Susan Boydell, a partner with Barlow/McCarthy, has deep experience and brings a practical yet inventive strategic thinking to healthcare organizations and physician practices nationwide. Passionate about “listening” to the “voice of the customer” Susan helps clients discover what physicians want and expect. She then translates those insights into customized solutions for referral development, leakage improvement, evolving teams, and keeping organizations one step ahead of trends. Before joining Barlow-McCarthy, Susan led business growth strategy at Texas Health Resources and was the marketing and brand leader for BayCare Health System.
Name: Susan Boydell, Partner
Company: Barlow/McCarthy
URL: https://barlowmccarthy.com/
Transcript of the Conversation
RJ Martino
Welcome to the iProv made podcast where we help you build a more profitable practice. I got my co host with me JORDAN SMITH.
Jordan Smith
Hey RJ How are you?
RJ Martino
I’m good. I’m excited about this podcast.
Jordan Smith
Man. I am too. We’ve been a fan of Barlow McCarthy for a long time. If there are listeners out there that know anything about it, you guys are excited for as excited if not more than we are to have this guest on. If you haven’t cool pay very special attention. This group they literally wrote the book on physician relations. So today, we’ve got Susan Boydell with Barlow McCarthy. I just want to hop into it RJ. Let’s
RJ Martino
do it. Alright. Welcome to the I prov made podcast where we help you build a more profitable healthcare practice. I got my wonderful and good looking co host, JORDAN SMITH.
Jordan Smith
That’s a new one.
RJ Martino
It’s an audio podcast. You can tell anybody how you look on the radio, they don’t see you. So,
Jordan Smith
all right. I’m okay. I guess how are you today?
RJ Martino
I’m great. I’m excited, because we have someone that I’ve looked up to for a long time. I’ll tell a quick story. But excited to have Susan Boydell with Barlow McCarthy on the podcast. Susan, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I’m glad to be here. I like to tell people at one point in the last few years, we were providing, you know, we provide marketing services for lots of our clients and we had a client who had a need for someone to and you’re going to hate that I say this because you over simplify everything but shake hands and kiss babies and work for for referral sources. And because they had a need and because I love seeing opportunities, I said we could do that for you. And they they gave us an agreement and then I got home and it was the dog that caught the car. I was scared. How are we going to deliver this? And what we found out was called physician relations, kind of building referral sources. I went to our community of experts, we you know, we’re part of a group of healthcare experts, healthcare marketing experts, and they said, Hey, you have got to get in touch with Barlow, McCarthy. They are kind of the leading experts in that field. I was referred to books, I consume those books in 24 hours, they are so well written, so well organized and give a strategy for physician relations. So I’m excited to have a partner from Barcelona McCarthy here, Susan, thank you again. Thank you. Before we get started, the first thing I really like to do, Jordan and I like to kind of talk about what we call our baby steps for how we structure a profitable healthcare practice. And really, for us, it usually starts with just asking questions and listening to symptoms that physician or health Care leaders tell us about because usually they’ll tell us things like our patient counts are down, or referral sources are full. And those are all symptoms to a larger problem. And so we’re asking questions so we can really dig into what the problem is. The second thing we do is we make sure that when we’re talking to someone that they’re the type that will be accountable for the problem. You know, often as business leaders, we want to throw money at problems and they just go away. And it can’t work like that. Because the third thing that we do is we make sure that there is some long term strategy, we call it a business plan. And that is we need to know where they want to where they want to be in five and 10 years, because ultimately, we can build a strategy but if it doesn’t align with their long term plan, they’re not going to be happy no matter how successful we think we are. So we need a long term plan and then we go out we build a strategy. And based off that strategy, we build tactics tactics are those you know how many people you need to see how many phone calls Do you need to make? Or how many social posts should we make? All those things are very tactical. But as business leaders, they often want to buy tactics and they ignore all the other stuff. And we say you got to go through those other processes first. And then we’ve got a way to align and keep your team accountable for those results. And a lot of times it’s a scorecard. It’s a, it’s a every month. Here’s what our expectations are for our team to hit. Jordan, did I summarize those things pretty well?
Jordan Smith
Yeah, no, that’s perfect. Which is why we’re so excited to have Susan from Barlow McCarthy on is is you know, if you know anything about the industry, they are the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to health care consultants, referral, specialty, that type of stuff. So Susan, give the audience a little bit of kind of a background and information on you.
Susan Boydell
Well, well, before I do that, I’m just going to touch right in what on you set what you said RJ because it is the exact same pro In physician relations that you just described, when you go into a practice, we’re sometimes talking to a different audience. And we need to understand that audience need, but it’s the exact same approach. I mean, you have to know where you’re going, you have to have a strategy for how to get there, what the business plan looks like. And then you got to have a way to measure it on the other end of it. So I started out in this business on the consumer side in healthcare, so I’ve been in healthcare my entire career. I’m old, too. So a long, long time
RJ Martino
ago, I told you what, this is the audio podcast, everybody thinks we’re 25.
Susan Boydell
Well, now I know I’m not 25 folks, okay, been doing this a long, long time. But I started out on the consumer side and this will really date it. This will extremely dated, because I was in the very first startup marketing department in a hospital in Florida. So think about that. Okay, so I always say hit from the ground up, okay. When it was like when people take You mean you’re marketing to patients to get them to come to your hospital? And you’re like, yeah, sort of. That’s exactly the whole idea behind it. So I started out in that space, I really got into physician relations, because I got a little tired of defending how I was going to measure the effects of my Billboard. And here’s what here’s what really it came down to. I had someone on my team, this was on the consumer side. Okay, on my marketing team, we did a lot of branding and a lot of stuff related to that, like we did videos with doctors, and we did videos with board members. And I would put her in front of those doctors and say, I need- here’s what I need them to start talking about. But I want it to be real natural. I want them to just tell me in their voice. And she had this incredible sense about how she could get them to talk about all those special points and messages that were important that were also important to them. And I was like Why don’t we go out and just start asking physicians. What do they need? What do you need from a hospital or health system? Or what do you need from your referral sources, all of that sort of thing. So that was where it all started. I, I used Chris Barlow and Barlow McCarthy and both of the health systems I worked in. So that was where my relationship started. And needless to say, we built really too strong programs. And then I have the opportunity to what maybe some people would say is kind of go to the dark side on the consulting side of it. And And so yeah, those so that’s the background. So I’ve been in physician relations for quite a long time. And and it’s a passion, well works, it actually works.
