SIL Referral Pipeline Benchmark
Where does your referral pipeline sit against top-quartile SIL providers? Three tiers, six metrics, real performance thresholds — and what the gap costs in dollar terms.
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 · $150,000/participant/year · 8% baseline vacancy rate
$150k–200k difference between top and bottom quartile in a 10-home operation — per year.
That is the arithmetic of bed-days multiplied by daily funding rates. 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?
When a coordinator sends an enquiry, does your organisation respond within 4 hours — including outside business hours?
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. An active SC generates 10–20 participant referrals per year. One new coordinator relationship added to your network is worth 10–20 participants over the following 12 months.
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.
Book the Operational Diagnostic30 minutes. Written recommendation. No pitch before the data.