What to do when Dental Referrals decrease and your schedule has openings?

Are empty chairs in your schedule dragging down your revenue?

When the "Summer Slowdown" hits your practice, those vacant slots are more than just a missed financial milestone—they are a critical warning sign that your referral network and internal marketing systems need an immediate overhaul.

In this episode of the Summer Slowdown Series, we shift your approach from reactive referral tracking to proactive pipeline building. Learn how to find hidden scheduling opportunities right inside your current practice data without spending a single dollar on new marketing campaigns.

Key Takeaways from This Episode:

• Cast a Net Over Open Referrals: Discover how to pull a targeted 90-day report from your practice management software (PMS) to spot patients who dropped off the radar or never scheduled.
• Tighten Your Tracking Systems: Ensure your digital intake forms completely lock down the "How did you hear about us?" field before the provider steps into the room.
• Build a Proactive Pipeline: Learn how to run a 12-month detailed referral source evaluation and execute consistent out-of-office community outreach.
• Expand Your Local Market Analysis: Map out every provider within a 45-to-60-mile radius to identify fresh opportunities for strategic clinical collaboration.

Stop relying on stressful, reactive marketing that makes your referral sources feel like a commodity. Take control of your practice growth today!

Connect & Grow With Us: 

https://stan.store/dentalreferralmarketingpodcast

• Level Up Training: Join our Free Level Up Training Course 
• Book a Call: Schedule a 1-Hour Strategy Discovery Session
• Referral Conduit Software: Apply to be a Beta Office for our Patent-Pending Software

Thanks for Listening! Please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like assistance for your dental practice(s) to grow your referral marketing program, on-board new dental associates to your referral network, plan and execute dental referral marketing events for your referral network, online seo/ai growth strategies so your dental website and practice are visible to potential new patients and more. 

See you in the next weekly episode, posted Monday mornings at 8am est. time. Referral Marketing made simple for Dental teams who want to grow!