RJ Martino
Was it called physician relations when you started it, because even whenever we had the opportunity to do the work, we didn’t know the term and I think some of our audience members might not know the term. Can you describe what physician relations from your perspective is?
Susan Boydell
Well, so this That’s funny because the very first time I built a sales team, it was it was really we named it physician business development, because it was about going out and earning referrals from physicians. So it was very much about having conversations with primary care physicians about what their patients needed from a specialty perspective, and then making the connections between that and those and those specialists that could provide those services. So that’s what we called it way back then. Physician relations has been around for a long, long time, but if you look across the country, everybody calls it something different. Yeah, um, but the big piece of it is really underneath it all is all about earning referrals. And it is about physician engagement. So if you’re in a practice, if you’re a specialty physician that wants to grow their business and earn more referrals, it’s a All About that relationship with with em. That those referring physicians. So yeah, it’s all related to that.
Jordan Smith
Very cool. Very good. Well,
RJ Martino
good. Go ahead, Jordan. I’m sorry.
Jordan Smith
just gonna say so for the audience members out there listening now that’s a, that’s a great kind of synopsis of how you got to the point of where you guys are now, how do you help clients currently, whenever they call you what, what exactly do you guys do for them?
Susan Boydell
Well, it always usually starts with what they need. And I’m going to tell you most of the times when somebody is calling us it’s because they say I need I want to or I need to grow my business. So it all usually starts with that sometimes it might have to do with relationships that maybe have a more adverse effect or something that they need to change from a communication perspective or brand perspective. But I would say nine times out of 10 I need to grow my business. And so like from a practice perspective, It’s exactly that whether they’re a startup on a brand new surgeon, and I’m an entrepreneur and I want to grow my practice, I got big visions for what that is. Or it’s an established, it’s an established practice that perhaps wants to grow. They’re adding on new partners, bringing on additional specialists, and they want to make sure they’re busy. Because it’s all about that. So it almost all the times is related to that piece. So that’s usually where it starts. They want to grow their business.
RJ Martino
Perfect. You know, one of the things I always like to ask is, how many times have you met really busy practices that call you because they say I’m busy, but I’m not making the kind of money I used to make or, you know, I just think a lot of times they need to our audience needs to hear you’re not in it. You might think you’re in a very unique position and obviously everybody’s positions unique, but how many times have you heard that from your customers or clients?
Susan Boydell
Yeah, yeah, you know you do actually do hear it. And you know, sometimes you got to dig underneath that because perhaps sometimes it can be 100 maybe it’s not even related to the referral side of the business usually there’s always opportunity to grow business I don’t think I probably talked to a single practice or to a single hospital or house system where there isn’t some opportunity to grow some business. The other side of it that we always look at is your readiness to grow. So how ready are you to grow? So from
RJ Martino
Yeah, what does that mean go ahead expel so that’s
Susan Boydell
like really looking at so you’re ready to grow. So when I want to make an appointment, how long is it going to take me to get an appointment? So if I’m if I’m a new patient, they my expectation is that I want to get in within let’s just say one week, and you got a three month Wait, you got a problem. So So all of those things, you can go all the way down into the whole piece about patient experience. Okay, all that all those, all those pieces go into it. So it’s it’s making sure that behind the scenes so here’s what I was saying about position relations and and liaisons in the field that are going to bring those referrals they bring, they can, all they can do is bring it to the door. Once they get it to the door, then that practice or that hospital house system, I gotta bring them in. And I oftentimes said, You can’t have you got to roll out the red carpet folks, you can’t roll out the brown carpet with the big holes in it, gotta roll out the red carpet, because I just brought you something. Now you got to make sure that the person on the other end that made that referral feels really good about what they just did. Now from a physician perspective, so I’m thinking about like specialists that want to grow their business. You know, I always think about physicians want two things. Number one, take good care of my patient. Number one, there’s an even if you talk to patients and say, what’s the most important thing out there, they’re always going to say quality. Yeah, everybody defines quality in a totally different way, and all of that, but it really comes down to take care of me or take good care of my patient. And the second part of that is how easy do you make it for me to work with you? What a lot of physicians will say from a referring perspective is, this is mostly in the primary care side. So I made a referral to a specialist and one of the number one things they want is communication back on how they took care of that patient. I often will say to specialists, this is your chance for differentiation. Because in a lot of a lot of places, not very good at that we’re just not. And when when when, when physicians will rate how well those things are happening. It’s really important to them, and we usually don’t do very good at it. So think about that from a differentiation spec- perspective, and you know, when you’re a busy physician and a busy practice, I can get it like you’re able to take a lot of time to pick up the phone and call somebody. And many times the EMRs are not enough of that. They want that personal relationship with that specialist that they’ve said. So yeah, makes a real difference. So a lot of that’s all when that readiness bucket,
Jordan Smith
that’s a difference. And you know, we talked about patient experience all the time. So yeah, it’s, it’s, you’re right, you guys can bring them to the door, but what happens once they walk through that door is going to make all the difference in the world? Yeah. So talk a little bit let’s piggyback off that a little bit. And let’s, let’s make sure that we tell the listeners kind of describe your most successful clients so So you mentioned what you know what, what what some good things to start off with, as far as Do you have the proper intake and all that other type of stuff to grow? Now let’s take it a step further and say who are the most successful folks what what is their practice look like? What’s what’s life look like like for him now that they’re involved with you guys? Paint a picture for everybody out there?
