VMP 302: Build a Referral Machine For Your Veterinary Practice: Scripts, Offers, Tracking, ROI

Brandon Breshears 00:00:00  Most practices really rely on referrals to grow their business. But the thing about it is that they're not taking a systematic approach to it, and that just leaves it up to chance. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about referrals, because it doesn't matter if you're doing social media marketing, email marketing, paid ads, if you have your referral system down, you're going to be far more successful because any type of client that you generate from whatever source you like to generate them from is going to be that much more valuable. If you're able to leverage those ideal clients that you're getting into your practice and turn them into more. In most of the practices that I talk to you, at least half would say that referrals and word of mouth are their best traffic source for their ideal clients, and I think this makes a lot of sense. People deeply trust connection and referrals from people that they already know, like, and trust. There's an interesting, stat that 90% of people are more likely to buy from a brand that is recommended by a friend.

Brandon Breshears 00:01:05  For veterinary practice, this is gold for you. Pet owners are always listening to their friends, their family, and looking for positive experiences. And so if you have your your clients referring to friends and family, there is a much higher likelihood that they're going to actually become a client. And the thing about this is too, that if you really like your clients, the chances are that their friends, family, and work connections are probably going to be pretty similar to them. And here's another crazy fact, too, that for people that are referred to your practice, if you look at the revenue on average from referrals from all small businesses in the US, they have a 59% higher lifetime value on average. And that makes sense. If your best clients are referring more of their friends and family, it's going to be more of your better. clients are going to come in more often, spend more money, and it's going to help you to grow your practice, but not just with anybody, with the people that you actually want to be serving and that you like working with.

Brandon Breshears 00:02:05  Now, here's an even crazier stat only 30% of small businesses have some type of referral system in place, so it is the best source generally for free and more clients without having to actually spend more money. But most practices are not doing it, and that's where you can really grow and outshine your competition. So in today's training, we are going to be talking about all of the strategies and tactics that you can use to create a world class referral and lead generation system to help grow your practice with the right kinds of people. Now, one thing I'm not saying here is that if you set up a referral program, it's just going to grow your business like crazy. Obviously, there's really important foundations that you're going to have to lay before you start getting referrals. So before we dive into the tactics and things, we have to remember that referrals must be earned. Pet owners are only going to refer a clinic if they genuinely trust and appreciate your service. And so this starts obviously with delivering outstanding client and patient experience.

Brandon Breshears 00:03:12  You're going to want to make sure that your service meets or exceeds their expectations. And if you can't do that, the referrals that you're going to get are going to be scarce. But if you have the majority of your clients as happy clients who would recommend you if you were asking, then this is going to help generate more referrals. There's a study that said that 83% of customers are willing to refer business after a positive experience. And so this means that when you provide compassionate care and you're giving great service, great experience, you create clients who want to rave about you. And so implementing these systems that we're going to be talking about will help to make your hospital easier to refer. For this is like what I say all the time with respect to your CSRs and your front desk. So many times you'll have people calling in, but your CSR simply won't ask if they want the appointment. That simple ask is what takes somebody from just being interested to then becoming a client. So it is just the same with your referrals in your veterinary hospital.

Brandon Breshears 00:04:16  If you don't ask for the referral, the majority of people won't give it and they would typically, but it just slips their mind. They're busy. And so putting these systems into place is going to help to get more on a consistent basis and treat it like a system in your business. So why do referrals work so well? I think it's important to understand why they work so well as well. With the younger generations, especially, over 85% of millennials and younger trust recommendations from friends and family over any other source of information. And that is especially true for products or services. And you can see this being used so many times, especially with big companies that are taking their really polished and highly finished social media presence and making it more real, so that it appears that they're not just a faceless, massive corporation. People trust other people. And whether that's through, just positive reviews, positive engagement, positive content, that is a a system and a source of referrals. But referred clients tend to also be better clients.

Brandon Breshears 00:05:24  And the reason that might be is because it creates a personal recommendation. Right. So if you know somebody and you're like, you got to try this restaurant, you would love this. I know that you like this type of food. You have to try this place, right. So you're pre selecting for people who are going to be probably a right fit. If you know of something that works really well for you, and you have a friend that has a similar situation that they're looking to solve, you feel like you're doing them a service by referring them. So it helps to self-select the right types of people. So when you're getting the types of clients that you really like working with, if you have the system in place, it'll help to generate more of them. And by that same token, if you have like let's say your client refers their family member, their family member refers, you know, 2 or 3 of their neighbors. Those neighbors refer more and more. It's like a legitimate pyramid scheme, but it's not scamming anybody.