Michelle Hougland

Host - Dental Referral Marketing Podcast

CEO/Founder - Referral Conduit Software

michelle@referralconduit.com

https://stan.store/dentalreferralmarketingpodcast

Transcript

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Do you have holes in your schedule? Have all the referrals been called and your team has already tried to move all the patients up in an attempt to fill them? Have you hit the summer slowdown? Even if it's not summer when you're listening to this episode, well then this show is for you. When the summer slowdown hits, empty chairs are not just missed revenue. They are a warning sign regarding your current referral network and your internal marketing systems. In today's episode, we will discuss how to transition from reactive referral marketing to proactive pipeline building. We will cover, number one, how to throw out the metaphorical net over your open referrals to catch potential scheduling opportunities that may not have been seen before. Number two, firm up your referral tracking systems to make sure your new referrals are not lost. And number three, we'll cover how to create a proactive pipeline building system that you can quickly deploy while you firm up your future strategies to implement. Let's begin. Point number one, how to throw out the metaphorical net on your open referrals to catch potential scheduling opportunities that you may not have seen before. Practices may lose track of stale or unpursued referrals during busy months. When the phones are ringing and the schedule is booked, these are the things that often get overlooked. To be able to recover that opportunity, let's pull a 90-day referral report of all of your incoming referrals to find those gaps. Now, this is something depending on your practice management software, it may not be available. If you are unable to record a referral from the time it's received versus where a lot of software will go in and it only tracks a referral once you have successfully completed a new patient appointment. If your practice management software does the latter, where it will not record a referral until the exam has been completed, do you have another way that you've been using to track your referrals? It may actually just be paper in a drawer in a file, if that's the case, or maybe an elaborate spreadsheet. Either way, let's get a look at the last 90 days of referrals. Have your team go back through their notes, through the voicemails, the different things that they have been using in their current systems to let's see what are those open referrals that are still remaining. It may be someone that was checking their insurance, had to check their work schedule. And I find that 90 days is typically that sweet spot with any referrals. We want to be able to respond to them within the same day of receiving the referral. But 90 days is the threshold that you're gonna see active re-engagement of these referred patients to be open to scheduling. Anything after that, I really wouldn't put a lot of time into it at this point. So, on a side note though, how are you tracking your referrals? Does your practice management software allow you to record them once they've been received? If so, fantastic. And I would love to hear from you if that's the case. I've worked with many different practice management softwares, but if your software tracks it from the time that you have received it and not the time that it is completed as a new patient exam, I'd love to hear from you. There is something in our show notes that's called fan mail. Leave me a message or send me an email. Thank you. So once you've pulled that 90-day report, now let's identify patients who have never scheduled or they dropped off the radar. These are going to be the ones that you're going to want to focus on first and primarily. Let's make the most of what you already have in your practice currently, and we'll review in later points what you can do to activate new referrals coming in to help overcome this summer slowdown that you may be experiencing. Let's make the most of what do we have in our hands currently? What do we have at our fingertips that we can quickly fill those schedules before we start looking up and looking out? By doing this, pulling a 90-day report so you can see all of the potential incoming referrals. This is a perfect opportunity for you to be able to fill those schedules while we'll work on some proactive pipeline building opportunities. Now, depending on your practice management software, you may not have the ability to pull this report. Let me explain. Some practice, most practice management softwares, do not count a patient as a referred patient until they have scheduled the appointment, come into their exam, and you have postset complete or closed out that first appointment. Then the practice management software said, Oh, look, you got a referral. Well, you got a referral from the time it left your referring provider's office and before that patient even scheduled. But a lot of practice management softwares lack in this opportunity when you're trying to pool reports because it does not show those patients that have not scheduled and or completed their first visit. If this is the case for your practice, don't worry. Some of the things I've seen in some of my practices I've consulted with is they'll do spreadsheets. They might even just have a notebook or a folder in a drawer where they keep those printed out facts or emailed referrals at their fingertips and make notes on them every time they've called the patient. Don't worry if this is the case for your practice. The great thing is there's a great opportunity for this to increase so that we can keep you out of these summer slowdown months by knowing the number of referrals that are coming into your practice and not only just the number of exams that are completed in your practice. There's a lot of opportunity here. On a side note, if you like to see how this could be improved for your practice by a software that can help you with this, I built a referral tracking software just for this. I built it for myself because of what I needed in the industry, and I know this is going to help you as well. It's called referral conduit. I have links in the show notes below if you're interested to learn more. But regardless, let's go ahead and pull that report however you've been tracking it, whether it's through your practice management software, through a spreadsheet, or if you have it printed out. Let's get eyes on those open referrals. Those are the ones I would focus on first and primarily. Don't go past 90 days. Anything after that, it's usually in my experience, the data proves it's much harder to get those referred patients to schedule. They've typically moved on, had the treatment taken care of somewhere else. And that's okay. Let's just wash our hands and go forward. Next, let's identify patients who've never scheduled or dropped off your radar. Let's get them scheduled and on your books. That should give you an immediate low-hanging fruit, a quick lift to your schedule. Point number two, let's firm up your referral tracking systems to make sure new referrals are not lost. Require on your new patient paperwork that you ask, how did you hear about us? And it's completed on your digital forms as well. Instruct your team and reinforce this by ensuring that the new patient paperwork is not quote unquote completed until this field on your forms are filled out and that it's recorded in your practice management software before the doctor sees the patient. I would encourage you in your team meetings and your morning puddles that you may have, let this be something that you reinforce to engage this new behavior and this new