Case Study: The Hard Referral That Changed Everything

This week's case study: a discharge planner called me with their most complicated referral only a week after I hosted a lunch and learn at the hospital. 

It was for a fiercely independent woman managing cancer alone, estranged from her sons, cycling back to the ER for the fourth time in eight weeks. No family support. No safety net. No easy path to a move-in.

Listen in on how what it actually took to earn this woman's trust, why the hard referrals are the ones that build your reputation (not the easy ones), and what happened when the "move-in" turned into showing up with a Denny's breakfast on a Saturday morning.

In this episode:

• Why the easy referrals don't always build your reputation. The hard ones definitely will.
• What it looks like to meet someone exactly where they are, not where your marketing plan says they should be
• The moment referral relationships shift from "checking a box" to case managers trusting you with their hardest cases
• This week's action step: build your "we can actually say yes to" list

This week's exercise: Write down five situations your community is truly equipped to support — not what sounds good in a brochure. Then finish this sentence: "We support residents who need help with ___, and the reason we can do that well is because ___."

If this hits close to home because you know your community isn't positioned clearly enough for referral partners to know when to call you, that's exactly what's covered inside the Momentum Marketing Bootcamp.

Link to learn more about the bootcamp: http://mmb.thesparkpointagency.com

Transcript

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Tiffany Updated voice 0:00

If you listened to the last case study episode, you know I spent months earning my way into a room with case managers at a closed hospital. Today, I wanna tell you how I solidified my position as the go-to person, and how my name was passed around in the break room. That's kinda funny, but yes, passed around for sure, because getting in the room is not the win. What you do with the trust you built once you are there is the win. And so today's story is about one referral, a fiercely independent woman who had every reason not to trust another person's plan for her life. But she was also exasperating the social workers and the discharge planners and the case managers at the hospital. Who really tried to help her, and what it actually took to turn that referral into a move in Hi, I'm Tiffany Hill-Allen, and stay tuned for Start with Occupancy

Tiffany 0:57

Uh huh. Welcome to Start With Occupancy, the podcast for senior living owners, operators, and sales professionals. /Hi, I'm Tiffany, marketing strategist and former corporate baddie who got tired of producing results for wall street and wanted to make a change on main street. /I provide quick tips, idea nuggets, and case studies to help you with proven sales, marketing, and business development strategies along with leadership concepts so that you can inspire change, impact lives, and improve outcomes for the aging, their families and your teams. /I'm committed to equipping you with the tools, the knowledge and resources that you need to excel in your business. /With experience working inside senior living companies, large and small, I've developed a deep passion for advocating for the aging adult and those who care for them, all while driving business growth. /So whether you're already in the senior care industry or maybe you would like to be, if your mission is to serve them, my mission is to serve you. /Join me as we unravel the strategies and tactics that drive success in your business while making a difference in someone's life. /The goal is to touch, guide, and impact the lives of 10 families per month! /Are you with me? It's time to be inspired, gain practical tips and own your future.