Susan Boydell
Well, the thing I would probably say from a success perspective is it always starts with those who get it. They might not know how to do it, call for help, but but they have to sort of get it and you got to be hungry for it from that perspective. Now we have a list of things that when when we work with anybody in the whole space of referral development or growing business through referrals, okay, and that relationship piece, best practices that we kind of go through, and it’s, it’s also probably a piece where you go, we often will tell people, well, let’s like, let’s, let’s see, where, if it’s a brand new program can’t do this. But if they had something in place, and they’re saying, Yeah, it’s not, it’s not working, maybe as well as I want it to work, which we do a lot of a lot of retooling going, Yeah, we’ve had it for a while, you know, physician relations, even five years ago is not the same as it is today, and certainly isn’t going to be the same as it is tomorrow. So from that perspective, so when we sit down with folks and kind of trying to understand from an assessment perspective, where they are, everything always starts with this whole piece of targeting and data driven. So I want to grow my business, I got to know who it is I want to grow that from, I would say, there’s a lot of practices out there most if there were some practices listening right now they’re going to nod their heads and go, yeah, is is, you know, we don’t we’re not really good on that data side of it, just not really good. I’m always amazed I this is a piece that often will say to specialists just really track where your referrals come from. Because it’s a it’s a goldmine, because I want to be able to go back in and look at that and say, Oh, so and so’s up or so and so’s down. I need to go out and find out why he’s down. Even if you do not have a liaison. Somebody in that office needs to be looking at that from that perspective. So that whole piece of targeted and data driven is when you know, it’s really, really successful. The other side of this is if if so this, this whole model revolves around putting folks in the field, these are sales people, folks, sales people, to go out there, build relationships and earn those referrals. And that’s not it, you know, people kind of get turned off by the sales side of it, which is you, I always say, No, no, no, no, no, I’m earning it. It’s all about solutions. It’s all about relationship. So when you think when I think about those pieces of a when it goes really, really well, I hired really good talent. Now, here’s where I always say to folks in the healthcare world, mostly in hospitals and health systems, I’m going to guess it’s probably the same in practices, even though there are some physicians out there that I would say have a true sales mentality, okay. But I always say, don’t. There’s three things that are important from a salesperson in the field. In this role, okay, they have to understand the products and services are selling. So if I’m if I represent a large cardiovascular practice that I understand what makes us different, I understand I can have deep conversations about what my physicians do. And I understand the world of Cardiology and how that affects patients. The second part is that they got to understand how things happen. So how does a referral happen? When they when I bring them to the door? What’s going to happen is, are there tests that they need to have before they’re actually even going to see that physician that and do I have a backlog in that so that’s going to affect and how do I message that piece? And the last one is purely can I sell? And when I always say to folks in the healthcare world is you’re usually not going to be really good at that part. Now we we specialize, obviously, and that part we’ll help you train them. But you got to hire somebody who has that natural instinct right up front. Because I always say yeah, I don’t Little bit, a lot of folks will say, Oh, yeah, I put them in that role because they were really good at talking to people. In fact, I can say, probably in roles like that, because I could talk to people, yeah, and do that. But you have to have a sales mentality to it. So the whole talent piece is a really, really important one. And then when you take that talent, you have to say, I gotta leave them alone, to go out there and talk to those referral sources in the field. It doesn’t do you a lot of good to have a salesperson sitting in your office. Their whole thing is about the relationship with those folks out there, that they’re going to be the bridge, they’re going to create that relationship between your specialist and those referral sources. 100% of their job is to do that piece. So it’s a big part of it. So to me when you have really, really good count talent, you got a good business plan, just like RJ was saying at the very beginning that supports where I’m going and probably the last pieces I measure. I actually look at what did I do? And what did I get for you? You I was telling you way back in the beginning about when I was in marketing and your struggle with how to how to justify my billboard, one of the greatest things in referral development is that I get to have a one on one conversation with my customer. We’re getting better at that on the consumer side, because we can do a lot of it through social media and all of those things. But this is truly I’m having a one on one conversation with my customer. And so I get incredible intelligence that I can bring back. So not only do I have a chance to earn the referral, I always say the greatest gift you’re going to bring back to your practice is that you’re going to let them know what’s the barrier, what it’s going to take, how do I differentiate if we could just do more of this, I was using the example before of communication, there’s an opportunity to earn additional referrals. So if you look at all of that together, and how you can package up the story. Those usually when you do all that, well, you should get really good results.
Jordan Smith
That’s a great point. I’m sure there’s a handful of doctors or administrators out there that’s like, you know what? I’m not really sure what, what, what Susan does she’s never in the office numbers are rolling in fine. But yeah, she had golf tournaments are, look at the numbers if the numbers are working that individuals doing their job right?
Susan Boydell
Well and you could take that one step further I always tell this is when I tell people in the field not. There’s not too many sales people that like to document stuff. I mean, that’s what they’re good. They’re good getting out having conversations, that’s what they love. That’s put them in that space and they’re great, but I also need them to bring back it’s their job to bring back in and connect the dots. So here’s the activity that I did out there. Here’s the conversations that I had. Here’s what I learned from those conversations. And and let me connect that with when the phone rang or when the referral came in, so I had three conversations with this primary care office over here. And two weeks later, we saw two referrals. So I’m going to make a connection between those two pretty doggone strong connection. Versus we got five referrals from Doctor Y down the street. I never talked to them.
RJ Martino
Jordan says it all.
Susan Boydell
Maybe I can turn five into 10. You know, so it’s, it’s all of that connected. Kind of really, it really justifies. You know, we, we often say this to folks. And you know, because I came from the marketing side of it, this is not a cheap endeavor. Because it is people-people, talent driven. I need really good people out there to be able to do this job and do this job well. And, and so it’s not a cheap endeavor. So they have to kind of prove their worth pretty quickly. Yeah, um, to make that happen.