Brandon Breshears 00:06:17  So it builds up very quickly and can give exponential growth to your practice. The best part is here, most of the things that we're going to be talking about cost almost nothing, just basically time. And so it's just something that you can implement right away and get more new clients. And so I'd say this, that if you listen today and you hear something that you like, please implement it. Because when you set something like this up as a system, the ROI for this is going to be massive, because again, it costs almost nothing to get them in the door. So hopefully you'd be looking at all of the strategies that we talked to in terms of a system that you can implement in your practice that's going to help to drive more clients, but once you set it up, it should be able to run basically on its own. And we need to think about that. What can we do today that's going to give us results for a long time and apply leverage to those type of marketing activities.

Brandon Breshears 00:07:08  You as a practice owner should be thinking about high leverage activities. So that's stuff like setting up a referral system, creating a content system, creating a method for reporting, right. The things that are going to generate long term results for you that you set up once, and then you get benefits for a long time. And I think this is especially true because as true, because as a practice owner, you just have so much going on that the type of marketing activities, if your practice owner, practice manager, you work in a practice, obviously, if you're a CSR or somebody listening that is actually doing it, then you can apply these things in your job. But if you're from an ownership or a management type perspective. Trying to set up these systems that produce high leverage for you is going to help you to grow even faster. So let's jump into some of these strategies. The first one is really simple. And we're going to start with the free and high impact referral strategies. It's really simple really obvious.

Brandon Breshears 00:08:05  But I want you to go and ask your team when is the last time that they ask for referrals? Most of them don't. In fact, about 91% of small businesses, their employees do not never ask for a referral at all. And so the simplest tactic is most overlooked. Have you asked your clients for referrals and chances are you probably haven't. So a lot of practices feel like it's kind of salesy to ask, but I think we need to reframe how we're thinking about the approach here. If you feel awkward, Unsure. Kind of weird about it. Then I have some questions for you. Do you feel confident in your care? Because if you don't feel confident that you're producing a good result, you're probably not going to want to ask for referrals. So obviously you have some clients that you wouldn't want to ask because they're a pain in the butt. But if it's the best client that you have, have you asked them for referrals? And I will say this too, that asking just anything is better than nothing.

Brandon Breshears 00:09:09  So if you said, you know, at the end of the exam, you know, thank you so much for coming in. If you have any friends or family or neighbors that you think would need care or have pets, we'd love to help out, just let us know. That will get more conversions than nothing, right? But that's definitely not the best way to to ask. That's like a really simple nudge. Everybody in your practice should be asking or saying that. Just to reiterate that, hey, we really appreciate referrals. and you can even frame it in ways that are similar to that. So thank you so much for coming in. And by the way, if you have any friends or family who you think would enjoy our practice, be sure to refer them. We always really appreciate referrals. So that's a very non salesy way that I think you should end every conversation. That is when they're coming in, make sure that you're asking for that. But I think there's actually a better way to do it, which is instead of asking in that way that is very close ended.

Brandon Breshears 00:10:08  If you ask people a question, that's a yes or no question, where no is the answer that shuts down the conversation, people will say no, and that's just built into human nature. If you've ever had kids, like when they turn to, their favorite word becomes no. And it's ingrained, right? You have little kids that say, no, no, no, no, no. Like, no, I want this. No, no, no. That's all the time it is built into us. So the automatic response is no. Because if you're thinking about like, oh great. What are they going to ask me for if I say yes? Right. So people want to say no. It takes less energy. It is just built in. Take. Take my word for it. It's built in to our. If yes or no. So if you change the the sequence of that and you say, you know, we really appreciate you coming in, by the way, we really appreciate referrals.

Brandon Breshears 00:11:01  Who do you know that would also benefit from coming into our practice. And then just sit and listen. So instead of if you know, it's who do you know? And then the answer is not yes or no. It is. Okay. Let me think about it for a second. And so oftentimes and you can say who do you know. Or do you know anybody who also has pets that you think would love coming in to our practice? Something like that. But changing that, that question from yes or no to then, okay, I have to think about it, and I have to go through the list of people and I actually like, do you know anybody is actually my. One of my favorite ones. that does give a no, but I think it's a little bit easier than who do you know? Because that that transition is pretty simple. so those are my two options. So who do you know, or do you know anybody. And that gets them going through their Rolodex in their mind of okay, let's think about this.

