SIL Referral Pipeline Benchmark
The planning lines in this document are Build n Bloom's editorial judgement — useful for ordering your priorities, not sector statistics, and not evidence-backed benchmarks. Where a target matters, set your own number and run the exercises on it.
Where does your referral pipeline sit against top-quartile SIL providers? Three tiers, six metrics, editorial planning lines — and what the gap costs in empty beds and coordinator reach.
Benchmark Tiers
Six referral pipeline metrics across three performance tiers. Where does your operation sit?
Referrals arrive before a vacancy is published. Coordinators call this provider first. The relationship is maintained during quiet periods — not just activated when a bed is empty.
Referrals arrive through 1–2 personal relationships. If either coordinator changes roles or geography, the referral pipeline stops. No active outreach is running.
Vacancy Economics by Tier
10-home SIL operation · 8% baseline vacancy rate · vacancy duration driven by coordinator reach
Top-quartile operations lose around 30 bed-days a year to vacancy. Bottom-quartile operations lose more than ten times that.
That is the arithmetic of vacancy duration multiplied by vacancy count. The driver is coordinator reach, not care quality. Not a sales argument.
Self-Assessment
5 questions. 2 points each. 10 points maximum. Answer yes or no — your tier updates as you go.
Can you name 10 or more support coordinators who referred a participant to your organisation in the last 12 months?
Do you contact each active coordinator at least once per month — with a specific reason, not a vacancy notification?
They answer fast — with a system, not a person
Are all coordinator contacts, conversations, and referral outcomes logged in a system accessible to more than one person?
In the last 30 days, have you made contact with at least 3 coordinators you have not previously worked with?
Answer the questions to see your tier
What Top-Quartile Providers Do Differently
Specific behaviours — not strategic principles. Operational habits observed consistently across providers with 15+ active SC relationships.
The most common failure mode is activation-only contact — reaching out only when a bed needs filling. Coordinators notice this and deprioritise the relationship. Top-quartile providers contact their network monthly with outcomes, compliance updates, or sector information — regardless of vacancies.
Urgent placements are often declared on Friday afternoons. Providers who respond Monday morning have already been passed over. Top-quartile providers have a response system — not a person — that monitors and acknowledges incoming enquiries immediately.
Top-quartile providers know when they last spoke to each coordinator, what was discussed, what follow-up was promised, and whether it happened. When a coordinator moves roles, the relationship history is preserved. Nothing is lost.
3–5 new coordinator contacts per month. We do not publish a per-coordinator referral figure; track referrals per active relationship over 12 months. (A Build n Bloom planning estimate — see other diagnostic tools on this site for the range of assumptions we use.)
Coordinators who receive "we have a vacancy suited to a participant with complex autism and high-intensity support needs — here is our capability profile" have a specific match to assess. Generic vacancy notifications get filed.
The gap between middle-market and top-quartile is not a talent gap. It is a systems gap.
Monthly touchpoints, fast response, structured tracking, consistent outreach — these are mechanical processes. They can be automated.
See where your operation sits
in your actual numbers
The Operational Diagnostic takes your specific inputs — SC conversations, vacancy rate, team size — and produces a written recommendation on which agents your operation needs and what each is expected to recover.
Apply for a Workflow Fit Call30 minutes. Written recommendation. No pitch before the data.