RJ Martino
Jordan, I love the quote, he’s always saying manage activity judge on results. And so that’s how and that’s how you have to think of physician liaison and Patient Relations from my experience. My other experience, though, is leadership often has not had to manage in that way and it’s changing, but you know, usually it’s quality of care. And so what they want is they want that people-person, and if we talk to them, the idea of putting and managing activities based on feels too salesy. You know, it’s, it feels like, we’re selling cars, and we’re not, can you dispel that myth? Or is is there some truth to that? What’s your thoughts on the idea that you just want a friendly person to build relationships?
Susan Boydell
Well, you know, it’s funny because we hear that line, we hear it a lot, like a lot of places will say we can’t call it sales and I’m like well, that’s kind of what it is. It is sales. No, it’s kind of what it is. Because they think exactly what you said, RJ. It’s exactly what they think. Um, this approach is very much about needs-based selling. So this is where the selling piece comes in, and where I’m making sure I’m hiring the right person who really gets needs-based selling. It is not about what we have. So if I’m in a specialty practice that wants to grow my business, most doctors and others in the practice will say, just go out and tell them what we have. Tell them how great we are. We’re just great. Go tell them how great we are, doesn’t really work that way. And a good salesperson will know exactly how to work around that one, because it’s all about going out. So I know enough. I told you the three legged stool before I got to understand what makes my doctor special and different and unique from the competitor, which means I got to really know my competitor from that perspective. But I’m also going out and I’m having the conversation with a referral source to help them understand what they need, what their patients need, and how my physicians can better meet that need. So it’s 100%. about conversation.
Jordan Smith
Yep. Yeah.
Susan Boydell
So it’s selling because I’m going to move you through and I’m going to make sure you understand, but I’m not. I’m not telling and selling or as we often say, this is a Chris Barlow thing that’s been around forever show up and throw up. You know, it’s like, nope, nope, neither one of them work. They don’t work.
Jordan Smith
Yeah. Yeah, you know, you’re you don’t want to show up and just show them a whole bunch of features that you’re doc can. It’s its purpose. As for my experience, sells, the best sales type of people in this role tend to be professional question answerers. And they ask those questions with a very deliberate purpose, guiding them to a very specific direction. They want to guide them, you know, so I love what you said when it’s having a conversation. It’s really just centered around what your what you mentioned were four or five really good questions that they could just ask every doctor that they go into that’ll that’ll give them some sort of purposeful next step as far as either the next question or the next thing they can tell them about. Right?
Susan Boydell
Well, you know that they that the piece that I would say is probably one of the toughest part from the parts for the liaison. It’s really hard to create and think of really good tight questions. I’ve been out in the field one too many times, riding with folks that do this, you know, I love it. Here’s what I love about it because I love to see how people approach it. Personally, I love the coaching side of it. You know, I love a sponge who’s who just wants to figure out a better way to do it. I always say take me to the toughest ones. Let’s go the hard ones. But here’s the other side of it is I love to hear what happens in those offices. I love to hear when when they, when they really clue in and get into that, I love to hear what is important to them. It’s all plus just to see what’s happening. Every market is different. It there’s no cookie cutter for this. It’s all everything that we do is extremely customized because there’s no thing going in saying, Yeah, here’s how we do it. Here’s your four steps, and we do it every place the same way. There’s no such thing. But the questions is really, really hard, tough part because we usually start off with pretty broad, pretty general questions and what do you think you get pretty broad pretty general answers? Yeah. Oh, you got to be good at that piece. Um, I would say what comes second from that is this whole piece on listening. Because I’ve been out with a lot of new liaisons and you know, they want to perform and and and they’re getting their feet wet. And so they got their questions all lined up, and they’re, you know, well prepared. They got the pre call plan, love all that, you know, and but then they sometimes there’s thinking so much, not thinking about or listening to what they’re saying. The thing about what’s my next question I’m going to ask, you know, but it’s a learning, it’s all learning and they just get better with it. But it’s so it’s both that piece of I asked really good questions, but I also know when to probe. Like, well tell me more about that. Well what do you mean by that? You know, it’s like that sort of thing to get them talking about it. Yes. I’ll tell you one thing. A doctor doesn’t mind talking about their practice. And what they do never met one that doesn’t like to talk about it.
RJ Martino
Yeah, it’s everybody. I, I’m, I’m not a physician. And I love talking about myself. Anyway. That’s how we are as humans I so I can tell you what our audience is probably listening. They think, Oh, this is great. This is what I wanted. But it’s different in my market. You can only find nice people who don’t want to sell or sales people that don’t know how to be nice. And so now, I think what you’re telling me, I’m convinced, but there needs to be some training involved. And it sounds like you guys could help there. But it’s hard. There’s just a lot to do. So tell us if if we were to bring you or someone like you in how do you integrate into a health care system so that I mean, are you hiring and firing? Are you writing along with them? are you providing them best practices? Are you listening called? What? What does it look like? How do you integrate that?
Susan Boydell
I would say the majority of the time, this is our approach. We, we are there to help get you going, and make sure you will be successful in building this program. So we are your partner through that whole piece. But our goal always is to make sure that we’re going to go away and you will continue to be successful. So there are many that like, you know, I need more of and the more of you, but most of that’s, that’s our goal is to help you do that. So so it ranges from from all different levels, but when it comes to the training part, so let’s say I’ve got a team. I’ve got my structure in place, but I’m just not sure that we’re performing at the level that we could be, um, our training is very customized to this whole space of overall development. So it’s sales training, and it’s got pieces and parts of, you know, Wilson learning and all of that sort of thing. But it’s sales training, but it is customized into this space of referral development. Um, you know, one of the things that that it will, it drives people nuts, but but it actually really works is, you know, we, we do a lot of scenario work in our training, and only because we’ve seen all those terrible scenarios out there. I mean, we all know, you probably heard this from others or whatever. I mean, the toughest thing right now is just dog on gatekeepers. You know, it’s like they that, you know, don’t be wasting my time getting back there talking to my doctor, you know, so which is where this meaningful piece comes in, because if I don’t have some value, they don’t have time for me. So I really have to be tight on that. We spend a lot of time in that space and a lot of time in the space of asking really good questions. Just like we were talking about, so many people will say in training, you know, when Chris Barlow rattles off a really tight script or whatever, and they’re writing like crazy and say, Can you say it again? So, no, it’s like, I mean, I’m sure you probably think the same thing. I can never repeat it again. Yeah, but it’s all about making sure it’s in your voice. And it’s in Yeah, and needs to come from you. So we let them hear it. We let them understand like how that might work. And and then we we let them practice now make them stand up in front of the room. And you know, we don’t we don’t it’s it’s not that kind of practicing. But we also tried to teach them as especially when their teams to teach them how to help each other. Because we’re gonna, like I said, we’re gonna go away. So it’s trying to say so carve out time all the time for you guys to say had a really tough visit last week. And you know, here’s, here’s what my pre call plan was. I went in and went did this and I got hit with this. And here’s my response. I went back out in the car and went Geez, hope that never happens again. You know, it’s Like you hear those kind of things all the time, those are great to share with each other. Because if there’s nobody better I always say practice on each other before you’re practicing in front of a doctor. Yep. Oh, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s all a process for how you work through it. So that’s, yeah.