Tiffany Updated voice 2:27

So the call came in, "Hey, Tiffany, we have this lady. She really could use your home visit program that you talked to us about during the presentation. She thinks she can manage her cancer on her own, but she keeps coming back to the hospital. This is like her fourth time back in the last eight weeks. She has three sons and only one is local, but he does not want much to do with her as well as neither of her other sons. We're having a really, really hard time, and we thought we would reach out to you, see what you can come up with." This came from the same case managers I told you about inside that closed hospital that I did the presentation. And by this point, they trusted me enough to call me directly when they had this patient they did not know what to do with. This particular call was this woman who kept returning to the ER department over and over again. She had no support at home, only a neighbor who would help, you know, as she could occasionally as best as she could. And this part mattered. She was estranged from her three sons, so she really didn't have any family that she could lean on except for her sister in a different state, and they were far away, so it didn't work out for her. And the case managers told me plainly, "This one is really complicated," which is another word for hard. Here is what I want you to understand about referrals like this one. The easy referrals are not the ones that will build your reputation. The hard ones are. And anybody can move in a family that already have, you know, three children who's by their side and a plan is in place and there's a checkbook ready. But this was not that. And this was a woman who the system had run out of ideas for her. And so I was going to be the one person who could not figure her out, or I was going to be the one person who could actually earn enough trust from her and the case managers to understand what is behind the wall that she had built and to figure out how to solve the challenges that presented itself to her and how to win her over. So what I tried, I sat down with her. I listened to what she had to say. I listened to her objections about moving into a community, even though I knew this is what she actually needed, and this is what her chart said she probably needed. I reminded her she had no support at home. It meant she kept cycling back in the hospital, and she said, "I know that, Tiffany, and I'm good, but I'm good. I have a, I have a neighbor. Neighbor's gonna help." And she was really trying to manage her cancer. But she couldn't drive. She could barely cook for herself, let alone clean the house. And she was, like I said before, estranged from her sons. There was no family, no safety net, no one waiting to catch her on the other side of this discharge. So my job was not to sell her on a community. My job was to convince her that the support that she actually needed existed and that she could actually trust it. And if you think about what she had been through, being that she had cancer, And, was widowed first and then divorced. She ran off and married a captain and bought a boat with her money. Like, there was things that was going on with this woman, and the person that she trusted the most, her new husband that she ran off with, had divorced her, left her penniless, and she just really had a hard time. She had been through a lot So it was not easy, and it was not an easy thing to ask her to believe in somebody. She was fierce, she was funny, she was stubborn, and she was determined. Yet I kept engaging with her, asking her questions about her life, connecting her story to my own, or at least relating to other people who I know who've been through similar stories like her. I was fascinated about her life choices and allowed her to talk and share and feel valued in this time and space in her life. Ultimately, after calling me on that Saturday morning because she had no one there to give her food and she was hurting, I said yes, of course. I went to her apartment. I brought her food. I spent my Saturday morning with her, and she finally said yes to coming to the community to check it out. And here's where the story stops being a typical move-in story. Because once she decided to make the move, she didn't know how she was going to do it. So I became a kind of like a surrogate for her. I had to help her move in. There was no one else to carry a box or to pack, pack her things, so my maintenance director and I did it ourselves. We took our community bus. We packed her up. We physically moved her in. I got with her s- one son that was in town and said, "Hey, just sign the paperwork. I got everything done for your mom. You don't have to worry about anything." You know, sit with that for a second. What is that like? Because every move-in is not going to be smooth. I know the online gurus tell you, "Open a house and they will come," and even when they do decide to come, it doesn't mean that it's a smooth sailing move in. Meaning that there are times where you have to go out of your way to do things for people that need your help, right? Sometimes we had to do things that was not in anybody's job description or in the scope of what you normally do. That is not a line item on a marketing plan. It was just me and him, two people deciding that this woman was not gonna be left behind because There was not a system to support her The lesson in this is that relationships will still drive your move-ins. Not ads or a brochure or a polished tour script. A relationship built with case managers who trusted me enough to hand me their hardest case, and the decision on my end to meet her exactly where she was, packing tape and all. That is what referral relationships are actually for. We're not just filling rooms, but solving the problem that nobody else is willing to solve. In the end, she moved in, right? She stayed with us until her cancer called her home. I do not tell that part of the story easily because she was very special to me. She will forever live in my heart and in my mind because that is what this work is actually about. Underneath the marketing conversations and the occupancy numbers is showing up for someone when nobody else will or could or even would And the case managers were amazed and relieved at the same time. Once I advised them that she was now living with us, the referrals from that point on started pouring in. It was great. You know, referral relationships are not a numbers game, but a trust game. And I say that loosely because we're dealing with real people with real emotions and real challenges and real problems and real situations. So they're not just numbers, but it can be-- come that when you're looking at spreadsheets, right? The case managers did not send me their easiest referral. They sent me the one they did not know what to do with because by that point, they wanted to see whether we would follow through with our Safely Summer program as I had advised, and our home visit program as I had advised. And it was when the situation was no longer easy for them. They wanted to see if I would back up what I said or just disappear. Well, after that situation, after that experience with me, they believed I would actually help them solve the problems impacting their ability to do their job effectively. That is the level of trust you are building toward. You're looking and helping these discharge planners to make their job easier and to make sure that you're providing a safe solution for their referrals. So this week, I want you to create what we can actually say yes to list. This is important. Write down five situations your community is truly equipped to support. Not just what sounds good in marketing brochures, but what you can really do. You want to know what you really can deliver. Maybe it's a resident who needs medication management. Maybe it's someone who needs meals and transportation and reminders and companionship or closer oversight. Maybe it's someone who needs, um, a certain diet restrictions or certain diet preferences. Maybe it's how you present, you know, something to them or their family that nobody else would Then I want you to write this sentence. Grab a paper. We support residents who need help with," and then you put that in there. And the reason we can do that well is because," and then you put that in there. That sentence now becomes a part of your referral conversation And this will help you to move forward. If this episode is hitting you close to home because you know you want more referrals, but you are not sure your community is positioned clearly enough for referral partners to know when to call you, that is exactly what we work through inside the Momentum Marketing Bootcamp. We do not just talk about marketing. We work on your message, your right fit resident for your community, your referral conversations, your follow-through, the systems that help you become the community's referral partners. So, this is the case study series, and my goal in this is to help you to experience the different scenarios that I have been through or my team has been through, and to provide learning lessons for you that you can take with you and you can learn from, whether they be, stories that you can glean when talking to other family members or referral partners or potential referral partners, right? Understanding that there's different programs that you can implement in your community today that no one else around you can or that can set you apart from others. There are things that you can do to really make a difference and to stand out amongst all your competition. And in turn, it could even justify your rates if you decide to charge a more higher premium rate. So there's some place for everybody in this arena and in this niche. It's just a matter of you discovering where you are going to fit in it and where your passions lie, and take it from there. Because that is what you're going to have to message out to the people in your community when you're marketing, so that they can know about you, that they know what you're able to provide for their clients or their patients, and that they are able to refer to you. So take what you need, share what helps, and come back for more, and I'll see you in the next episode.