How To Start Building Referral Relationships Within Your Community: What Did and Didn't Work For Me

Private Pay MBAGet my 9 page OTs Map to the World of Pelvic Health.Meet me on the OTs for Pelvic Health Facebook Group!Check Out More OT Pelvic Health Content here.Restore Your Core Teacher TrainingFind me on IG! @functionalpelvis--Transcript--Such an important part of being a pelvic health OT is making sure you have clients! And this is a topic I am very passionate about because as OTs, we are innately good at building relationships. And that’s all, at it’s core, marketing is. So let’s build relationships within our community with ppl who interact with our clients and can send them our way!I wanted to dig deep so in preparing for this podcast epi, I reflected back to what I’ve done over the past 9 years with the Functional Pelvis (ya know, what worked, what flopped) in order to share my top tips in today’s talk.We are going to talk about how to authentically hustle. The sales and marketing aspect is hard for so many of us, which is why I use the word “authentically hustle.” And what’s authentic for me may be different than what’s authentic for you. So after we discuss some key ideas today, spend a few mins brainstorming and jotting down some ideas that inspire you. What feels right for you? How can marketing feel less salesy? Only you can answer this question but I hope by hearing my stories, you will see that the authentic hustle is entirely possible.Ok so let’s get into it now.My first tip -- Start getting your name known. Whether you have a strictly online business, or you offer in-person services, you should have an on-line presence that helps people meet you and get to know your personality and brand. This means making yourself visible and showing up with consistency. It’s important for you to be seen as the expert where your client and/or referring parties hang out.Here is an example of this in the virtual world.Join FB groups where your potential clients or potential referring parties are. For me, this meant a doula FB group for the NYC area, a perinatal connection networking FB group, some popular fitness programs FB groups such as RYC, Mutu, etc. Join them and listen. Listen to their needs, pay attention to the specific language they are using to describe their concerns. You can mirror their language and concerns back to them or in posts. This will help them see you “get them.”  Once you are a fly on the wall and start to see patterns with their language and how they are speaking to their concerns, start to step-up and be seen as the expert in the room. Reply to their concerns with tangible, compassionate, concrete answers. And friends, be consistent with showing up so they continue to see your name in the forums. Ways to make this easier include Scheduling something on your calendar weekly to review your top groups. When you consistently relay tips and tools you will be seen as the expert and a dependable source of wisdom. From my experience, You will see referrals from this.The same things apply to the real world.So let’s talk about that now.The goal in marketing your business is to make connections so that people (be it referring parties or clients who talk to their friends) think of you. Basically, You are top of mind when anyone mentions something remotely related to your specialty. An____________________________________________________________________________________________Pelvic OTPs United - Lindsey's off-line interactive community for $39 a month! Inside Pelvic OTPs United you'll find:​Weekly group mentoring calls with Lindsey. She's doing this exclusively inside this community. These aren't your boring old Zoom calls where she is a talking head. We interact, we coach, we learn from each other.​Highly curated forums. The worst is when you post a question on FB just to have it drowned out with 10 other questions that follow it. So, she's got dedicated forums on different populations, different diagnosis, different topics (including business). Hop it, post your specific question, and get the expert advice you need.More info here. Lindsey would love support you in this quiet corner off social media!