Jordan Smith
I love that concept. And, you know, from a sales organization, it makes sense to us, but there’s probably some listeners out there that are hearing this for the first time. And they’re saying, Well, I don’t what do you want me to roleplay with my- Yes, roleplay with them, you win the game in practice, not in the game. So that, that 10 minutes that you might spend, you know, the very first thing in the morning kind of role playing with that, before they go out, is probably going to be the most valuable 10 minutes of that person’s day. You know, they’re gonna be able to practice stuff on you before they have to go out and you know, practice a way of saying something that might fail. So that’s,
Susan Boydell
and they will learn. We all learn when we go Oh, that was no, just ugly. Like, you know, Sometimes you get really tight on your questions and you go and you go, oh my gosh, they went down this rabbit hole that I couldn’t get my back Gallo, which was not what I was trying to talk about. I mean, we all learn from those experiences, which is how everybody just gets tighter and better. And
Jordan Smith
so so for those listeners out there, the the doctors, the practice managers, how involved are they typically in this process? So we talked about, you know, helping coach the entire teams and, and scenario training and roleplay and that type of stuff. How involved do you typically see the, the doctors, for instance, we’ll start there with with your process in general.
Susan Boydell
And here, here’s what we usually see in practices. There’s usually one, maybe there’s two, but there’s usually one that’s on this sales kick, like they’re like, remember, I said the beginning like they have to sort of get it. Okay, so they sort of get this. They’re the ones that are pretty passionate about it. They’re highly involved in it. Yeah. Where you need everybody else involved with It is exactly for the same reasons as anything else. I need you to hear what I’m hearing from those from your customers out there. Because if there’s some changes, there’s been some things we need to do different, I need you to hear that, or I need the office to hear that and make some of those changes from that perspective. I mean, we often hear a lot of times from and I hear this probably more in hospitals and health systems, you know, whether they’ll go in and so they’re looking at data, and they’re going, Oh, man, we’re not getting any referrals from Dr. So and So and then they go in and talk to Dr. So and So and he says, Why only send to you and then you walk out and talk to the referral coordinator? And she goes, Oh, no, I can never get into you guys. So I go over here. So doctor thinks, but something else has happened in that front office. The only way that we’ve ever been have figured out that is by because there was a conversation. Yeah, most of the time, we’re telling salespeople, you you have probably three, maybe four customers when you go into an office, and the physician is wanting each one of those customers has a different need. Oh, it’s like so what you might talk to a physician about just like we said, I’m talking to the physicians about everything has to do with the care of their patient. All the clinical side of this all take good care of my patient, they want to know what are the new technologies, they want to know about new physicians, they want about know about new things and how you do all of that sort of thing. An office manager typically typically they really care about keeping the peace in the office and they want to get paid. Yeah, and and then we all know what referral coordinator once a referral coordinator and office just make it easy for me. Well, I would send to you but Doggone it, you guys make it so impossible, you know, and my job is get the patient in fast so yeah, so it’s it’s it’s knowing each of those but I’m I’m doing a pretty much total office visit when I’m in there because each person plays a role in the ability of that for that referral to make it through. So
RJ Martino
I want I want to capitalize a few things that I’ve heard I think it’s just worth repeating. One of it is our audience. If you are listening to this, and you are that person in the office that says I want to grow, I get it. You are the only one that’s going to make this change of what you know what you currently are doing from a liaison perspective, you’ve got to step up. The second thing I heard that I want to capitalize on is there’s really two main groups that you guys work with. One is the one that I’ve seen, which is they don’t have a physician relations program or liaison now, and they want to do it. And thinking that they can just hire the nice person is a terrible mistake. And we’ve seen it. And a lot of our audience have done that before where they just hired someone. They don’t know how to manage them. They don’t know how to measure them. They don’t even know if it’s working. But it’s money that they don’t want to stop spinning because it might be working. And so, yeah, you all’s group does a great job at building a framework to manage and to feel good and to measure and not only for the stakeholders, but even for the person doing the work, who we’ve heard from a lot are the physician liaisons who they don’t even feel great about their job because they don’t know how they’re being measured.
Jordan Smith
I mean, how often how often RJ have we run into and I’m sure Susan’s in the same thing where, you know, it was, oh, well, someone said was our front desk girl for a couple years, and she just really personable. So you gave her a credit card, told her to go buy cookies every week and go to these. And she’s, you know, that type of person is listen to this to saying, oh, cool. I need a structure, because I’m flailing out there because no one’s giving me direction. And I don’t know where to go for that either.
RJ Martino
Well, the goalposts move on those people if it’s not clear on what they should be doing, often, they feel like the goalposts keep moving and they think they’re hitting their goals. And all of a sudden leadership is mad about something else. So again, starting a program, I can’t recommend it enough. The other group is we have physician relations now and we Just don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right. Or we don’t know if they’re meeting their names for our audience kind of capitalizing those things were really important to me, because often they’re saying this sounds good. Where do I fit in? You know, who? Who do you guys help the most with? So knowing those things are? And you might have already answered this, but are there distinguishing factors that separates successful practices from those who it just doesn’t work for you? And, you know, are there factors that you can say, hey, if if they have a, b and c, they’re going to be successful? Or if they have a, b and c, it’s not going to work out?
