Create a List of Primary Prospects

Your primary list, as opposed to your master list, will be a list of prospects that you are currently developing into referral relationships. This list will be shorter and should only contain as many prospects as you are able to visit in one month. The extra names on your master list will be set aside for you to include as primary prospects at a later time.

In order to determine how many prospects you should add to your primary list, ask yourself how many hours per week you will be spending on building your referral framework. For every hour per week that you are going to spend, I recommend adding four or five prospects to this list.

Each visit, including travel time, should (or could) take around 60 minutes: 20 minutes to travel, 10 minutes to review plans, up to 20 minutes for the actual visit (although you will rarely spend this much time talking with the staff), and 10 more minutes to make notes about the visit before moving on to the next. The following week, you will visit a different set of offices and you will not return to the first week’s offices until one month later.

So considering that each office requires about one hour per month, four prospects for every hour per week that you are going to spend on your referral framework is a good starting place. You can make adjustments to this primary list as you go.

Making monthly visits to the same office at the same time will help establish you as a familiarity and build a level of trust and respect that will pay off. Make room for these repeat visits and do not overload your schedule. It is important to only focus on a manageable size of prospects at any one time.

Summary of Stage I

Prospecting is an integral part of a referral framework. It is like calibrating a compass that will lead you to your destination. If calibrated correctly, you will wander right into your goal. If done incorrectly, it can keep you from reaching your destination. You can put as much effort as possible into your program and still see no reward if you are not visiting the right doctors.

Prospecting sets the potential for success. If done thoroughly, you can have a list of nearly every person in your area that might refer to you. It is the first step that you must take in order to build a framework of medical massage referrals in your community.

Referral relationships take time to build. You should not expect to get referrals on the first or second visit to an office. You will need to focus on developing trust and mutual respect with each of your prospects and as a result will need to focus on only a limited number of prospects at a time.

Checklist for Stage I

1. Get your CRM ready.
2. Select your target market.
3. Gather a master list of prospects.
4. Create your primary list of best opportunities.