discipline. It's so, so important to know where each and every patient has heard about your specialty practice because knowledge is power. And when you have the data of all of the inroads of referrals coming to your practice, then you can look up and look out and prepare so that we can see if a summer quote unquote slowdown is coming so that you can respond in a proactive way instead of reactive. And some of my best specialty practices, when the doctor goes into the room to introduce themselves to the patient for the first time, they'll try to gather one or two personal conversation points about the patient before they just jump right into the dental exam, such as, how did you hear about us? Who can I thank today for sending you over? We're so glad that you're here. Another question that fills in rapport with the patient. Well, where did you grow up? Patients want to feel first that they are valued and they feel connected with you before you jump into all the science and nitty-gritty of the reason why they're there. This is a perfect opportunity for you to confirm that what they put on their paperwork as far as who referred them over is indeed the case. I've seen a lot of times patients will say, I heard about you from my neighbor, or they'll just put down the name of their general dentist. But honestly, maybe it wasn't the general dentist. Maybe it was the endodontist that they went to. And the endodontist now has referred this patient over to you. Let's say, for instance, if you're a periodontist, to be able to check that the health and the bone loss of a tooth before they treat the endo. And the patient didn't even come to you from the general dentist, but they just put their general dentist name down. So it's really important for you and your team to investigate this in a friendly, non-confrontational way, but a way that you can have accurate data to be able to look up and look out and have proactive marketing as a result. So asking them, how did you hear about us? Who can we thank for referring you over today is usually received really well by the patient, something super quick and easy and just needs to be worked into your day-to-day systems. Remember, you're treating a person and not just teeth. So once you've firmed up tracking the referrals coming into your practice, now you truly do have eyes to see, looking up and looking out. So we can be proactive and not reactive. Because if you only have a part of the story, you're not going to be able to navigate your referral marketing initiatives appropriately. So again, make sure that your digital software, your forms, whenever patients are filling out, they have a link on your website, or you have tablets that you give them when they come in. For the digital part of it, of course, we want to go in and make a required field. This is something that if you're unable to do, please reach out to your IT vendor or your practice management software if that's where your digital forms come in through. They can make it, you've seen it whenever you've filled out forms where you can make it required where it has that little red asterisk beside it, and you cannot save the form until that field is completed. This will make your life so much easier by doing this. If your practice has not adapted to digital forms, then just make sure that your team are reinforcing, gathering this information and not only having it on your paperwork, but making sure they are entering the correct data into your practice management software and that part of the field is entered in so that you can fully run reports in the future and see the number of referrals coming in. Point number three, create a proactive pipeline building system that you can quickly deploy. After you've firmed up this low-hanging fruit, this will give you the opportunity to have future strategies to implement. Once you've gone through these existing opportunities, ensure your current referrals are fully maximized and recorded in your office systems. Now let's create a proactive pipe building system. This is something you may want some additional assistance on. If so, feel free to reach out to me, book a call, be happy to work with you and your team on this to accomplish this vital step. Check out my Stan Store link in the show notes below. For your proactive pipeline, run a full 12-month detailed referral report so that you can identify your top referral sources from top to bottom. This is not only by the number of referred patients that they're sending you, but the production that's attached to those referrals coming in. This is going to give you a true view so that you can have proactive marketing in the future. If you do not have a specialized referral tracking software in place or your practice management software does not capture the full referral story, check out referral conduit. This was built to help fix this exact problem. Once you've run that full 12-month report, then let's plan some consistent outreach opportunities for not only in-person connections, educational events to come together while building relationships layered with ways to connect further that does not necessarily require you or your team member being present in their office. This is something that should be consistently done whether you are busy or are experiencing a summer slowdown, for instance. Reactive marketing is not only stressful, but your referrals can sense this. It causes them to feel like they're a commodity and that you only reach out to them when you're in need or in a bind where your schedule has holes. Instead of serving their practice and their needs and in reciprocity, they will want to do the same for you. Referral marketing, quote, relationship marketing, it is something that's built on trust and consistency wins in the end. Lastly, how long has it been since you've done a full market analysis in your area? I would say look up to 45 to 60 miles around your practice through Google. Identify providers that you may not have had the opportunity to work with or may not even be in your practice management software because they join the area since you've recorded referrals coming in and you had no idea that this practice had been built or this provider is now in this practice, which is a great opportunity for you to reach out and connect. I know life can get busy in your practices, and so this is something I recommend that's done at least on a yearly basis. But on my high-producing practices, we like to do this at least every six months. This will give you the opportunity to connect and clinically collaborate with these practices and see if a relationship can be built in a clinical fashion. So in today's episode, we reviewed if you have holes in your schedule and you may be experiencing your summer slowdown. We went over how to throw out your net. So you're going to go back through those existing opportunities, that 90 days of open referrals to have that low-hanging fruit to fill your schedule quickly. Then we firmed up your referral tracking systems to make sure future referrals are not lost through systems and holes currently being used. And lastly, I've gave you a proactive pipeline building system so you can quickly deploy while you firm up your future strategies to implement. This is something that a lot of our offices need a little assistance with. If that's the case for you, feel free to reach out. Also, I'd love to offer to you to invite you or your team to my virtual monthly level up. Zoom training is completely free. I have links in the show notes below to register. This is Michelle with the Dental Referral Marketing Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next episode for our summer slowdown series. Have a great day, everyone. Bye bye.