Susan Boydell
So so I kind of want to it because it fits into this, but there’s probably a little bit more to it. But I want to kind of go back to what you were just saying about knowing what the goalpost is, yeah. It’s really, really important because when we when we just put somebody in a role, and we sort of tell them generally, we’ll go out and talk to physicians and see if you can get some work. You got to tighten that up. Because there’s what we often focus on is, it’s pretty foundational in it in that, tell me what you want me to grow. So I want to know right up front, what am I going to get credit for? Because it’s one thing if I bring in a whole bunch of, you know, some, some type of patient and everybody goes, Yeah, that’s nice, but I didn’t want those. It’s a little late. So I want to know, right up front, what are we going to measure up front that the organization or the practice is going to say, this week that you grew the practice based on what we needed you to do? The second part of that get goes down to I talked before about it won’t go on any more about the target list. So who am I going after and all of that piece? What we tie to that from a liaison perspective is it’s this piece of activity, how many visits, how many conversations with a referral Physicians Do I need to have on a weekly basis? This is basic sales. I’m just filling the funnel up is what this is. But I’m going to that’s going to be a performance expectation. Because otherwise, I find folks that especially if this isn’t if they’re not true salespeople, you kind of linger and do the things I like to do the most and skip the things I don’t Yeah. Or you know, a lot of times I’ll go back and like target list and go, Okay, so you spent a lot of time in this practice, and most of the time, it’s because that was the practice they could get into easily and they love them when they came in there. Well, who doesn’t want that? You know, it’s like how many times you want to hit your door hand against the, you know, the wall, but in all honesty, it’s our job because usually the those are not the ones that are giving us a new business. You know, when you when you think about targets, I often say put them into two buckets. There’s those those referral sources that you already know, give you everything they can. So they’re already the ones that say uh, okay, when I need a cardiologist Dr. Smith, he’s always my first top guy, when when the patient needs XYZ, He always gets them. Those are retention targets, I want to I can’t afford to lose them. But my relationship is going to be different. It’s a different strategy versus somebody down here who sends me a few, but sends a lot to somebody else. I want more of those that he sends to somebody else that’s growing business.
RJ Martino
Yeah, I love it. You know, and I want to dismiss this fallacy too, that, you know, a lot of times leaders think they’re doing people a favor, by not giving them those, those numbers that you were just talking about, you know how many, they think that they’re being nice and they don’t want to they don’t want to micromanage you so they don’t. So you’re not giving these people these expectations. You are doing them no favors and in fact, your best people will leave your best people won’t stick around if you don’t kind of set those expectations. But it’s hard. And that’s what you guys do is you guys help them set those expectations and just love it love everything you’re saying. And it is so counter to the way that lots of healthcare systems just traditionally run other parts of the business. So different management system, and that’s why you need an outside coach often to be able to help do something like this. So moving on to the second part of this, what are some key performance indicators? And you’ve already talked about a couple, but if they’re saying, if they’re listening to saying, hey, I’ve got these liaisons now, what are some key performance indicators that you think they should be looking at to determine if they need help or not?
Susan Boydell
So you’re talking about If so, I’m in my practice, do I need a physician relations or liaison type role?
RJ Martino
I’m actually thinking, I’m a healthcare leader. I’ve already got liaisons. I just don’t know if- if it’s working is Is there a way that they can dive in to say if they have a problem?
Susan Boydell
So So the biggest piece of this, and I’m going to tell you we hear it everywhere. Okay. Is you’ll hear from leaders that will say, Well, I think they’re doing a good job. I just don’t know if they’re doing a good job. And it’s probably when I think of many of the conversations that we have even with liaisons and with leaders of liaison teams, and say, What are your greatest challenges, one of the top of the list almost always is being able to tie the activity in the field to the actual results. Now, in hospitals and health systems, it’s just really cumbersome because there’s almost too much data and it’s usually not the right data and it doesn’t come in the form of the day that I want. And I can’t get it until a month or two later. You know, it’s like all those reasons, okay. In a practice it, there might be some of that same thing, but it’s not as complex. It might mean that I just don’t have the systems in place. And a lot of times I say, just get it on an Excel spreadsheet, even if it’s a little tick mark in there. But it’s usually that that beginnings piece of it is that I’m not seeing a connection between the two. So in other words, we saw Dr. So and So’s volume go up. But I’m not 100% sure it was because of liaison team because maybe it was because of the billboard you get when I got where I’m going. But it’s able to be pretty tight about that with a lot of times we coach on and do some teaching on this piece. It’s in this part of reporting. And there’s the there’s the dashboards that that that give you the ability to be able to say So remember, I was giving you the example before I made three visits, and two weeks later, we got two referrals. I connection, I’m going to make the connection, but I got to make sure that I communicate that connection in a way The mind leaders get it. So if I just give them the old spreadsheet, they’re not getting that. So I got to tell the story, I always say you got to put your sales hat on internally as well, because they’re, they’re not looking at this the same way as you might be looking at it. So it’s been able to connect those two dots between that a lot of times will tell liaisons, you know, I think I said before, tell your specialists to please track where they’re getting the referrals from, you can do that backwards. You can go into a primary care office and say, can you just call me when you make your first referral to Dr. So and So’s office, you know, and then I’m right over Dr. So and So’s office, go and get that red carpet out. He’s on his way, you know, it’s like, so I’m working it on all sides. And to me when all that happens, and I understand all that, I can tell the story a little bit better internally. So you need reports. And you need all those dashboards, but I also need the story behind it. That kind of tells, caps then connect the dots on the value of it.