Brandon Breshears 00:12:01  And then for them to say no, they typically have to pause and say like, no, you know, I don't know anybody. Okay, great. Well, if anybody comes up, we have a referral program and we give you a referral credit, we give them a referral credit. And so just wanted to say thank you. And we really appreciate you something like that. But at least it lets you introduce some type of referral program. So one thing I would say here too that's really important is that you need to have it scripted out. So take a minute, think about it. How would you want to say this. And then make sure everybody follows the script? I actually think it is incredibly important to use scripting and sequencing in your practice, because if everybody is doing their own thing, you can't track and measure what's actually working. So even if somebody is saying a script that's not going to work, that's actually better than just having no script at all because you can make changes to it.

Brandon Breshears 00:12:52  So then you're like, okay, this doesn't work. Let's change the script to something that does work. The next thing that you need to do. So once you have a script in place, everybody memorizes it. Everybody uses it. Test it 12 times before the first time that they're going to use it. Make sure that it comes off really natural and easy. Make sure it's in the right sequence, in the right place, and make sure that everybody uses the scripting. Stick to the script, and then you can again measure at how successful it is. the other thing that you need to have, I think in place is a next step. So how do you want to get a referral? I just briefly mentioned there a $25 reward for the person making the referral and the person giving the referral. So how are you going to measure that? A lot of practice management systems have some type of referral program enabled in it. You could make something as simple as a card like when they come in.

Brandon Breshears 00:13:49  Here's the card. It's going to have your name on it. They at least have a next step to do. And so that's really really important. So what is the next step. If you have like a texting number you could just have them text and see both of you on that text message. You know. Hey and it's Brandon. I was just letting you know, the my doctor at the Veterinary Hospital was really great. And they have a referral program. I know you needed a new vet, so I'm making you an introduction. Let us know if you need anything. Like whatever. Right. So ask for. So I think actually the easiest way to do something like this would be through like a referral card, for example. That's an easy way to get people like you put your friend's name on it. Hand it to your friend when they bring it in. Everybody gets $25 off their their visit. You get a $25 credit and new client gets a $25 reward. Everybody wins. You get a new client.

Brandon Breshears 00:14:46  And if you think about cost per acquisition for clients in the door, $50 for a new client is likely ROI positive on that first visit. Obviously, make it whatever you want, but rewarding an existing client who is a really great client that works great and so everybody wins in that instance. that reward also keeps people committed to your practice too. So if somebody refers a friend and now they have reward, that's great because they're going to come back to use that. So I think something like that is really simple to do. If you want to get a little more advanced, you could get some type of an introduction on text sent or email or, have them call their friend and be like, hey, I'm at the vet right now. And they were mentioning they have a referral program. Just wanted I know you were looking for a vet. Like that would be really aggressive and probably most practices wouldn't do that. But like you could have them text your practice number or something. If you have like a 1 to 1 texting system, you could have a templated response that said, hey, you know, first name.

Brandon Breshears 00:15:52  I wanted to introduce you to my vet. They have a great referral program and I know you're looking for a vet, so here's their contact info and then basically just start chatting away there. You could do it through email too, if you wanted to. Right. Let's all of the people who give me referrals always do it through email. They'll CC send an introduction and then we take the conversation from there. So email is a great way to so that I think just ask is the most obvious and simple thing. But we have to talk about it because 90% of businesses don't even ask for referrals. So whatever you do, if you're doing nothing, if you do anything, you're going to be more successful. Script it if possible and leave it in an open ended question instead of a yes or no question. The second tactic that you can use to generate more referrals is give them something that is actually remarkable to talk about and exceptional service. So just beyond the good service, you want to try to actually engineer a wow moment that is going to be so remarkable that people can't help but talk about it.

