As a physician liaison, it’s easy to be placed in the friend zone.

In fact, I bet you’re being friend zoned right now and you may not even know it. 

How do I know? Because sadly, I made this mistake early in my career and I see clients make this same mistake every day.

What is the friend zone?

The friend zone is when you go into an office, build some rapport, talk about sports, the kids, whatever.

Everyone’s happy and feels good.

Then you walk out the door and nothing happened. 

The friend zone seems pretty cool. Why wouldn’t I want to be there?

The friend zone can be really deceptive.

It makes us feel like we’re doing well and making progress.

There’s some nice chit chat and a few warm fuzzies. It feels great. 

We can even report back to our leadership team what a good call we had and how great our relationships are. 

The problem is that you’re not bringing any value to your referral partners or their patients and that’s a waste of their time. 

The friend zone doesn’t bring value to your customers or to your business.

I think I might have been friend zoned. How did I end up here?

The friend zone starts with good intentions…

Chatting it up trying to build rapport or get past a gatekeeper.

The problem is, that’s where things stay. The conversation never transitions to the value you can provide their patients.

Once a practice determines you don’t have anything of value to share, you’ll be friend zoned. 

And once you’re in the friend zone…

It’s really hard to get out.

You see, now you’ve become buddies. Which seems like a really good thing right?

But at that point you don’t want to come across as pushy or do anything to upset the relationship. It becomes really awkward to transition the conversation into a business discussion and your office calls become social visits. 

Once you’ve been friend zoned, your customers never get to hear about the benefits of working with your practice, so they don’t refer more patients. 

Once you’ve been friend zoned, your customers never get to hear about the benefits of working with your practice, so they don’t refer more patients.

How do I stay out of the friend zone?

It’s actually fairly simple.

Bring value to referring partners, their patients and their practice. 

What referral challenges are they having? How does working with your practice solve those challenges?

By listening to your customer’s needs and offering solutions, you are providing a valuable service to their practice.

Consistently bringing value to their practice elevates you from a social acquaintance to a trusted business partner.

Here’s the ironic thing…

By bringing value over time, you will develop lasting relationships. 

Many of those you will happily call friends.