RJ Martino
Well, I think that’s worth capitalizing to, which is if you’re an audience member and you are in the physician relations side, or if you know someone and you send this episode to them, they need to hear this too, because communicating back to leadership is a key and difficult thing to do as well. And so it sounds like to me if I’m in physician relations, and I’m listening this, I’m sending this over to my leadership team and saying, Hey, we need to bring these guys in to help both you and I because some of the hardest, biggest complaints we see is successful physician liaison, physician relations that can’t communicate to leadership, hey, this is working. And they know it, they know it in their gut, they see the results, but the connecting the results at that attribution that you talk about, I think I think there’s some physician relations specialists in the area. And listen to this and yes, you’re finally speaking my language.
Susan Boydell
You know, it’s it’s very funny because that the story I always tell it was my, it was my lightbulb moment when I worked at a health system and a boardroom. And I was telling a story about it came straight from one of my liaisons Do you know and I repeated this story. And the CFO at the table said, we need more of that. And I went, bingo. I was like, cuz you think about, you know, CFOs how many times you talk to them?
RJ Martino
I thought this was going negative actually.
Jordan Smith
I was too, I was like,
Susan Boydell
like, excited about something, you know, but it was a lightbulb moment because it was like I tried something. And what I often tell people is, if they’re glazing over in your reports, and they’re not paying attention, or they’re just not getting what you think they need to get, find another way to say it. You just haven’t gotten to them yet. So, so don’t keep hitting your head against the wall. Trying doing it. This Same way, you’ve always done it, you got to change it. And sometimes it will, you need to do a one way for one leader and another way for another leader. So that’s just understanding who your audience is.
Jordan Smith
You got to reframe it for every individual in there and focus them on the things that they should be focused on. So speaking of that, I think that plays really well into the last part of the process that RJ always lays out at the beginning of these, which is engaging your team. So in yalls experience, which team members are essential for success? outside of the and I think you’ve mentioned this already, but it doesn’t hurt to re emphasize this. What other members of the team is it the doctors directly? Is it the CFOs? Is it you know, who are some of the team members that you say, if no one else gets on board with this, we at least have to have these individuals, you know, on the same page as we are?
Susan Boydell
Yeah, it’s it’s, um, it’s, if I was to give you three of them. Yeah. First of all, I need leadership buy in, I need them to get it, I got it, I need them to support it. I need them to play a role in the organization because because here’s one thing that a lot of teams struggle with, is they go out, they talk and they get just loaded with every problem, there is why they can’t grow any business. And a lot of it is legitimate, but a lot of it is big stuff that you just go that’s just not something like the AMR is not going to go away tomorrow. You know, it’s like, it’s stuff that you can’t fix overnight or access problems. You know, we just don’t have enough doctors, get people in, you know, all those pieces. I need leadership to be able to take that feedback I’m going to bring and also I always say it’s one of my gifts I’m going to give you because I’m going to tell you what you need to change and what you need to improve in order to grow some business. So that leadership buy in the physicians are really really important because the first of all, I need them to be hungry. So when I was talking about that, that operational readiness are that readiness to grow piece, one of the pieces of that is I have to have specialists that are hungry to grow. So if if, if it’s, if, if I’m in the practice, and I’m, I’m the practice administrator, and I go, oh my gosh, we really need to grow, we need to grow some business, but my doctors are over here fat and happy. And like, you know, I don’t really want to work any harder than I’m working right now, then you got a problem, because they’re not going to be on board with that. So it’s a silly example. But but it really shows so the more the more you have those surgeons and everybody willing to do that, the better piece of that. And probably the last one that I would say that this is probably more for hospitals and health systems that are key role in all of this. But it probably plays a little bit into practices is I need somebody who’s going to understand all this data side, because I got I got to package all that up. I mean, everybody’s always used to looking at the financials. But I’m going to be looking at it from a referral perspective. And a lot of times we’re just not documenting that way. We’re not tracking that way, we certainly aren’t reporting that way, you know, so I’m going to have to get somebody internally that can help me with putting those pieces together or providing them intelligence to me, so that I can then not only use that from a reporting perspective, am I making a difference? But am I on the right track, or should I be going down a different path? Or did I miss a group of doctors that perhaps could have been or something that could have been a great referral opportunity that we just didn’t catch? So, yeah, those three.
Jordan Smith
Perfect.
RJ Martino
That’s good stuff. You You have nailed so much and I feel like we could have so many more podcasts with just you and talking through this stuff. But we have reached kind of our final round where we like to ask some final questions and the one that I like so much as you know, as a hospital system as a physician office, what we’d like to build is systems and we like systems because we know that they get reliable results and it’s repeatable results and our patients are constantly happy and we don’t have to manage or think about the system to get those results you really need to do something repetitive and so the question is, you know, if there was one strategy or one thing that healthcare leaders could do on a daily basis and get great results out of it, what would the what what is one thing you’d say look implement this strategy today often for in a health you know, in the normal health care world it is go run everyday I don’t need you to run fast I don’t need you to be, yes, just get out there and run every day and you will get you will get great results. Is there anything like that in your world that you say do this do it now?
Susan Boydell
You know, it’s hard to pick just one thing but it but what always pops into mind of when I think about what is one of the most important parts of all of this it goes back to the talent side of it, this is about the people that are out there having those conversations. It’s about creating relationships, and that is people to people. And so that piece has to really work well, that piece has to be in place. Um, it works really well when all the rest of the foundational stuff is there. But if I don’t have talent, I can have the best data in the world, the best tart list in the world, the best report in the world, if I don’t have talent, I don’t have results. So it’s very talent driven in this space. And so it’s probably the one thing that you say, yeah, just how to really hire the right person to do that job to get you the results that you need.
Jordan Smith
Well, speaking to that, and the last question before we let you go, because I know that the listeners who have been listening to this say, Man, I’m so I know that I need to do this. I know I need to start it yesterday. But the thing that you just said is the hardest part of all this which is finding the right fit, right? Are there are there some tips or some tactics or some, some tricks of the trade that you would kind of point them in the direction of whether it’s questions to ask people or the type of folks to look for? Or what type of background they have on their resume? What are some real life things that, that the folks listening out there that you could give some advice on, if you’re in front of somebody, and you think they might be a good fit, you know, look for these specific traits.