Brandon Breshears 00:16:58  So things like a handwritten thank you note after your pet's first visit. That's something that would be super kind of low tier. It's not necessarily remarkable. There's been some things that I've seen. There's an app that's called Bon Zorro, where you can record custom messages and send them out, and it's like a video message, but doing something. And the reason why I like that is because it's personalized. The system is really, really easy to use and it is really remarkable. It's it's super, super rare. What typically happens with Bonjour is that you'll get a notification on your phone, you'll pull it out, it'll say send welcome message to so-and-so's name. So it'll give merged fields, and then you'll just record a message from like either you or the doctor and basically say like, hey, it's it's Doctor Brandon. I just wanted to say thanks so much for coming in. It was great meeting Bella at her first visit. If you need anything you know, be sure to check your email. We sent you all of our links and updates, but we're happy to have you as part of our hospital family now.

Brandon Breshears 00:18:07  And just wanted to say thanks for coming in. If you have any questions, let us know. All right. So just making something and then it sends that as a personalized message through text. And it's really, really cool. But that just stands out. So how can you stand out. And if you're trying to do better service. Like, what are the types of things that you're actually going to do better in than the other hospitals around you? I'll give you a quick idea to like if you want to get crazy about it. And Bonjela is super cost effective. but there's things out there where you can get personalized gifts that get sent out to people. And like an example is, Dennis Yu or. Yeah, Dennis Yu, who's been on the podcast. I was thinking of Dennis or Daryl Eaves, but Dennis Yu from Blitz Metrics, when I signed up for his course, he sent me a pair of socks, which is like an odd thank you gift. But the thing that was crazy was that they were customized with my face on them.

Brandon Breshears 00:18:59  So like, what the heck? I took a picture of it and had my face repeating on the socks. I gave it to my wife. She wears them all the time still, and it's been like seven years. so like, they're a really good pair of socks. But every time I see that, I think about Dennis and his socks that he sent me. And then I took that on social and I was like, man, I just bought this blitz metric horse and this is what was included in it. Like you sent me these socks. That's the craziest thing ever. So that was remarkable. If you want to do something like that, that's, I think, pretty cool. one of my clients gives a bottle of wine and a, name tag with new clients. Like, that's remarkable and interesting and different. So you can be very creative, but if you can engineer these type of wow moments, I think you're going to do much better than if you're just kind of making a standard visit.

Brandon Breshears 00:19:54  That's just the same. So really audit your process. Think about what you could add. What do you want to be known for? How would somebody who is trying to get what you claim you're you're delivering on? What would they need to see, hear, think and feel? and like another example that I'm thinking, Cody Creelman, who's been on the podcast, they developed a scent for their practice. So like, it smells like a smell, like fen that has a smell to it. So they've designed everything down to the smell. I think you need to get that crazy about it. If you want to have something, that's going to be remarkable. The other bonus that you're going to get if you do these type of things, not only are you going to get referrals, you're going to get people commenting on social. You're going to get people giving reviews online. And this is going to help to amplify that word of mouth and help for more organic growth as well. The next thing that we need to do, and I talked about this briefly here in the first tactic, is we just need to make referring easy.

Brandon Breshears 00:20:53  So remove the friction from sending referrals. So simplify the process. Think about what is the easiest way that we could do this. So that it would be easy to train, easy to implement and easy to track. I think those referral cards are a very, very simple way. Just hand it out and check out. Everybody gets one. Give this to a friend for a free exam, and you're going to get a reward to something like that. And the free exam for friends. I think that's pretty much a no brainer. Like they would give that to their friends like crazy. So make the offer attractive enough that it makes your client look good for giving it to their friends, and then make the reward strong enough that you're actually saying thank you. And let's say you want to save money. Like if you're already printing business cards for your practice, just put a referral part on the back of it. Like make it part of it. Getting more clients with those business cards that would actually put it to work and get people using them.

Brandon Breshears 00:21:48  You might also, as I mentioned, want to do some type of pre typed message that people can copy and paste to send to their friends. but if it's easier to do, you're going to get more people to do it. So here in making it easy, it needs to be also super clear. Mention any incentive, if any, clearly outline how they're going to be able to do that and then how people redeem it. So what is it? How do I do it and how is it implemented? That's what you need to worry about here. But also think about how you can advertise this more in your practice. Put signs out. Keep it top of mind. Put it in picture frames. Like actually ask for it in places where your clients are hanging out. I really think that the key here is staying top of mind. So include it in your email that you're sending out, like have all of your referrals in every single email and text reminder and maybe not text reminders because you're just limited in characters, but any email that you send out, any invoice that you send out, be sure to be asking for this.

