Build Referrals using a Group Therapy model

I had breakfast the other day with Jayne Gumpel, and she shared this idea with me.

The discussion started because Jayne told me she had some new clients arriving as I left.  "New clients in the depth of a recession - great" I said " How do you do it?"

"Oh - I don't have to anything now" she said "there's enough former clients out there to refer me"

"OK- but how did you get to that point?" I asked.

Here's how Jayne started off building a large group of clients who could refer.  She developed a very lowcost group therapy approach, and let the therepists who refer to her offer it to their clients.  For example, someone seeing an individual client might say "This might be great for you and your partner to go on".

Jayne offered 4-6 group sessions at a total cost of $100 per couple!  The groups were fairly small, and each lasted 2 hours.  Couple's loved them, and when the time was right, told their friends that Jane was a great person to go to for couples work.

Of course to make this work, you need to have built your professional referral network already, so see our Practice Builder Guide for more information on how to do that.

To give a great experience, Jayne put some structure into the process, typically including the following:

• Start with a meditation of guided imagery
• Use a volunteer couple to demonstrate and teach the dialogue
• Run a discussion around the demonstration
• Send couples home to practice
• Closing meditation

You can contact Jayne Gumpel if you would like her to send you an outline of how she runs groups