Susan Boydell
Um, here’s what I always say, from a resume perspective right up front. And this goes to what we talked about anything very early on in this video, they need to have sales experience or having need to have a natural sales aptitude. Because as a practice or as a health system, you know, it’s not like we have a sales training module over here that everybody takes at once a year, no such thing and it’s not a sales driven organization. It’s just not what what we are. So that that that That piece of natural aptitude like we have, we have a tool. It’s called Sales Max that we provide a lot of clients. You can use both ways you can use it to kind of assess the existing talent you have. And it basically looks at three things. It looks at someone’s natural ability. I always say, it’s what’s innate in you, I don’t change it. I don’t teach it. Personally, someone can look at the report and say, oh, I really want to work on this area, but I can’t change that piece of it. The second part is they’re they’re not sales knowledge. So it kind of shows are they strong in prospecting? Are they strong and understanding and questioning and understanding needs? So it looks at that I always say we teach that. So if they’re not so great in that we can teach that the top part they got to come to the table with it. Sales Max will say that if you don’t if you’re not in the top three categories on their assessment piece of it. And it’s not for just healthcare. So it’s for any sales. So it has, it’s not specific to healthcare, that you have less than 20% chance of being successful. And not only because we’ve been using it for years and years and years, I have seen it. Exactly. Even when people have said, Yeah, but I really liked them. I think they can do it, you know? And occasionally, yes, you get one in there, but a lot of times No, um, because they don’t have the rigor for it, or they don’t just have that natural aptitude for it. And the last part of is what motivates them, which is the other piece, you know, so if they’re motivated by money, and your position doesn’t pay very well or doesn’t have a big giant fat incentive plan or whatever, probably not going to be a good fit, you know, and then it’s another one to say, Well, I can control some of that, or I can match some of that, which means they’re a good fit. So if that that piece comes into play, but from an interview perspective, I really want to understand how they think if they have no sales experience, then what’s really kind of good in the Sales Max piece also is it gives you really good questions on those areas. Perhaps they were a little lower in the says probe on this one. And they’ve even says if they have no experience sales experience, here’s how you might ask that. But it’s it’s really understanding how they might approach something. Because, you know, I hate to say this, but you know, salespeople are salespeople, and when they interview, they’re selling.
RJ Martino
Yeah, of course. Oh, well.
Susan Boydell
I made one too many mistakes. Because, you know, I found out later I went when the person showed up, you know, and two weeks into the job, I went, What happened to the person I interviewed, you know, it’s like, so you gotta, you know, it’s probably learning more than anything else. But but you get you get pretty tight on questions, behavioral type questions, you know, give me an example of when you did blank, or that sort of thing, but it’s, it’s, it’s the best way.
RJ Martino
Well, y’all know how expensive the wrong hire is. I’ve had good results with 10 And it’s good to hear that you guys have this. In closing, I’ll just say you know, I think a lot of people are listening and saying this is harder than we thought we thought we could just take the front desk girl who was good at social media and liked people and make her this job. But this is hard. And I can tell you, someone who has literally sold this service and then tried to build this, there is management, there needs to be structure. It is something that I wish we would have done first is just picked up the phone and called you guys. I can’t recommend you all enough with your process with your theory. And with the application of how you do it. If you’re an audience member, highly recommend you guys talk to Susan. Susan, if people are listening, they want to get in touch with you. Talk about how they can get in touch with you.
Susan Boydell
So info@barlowmccarthy.com easiest way then you can also send me an email directly which is just at s Boyd owl at Barlow mccarthy.com. Our website barlowmccarthy.com. We have a wealth of information. Lots of I can tell how many blogs, articles, webinars, lots of educational thing just for liaisons that might be new. But for all levels, leadership, all of those sort of things. So the website is a great place to go. Just to even learn a little bit about from a process perspective. But also if you’re looking for I’m stuck on this, let me see if they’ve got something on it.
RJ Martino
Hey, and I know I’m sorry. I know you guys. I found you through your books that you’ve written and I think you guys have another book coming up.
Susan Boydell
We do! A new book! Chris Barlow has just written a new book. It is on physician relations, the model the method and impact so it’s you got to get it it’s it’s an it’s an update to the some of the one of the books that she had written in the past but it’s it’s all about today, because just like I was saying before, what was five years ago is kind of old because times are just changing so quickly. So yeah, so it’s um, you can find that on the website. I think it’s been released already, but I know it’s been released sometime during this month of May. So yeah.
Jordan Smith
Well, very cool. Well, we appreciate it. We’re big fans, Barlow, McCarthy. Like she said, I mean a wealth of knowledge on their website. So if you have any questions about this, it’s free to ask questions, reach out to them, let them know. And they’ll point you in the right direction. Susan, thank you so much.
Susan Boydell
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Jordan Smith
Thank you. Susan Boydell with Barlow McCarthy. RJ. I know you’ve got a ton of Final thoughts as I do. I’ve got a whole notebook of stuff here written and I hope that listeners got a lot out of this too.
RJ Martino
Yeah, I think mine’s real simple. If you’re doing physician relations, call Barlow. Let them evaluate if you’re doing it right. If you’re thinking about doing it, call Barlow. See if they can talk to you about how to set it up there because both, you could do yourself this year, this audience is smart enough, but they’re gonna save so much time just letting Barlow and Susan’s group just come in and bring the knowledge with them.
Jordan Smith
And now, even a third section, if you’re not doing it, and you don’t think it’s for you call them anyway, and they’ll talk into because it just makes it makes all the sense in the world when you think about it. So like, comment, share, smash all those buttons, leave all the reviews, let us know if you know of anybody, or you, if there’s even an organization that you would like to hear more from or about, We’ll track them down. You know, we’re looking for good guests and trying to add value to your guys. So, RJ until next time.
RJ Martino
Jordan, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Jordan Smith
Alright. See you guys.