Brandon Breshears 00:22:55  And the more you ask, the more you're going to get. It doesn't cost anything to ask. And that leads me to the next point, which is most people overlook partners, especially with other related businesses. So not just specifically like your clients, but also your entire network. So think as broadly as you can. For people that have large segments of clients that you both share, people that have an influence with, people that are like, for example, Realtors are probably gonna if you have a neighborhood that has realtors who are doing open houses and they're selling houses in there, they got a bunch of new people moving in. Most people have dogs. And so like realtors would be a great example. But there's also in market segments like groomers, trainers, pet sitters, pet supply stores, shelters, rescue. Even other veterinarians, especially if you're a specialty practice. So these all are referral opportunities. And the more that you can refer back and forth you're going to be able to get, I think, a good relationship set up.

Brandon Breshears 00:24:07  So really at this point we're trying to build relationships, and in doing this, I would have hopefully some type of a goal for outreach. With AI, it's easier than ever. Just type into AI hate. I am a veterinary practice. This is my zip code. What potential businesses in my immediate area would be great referral partners and push enter and then say okay, wonderful, help me to make a cold outreach email that's introducing myself and just asking more about their services and seeing if they'd be open to referrals at all. Get that and then manually go through that. Do it five times a month and you can build up referral partners that over time are going to give you more potential new clients. If you are a specialty practice, you can also use AI like deep research and ChatGPT to go through and say pull list of all of the local veterinary practices in this county in this zip code with contact info from their websites. It'll put it into a spreadsheet. And then I wouldn't say mass email them, but you can call and talk to them.

Brandon Breshears 00:25:12  You can send them one on one messages. Again, don't spam, but try to build relationships with these people. The other thing too, is that once you get somebody who says, hey, I'm interested in generating referrals back and forth, I actually take an interest in them and follow up with them. It's called being nice. Be nice to people who send you referrals. Send them messages every once in a while. How's it going? Haven't talked in a while. Hope everything's going great. Is there anything we can help you with? Be outgoing, follow up with people, and actually work to build relationships. So hopefully you're working to find people that you actually like and that you want to refer business to. If you don't like somebody, but they have a lot of potential referrals like don't cultivate that. You don't have to. There's no no rules here. You can do what you want to do, but you're probably going to meet some really cool people. Some of my favorite people in the industry are other marketing professionals.

Brandon Breshears 00:26:08  And so I've met amazing people and it's fun to talk to them too. So it's not just only the benefit of referrals, it's that you get to meet and make new friends too, which is always a good thing. And so don't forget though, you do need to follow up and continue to stay top of mind to everybody. Everybody's busy. And although I'm sure people you know would love to refer to you, but if they don't think about you, there's not going to be a time where, I mean, there probably is going to be a time where they forget to refer you when there was an opportunity. But if you can stay top of mind, they will refer more. If somebody refers, give them a heartfelt thank you. This goes a long way and it doesn't cost anything. So for example, I have some personal examples from this. If somebody sends me a referral, I let them know that, you know. A couple of months later. Hey, by the way, thank you so much for the referral.

Brandon Breshears 00:27:08  We're still working together. Things are going great. I'll say that all the time and send that over so people feel confident in that referral. So not only do you say thank you at the time of the referral, but give them an update. Oh, by the way, you know, you referred the Smith family to us. They came in. We loved seeing their dog. We're so excited and happy to have them as a client. If you show them that, it actually makes a difference, that you're giving them special treatment, that their referral is safe. Because if you think about it, when people send a referral to you, if they don't feel like you're going to appreciate it or take care of them, it's going to be look bad on them for making a referral. So you want to make them feel like they are increasing in status to people. Do things a lot for status. They want to feel like they're important, special and elevated, and so making them feel important, special and elevated by sending that referral, it's going to help them to improve their status not only with their friends, but they'll feel confident in sending their future friends.

Brandon Breshears 00:28:07  Ultimately, they want to make sure that their friends are being taken care of and that they're receiving the same great care that you received. And so following up with them over time is going to help to signal to them that your practice values them and values their friend. And it's going to do a great job. So not only thanking them at the time of their referral, but make sure that you circle back with them and close the loop of. Was it a good decision to send a referral? It's going to help to increase loyalty and get even more referrals for you. So the majority of the practices that we just talked about are free, right? And the caveat would be what we're going to be talking about next, which is low cost referral program incentives. How do we incentivize them? People work on incentives. Dogs work on incentives. If they do something good, give them a treat. If your clients do something good, give them a treat. So let's design maybe a win win referral incentive program.

