll actually encounter. It genuinely takes a certain amount of courage to ask people things directly, which is a strange thing to say, but it's true, people often act like other people are somehow dangerous to talk to.
Jeff: Most people are perfectly nice.
Sabri: The vast majority of your patients are genuinely nice and won't give you any grief. And you can say almost anything if it comes from a good place and the underlying intent is good. Even imperfect phrasing works fine if the sentiment is honest: I'm trying to make sure your whole family has access to care, that shouldn't be something anyone objects to in this day and age.
Jeff: So whatever feels authentic to that staff member, that's what they should say, and you role play it starting easy and building up in difficulty until they can handle anything.
Sabri: Exactly, and as they start getting real wins, it gets easier and easier from there.
Jeff: Great, that's way one. Way two is the new patient phone call. Let's play it out, I call in.
Sabri: Go ahead.
Jeff: I just moved to the area, got your flyer in the mail, I'm looking for a dentist.
Sabri: Great, let's get you scheduled.
Jeff: And from there you'd collect the normal new patient intake information, which we've covered in detail elsewhere, episode three specifically, and there's a full receptionist and scheduler training course on our online platform, DDS Success, at ddssuccess.com, link on the episode page, plus Sabri's currently filming a phone skills course as well.
Sabri: That's right. So once I've got you scheduled, I'd ask: any other members of your household currently not seeing a dentist?
Jeff: Actually yes, my wife's been looking for one too.
Sabri: Perfect, the flyer offer actually covers your entire household, not just you, since it's our current new patient special. And since we're a family practice, we'll need to have that conversation about your family eventually anyway, so we might as well get everyone scheduled now. Can I get an appointment set for your wife or kids at the same time?
Jeff: She's right here, I can put her on the phone.
Sabri: Perfect. Some offices have a policy against scheduling an entire family on the same day, and that's completely fine too, whatever your office's scheduling policy is on that front works. The point is simply to ask at the point of that first call.
Jeff: And the same caution from before applies here too, don't force it if something about the interaction suggests it's not the right moment.
Sabri: Exactly, if a patient doesn't seem like a good fit for that conversation, skip it, let them come in, get comfortable with you, and revisit the family conversation in person later. But that's not a reason to skip it with everyone, realistically about half the patients you talk to are a reasonable candidate for this ask.
Jeff: Good guidance. So way one and way two are both what you'd call controlled referrals, since in both cases I actually know the person and have some real ability to schedule them directly. What's way three?
Sabri: The uncontrolled way, referral cards handed out and hoping for follow through.
Jeff: Describe what these actually are for anyone who hasn't seen them.
Sabri: Any small card, could be a simple business card with your new patient special printed on the back, or something fancier that folds, some practices use cards that look and feel like credit cards. There's a company called Viva Concepts in California that makes some of the nicest referral cards I've seen, genuinely well designed.
Jeff: Viva's actually the same company behind the new patient conversion research we referenced back in episode three.
Sabri: Right, their referral card product specifically is really well done.
Jeff: So walk me through the mechanism. Say I'm a patient, you hand me a card, what do you actually say?
Sabri: This goes back to finding your own language again, but I'd avoid the generic script most people have heard a hundred times, the best compliment you can give us is a referral, said while staring blankly into space.
Jeff: That's exactly how it comes across when it's memorized.
Sabri: If I were talking to a patient, I'd say something like: did you know only around 40 percent of people in the US currently have a dentist? We're actually running an outreach effort to get more people aware that dental care matters, especially right now, and that everyone deserves access to it. I'm going to give you a few referral cards, would you mind handing them out to friends? You'd be surprised how many people you know aren't currently under anyone's care.
Jeff: And I'd mention there's a savings involved for whoever uses it.
Sabri: Absolutely, we make it easy for them to come in and we take great care of them.
Jeff: So I take the cards, and later I run into a coworker who mentions needing a dentist, and I just hand them a card.
Sabri: Exactly, that coworker comes in, saves a bit of money, becomes a new patient, and you've genuinely helped them out.
Jeff: Back to Viva Concepts for a second, part of why I like their cards specifically is the material, it's plastic, so it survives in a wallet or bag without getting beat up. A stack of loose paper cards is much more likely to just get thrown away.
Sabri: This actually happened to me directly. Years ago, when our office was in Virginia, before we had any clients nearby, the closest one was about an hour and a half away in Baltimore. A coworker referred me to a local practice for a routine cleaning. The dentist was perfectly nice, but the referral card handoff was rough, she handed me a mug as a new patient gift, and just dropped about 40 loose referral cards into it with zero explanation.
Jeff: That's rough.
Sabri: It just looked like a mug full of paper, nothing indicating what they even were. That's a clear example of how not to run this. Tell the patient explicitly what you're giving them, use something durable that won't get tossed, and don't overload them. Give three cards, not a handful, and say clearly, here are three cards to help spread the word, feel free to hand these to coworkers or friends.
Jeff: And you can tell them what happens when someone uses one, they mention your name, and the new patient gets the same offer.
Sabri: Exactly, whatever feels natural for that staff member to say. But if a staff member isn't comfortable with that conversation and ends up just dumping cards in a mug for a confused new patient, that's on the training and clarity given, not necessarily on them as a person. That mug likely had a quota behind it, maybe 50 cards a day to hand out, and 40 of them just vanished into a mug no one will ever open.
Jeff: So don't set a goal for staff without actually teaching them how to execute it well. Is there any real correlation between how many cards go out and how many actually convert?
Sabri: Honestly, I've never tracked that specific ratio closely, the controlled referral numbers are where I've focused most of my attention since that's my preferred method. But I do remember a South Florida client who started just doing the first two methods, controlled referrals and asking new callers about their households, and saw an extra 60 referral patients a month from that alone.
Jeff: Let that sink in, folks, 60 a month, that's 720 new patients a year just from talking to existing and incoming patients about their households. And the cost of that is essentially nothing.
Sabri: External marketing is genuinely great when it's done well, and digital marketing done properly is great too, I have no issue with spending real money on marketing, in fact I think you should if you own a business. But don't be lazy about internal marketing at the same time. And internal marketing goes beyond just asking for referrals, it also means actively marketing to your existing patients and keeping them in the practice. An existing patient with an outstanding treatment plan deserves just as much attention as chasing a brand new patient.
Jeff: We're actually planning a future episode just on that, why practices lose so many existing patients without realizing it.
Sabri: That's a great topic, and most practices genuinely don't realize how many patients they're quietly losing.
Jeff: Looking forward to that one. So to recap what you've covered: make one person responsible for referrals, have them focus on controlled referrals, both existing patients and new patient phone calls, train that person thoroughly with real role play until they're comfortable, and make sure they understand the underlying numbers well enough to actually believe in what they're doing. On the card side, is it usually one specific person handing those out, or does it vary?
Sabri: Usually the hygienist, since they're typically already handing patients a care bag at the end of the appointment anyway, the cards fit naturally into that, and hygienists have a captive, relaxed conversation window with the patient throughout the appointment to bring up referring friends and family.
Jeff: That makes sense. This was genuinely useful, and I hope it's something people can start using immediately. If you're looking to bring in more new patients generally, it's also worth attending the MGE New Patient Workshop, more information at newpatients.net. Sabri, anything you'd add before we wrap?
Sabri: I think we covered it well. And this works whether you have 300 patients or 2,500. Don't assume referrals aren't relevant just because your patient base is smaller, you could still add 100 or 200 patients a year just from doing this consistently.
Jeff: All right folks, we'll see you at the next episode, hope this helped.