Brandon Breshears 00:29:03  The most popular here is two sided. You get something, they get something. Everybody wins. It's actually a win win win. The practice gets new client. The client gets a credit to the next appointment. The new client gets something as well. So here the level of incentive that you give is going to be directly tied to how many times it is used. If you give a $10 off, you do a free nail trim, something that's low end, you're not going to get as high of conversion as if it's a free first exam, or a free blood panel, or a free dental exam, right? Like, depends on what it is that you're doing. The higher the perceived value, the better it is for conversion. The way that you frame offers can also be really, really beneficial to you. So if you have some type of special tier of service that you can offer people some extra benefit that's maybe not accessible unless they send referrals and then their clients also other referrals also enrolled in it, like maybe preferred appointment slots.

Brandon Breshears 00:30:10  Like we keep these appointments slots available for our preferred clients who prefer us. So it's top secret. We don't tell anybody until you refer. So just letting you know. Once you refer, you get that. Like that'd be something interesting to try and you're not doing any discounting. That's just an increase in status. You can also do referrals for things that are non-cash rewards. So things like if you're for a friend, you get a hat, or maybe you get a t shirt or something like that, but especially if you have a really cool brand and you've spent a lot of money working on your branding and your logos and you make stuff that's really cool. There's a few clients that I have that I would actually like. Send me some of your t shirts because I would absolutely wear them. So if that's the case, that would be something cool. But you can get tons of different types of promotional materials that are branded and do a you think you package and make it unique? The Sox that I mentioned as a thank you for purchase.

Brandon Breshears 00:31:03  Like you could make something like that as well. For this, one of my favorite places to go and look just for interesting ideas is a place called Custom Ink. They have like the most creative stuff that you can get that's branded for your practice. Like for example, they have a small campfire s'mores kit or like it comes in a tube. It's got the sticks, the graham crackers, marshmallows, the chocolate, and then it's wrapped in a branded tube. So like that's really unique and interesting. Like they have the craziest things there. Check out that and get some ideas. And if somebody does a referral you have a referral thank you kit that you could give out. They have tons of pet products. I said this s'mores one because it just really stuck out to me. It was like super strange. Start sending those out to my clients and see what that what happens. But the more that you can do that is unique, the better you're going to be. Because again, you're being remarkable.

Brandon Breshears 00:31:57  If something stops people in their tracks, they're like, wow, that's amazing. Like, that's what you're looking for. And likely it would pay for itself. But you obviously want to make sure that you're staying profitable here. So I think it's important to always know your metrics. How much are you able to spend to acquire client. and make sure you're staying under that bottom line here. Your program needs to be simple. It needs to be. What do I get? What does my friend get that that's going with the referral. And then how do I claim it? How do they claim it? How is it tracked? Simple as possible. Simple is better. Now, when you're developing your rewards program or referral program, I think rewards are better than discounts. My friend Brian McCray, who's been on the podcast a bunch of times, he's got Rethink Vet Solutions, which is a reward program that helps. But he's done tons of research and study on discounting versus rewards. And let's say you have a $100 bill where somebody comes in.

Brandon Breshears 00:32:52  They have a their bill is $100 if they have a 10% discount. You collect $90 today. If they have a 10% reward, you collect $100 today. And then the $10 is out hanging in the future, which is an incentive to get them to come back. Rewards are always better than discounts, in my opinion, for that reason, because it keeps them bound. Plus, you're not going to have a as high of A. And also a side note, too, that the redemption rate is not going to ever be 100%. So if you have a rewards program, there's no way that all of the rewards are going to be redeemed. You're gonna have people that move away that don't ever use them, things like that. So that's just the nature of having a rewards program and why it's always better to have that hanging out over the future. One thing you could do is organize a referral event or campaign. So for example, you have a client appreciation month, for example, and in this client appreciation month for everybody who refers to a friend or family member, they'll get entered to win vaccines for life.

Brandon Breshears 00:33:55  Right? You could do that. Vaccines for life giveaway that we've mentioned a bunch of times, but the cost for the vaccines is very low. The perceived value of vaccines for life is high. It will retain a client to your practice for a long time, and it is easy to to implement. So they still have to come in and pay for the exam. The cost of the vaccines is just covered. So something like that. You could even set up competitions where every referral they get, they get an extra, entry into this giveaway. But with this you could get really creative though. You could do things like having a competition, for example, and the person who refers the most gets some type of special reward, right? So this has done a lot in marketing circles with event event launches, new product sales, things like that, with typically what are called affiliates, where people are getting paid to refer something and so doing some type of a competition or campaign around getting more referrals right before refer more friends and you'll be entered to win some type of a prize, whether it's like vet med related, maybe like they get a special parking spot that's reserved for them at your practice.

Brandon Breshears 00:35:06  Like, I don't know, but that would be something interesting to do. For sure, you can inject your marketing creativity here and come up with some ideas for sure. So with all things marketing, we want to make sure that any time we're doing a marketing activity, we're actually seeing how well it is working. And if we're trying to run a campaign, whether it's paid ads, social media, we need to track it and optimize it. So the easiest way to do this is have your reception. Always ask, how did you hear about us and note those if it was a friend referral or a client referral? Most practice management software has the ability to put that field in there and track that and so use those tools they're going to show you. Numbers. And you can pull client reports from people who've paid invoices and look. At source. And so for example, if 20 new clients came this month and five were from referrals. So let's say on an average month, you had 20 new clients coming in and five were from referrals.

Brandon Breshears 00:36:06  But let's say you implement new tactics. You start getting everybody on your team to be asking for referrals. And so next month you see 15 referrals and 35 new clients. You might say to yourself, this seems to be working pretty well. You're also able to do things like calculate the lifetime value of your clients by source. So for example, you could pull a report of lifetime value. Look at the source, sort by source. Get the average lifetime value by adding all up the the clients that came from referrals, dividing by the number of clients. And then you have your average lifetime value and you can compare that to paid ads, social media, different sources and see how much these people are worth versus other segments. in your practice, this is also going to help you to figure out how much you can afford to pay. Generally, for veterinary practice, I'd like to keep first visit ROI positive. So we're not doing like a loss leader. So we want to make sure that we're being profitable on first visit.

Brandon Breshears 00:37:12  And so that would give us the ability to scale up as much as possible. So the thought there is if let's say you're doing something that's a really compelling, referral reward, but it's making you lose money if, let's say a like 200 people in your practice go and send out a referral, you lose money on that front end, it might actually negatively impact you. So we want to be making money on first visit. but make sure that we are able to really scale this up and then it's profitable and it's a win win for everybody. So you the prefer and the referral as a follow up here, when your CSRs are asking where did you hear about us from. Make sure that if they said I was referred from a friend. Oh great. By the way, who was your friend? Make sure you're keeping track in a simple spreadsheet or a database. Who is giving you referrals? That way you're not forgetting to thank them and follow up with them and close that loop if you can. And like let's say you have somebody usually what happens is especially if you don't have a system in place, if you are getting referrals, it's going to be from like a small percentage of the people coming in your practice, but they're going to be prolific in the number of referrals that they give you.

Brandon Breshears 00:38:25  So make sure your super referrals refers feel the love and that they're being recognized. And that's going to help incentivize them even more. The next thing that you need to do is actually track the method that you're measuring this referral system. So let's say for example, you have a referral landing page and it's just for your friends and family, right? They're sending out a forwarded special text with a landing page that you've built just for referrals. But let's say you've built out a text referral system, and let's say you've also been handing out cards, and you see that you're getting almost no referrals from the texting system and all of the referrals from the card. It's time to double down on what is working, or try to figure out why the other source is not working as well. But if something starts per working, you need to continue to use it more and more. And the last bit here is to make this known to your team that this is something that you're actively working for, and set goals for referrals in your practice.

Brandon Breshears 00:39:23  Make sure everybody is on board with the fact that we're trying to get these type of clients. Here's why it's going to make things funner in their practice. Here's why this is going to help us grow. It's going to help us, you know, achieve all these goals which are going to benefit everybody. So be transparent, be open and let everybody know why we're trying to do this. So the team buys in. If you can get team buy in on something like this, it's going to be 20 times more successful. At least I just made that number up. But it's going to be incredibly more successful than if you're just trying to push people and force them to do just another thing. So get buy in, get them helping out. And if you have any other cool ideas, I would love to hear them, but I'm always on the lookout for something like that. So if you have any questions comments, you need help with anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can send me an email.

Brandon Breshears 00:40:12  You can reach out to me on socials, but I hope you have a great week and I'll see you in the next episode.