March 2008

Get and Keep Clients in the First 90 Days

by Cherie Sohnen-Moe

and goals.2

One quick tip: When starting out, talk with everyone about your profession — family, friends, neighbors, and people in line at the grocery store, movies and department of motor vehicles. Share your enthusiasm for your work and the results it produces. Excitement is contagious!

Although there’s no magic bullet, there are some steps every new massage therapist can take to acquire and retain patients in the first three months of practice.

Give to get

Decide how many sessions you want to work each week and do it. It doesn’t matter if you have to give free sessions in the beginning. You need to establish your credibility and build relationships. The way to do that is to work with as many people as possible. Actually, many companies use the stratagem of giving things away to obtain long-term customers. Think about all the book, music, and movie clubs. They lose money on their initial sales, yet they know that the lifetime value of the customer is worth it. Other large corporations bank on the reliability of this type of promotion and give away samples of their products. They are confident that once people experience the products, they’ll continue to use them.

The concept of “giving to get” also holds true for massage therapists. For example, let’s say that your typical “regular” client receives six massages per year and stays with you for four years. If you give away 40 sessions in one month and only 10 of those people become regular clients (or refer you regular clients), then those 40 hours of work will bring you $132,000 over the next four years. Not a bad investment at all!

Set goals

Estimate how much money you want to make and how many clients it takes to reach that goal. Program your mind to expect a set number of sessions, and soon you will find that those sessions are all filled with paying clients. Nevertheless, it’s best if those free sessions are given to people who '

Building a practice requires consistent marketing, business acumen, perseverance, and optimism. Many practitioners give up too soon because they don’t receive enough positive feedback and rewards don’t come as quickly as desired. While exceptions do exist, it takes most people two to three years to build a thriving practice. You might need to take a part-time job in the beginning to augment your income. The caveat is to make sure that at the outset of your career, you set specific parameters for when you will take the plunge into full-time practice (e.g., number of clients, amount of money saved). Otherwise, you may never make that transition.

Move forward

Once you have your first clients, it’s time to take the steps to fill your appointment book. Marketing your practice can often appear overwhelming and arduous. On the other hand, there is no rule that says you can’t have fun while promoting your business. Try incorporating creative approaches to building your clientele. Keep in mind that the most effective means of marketing wellness services is through a personal approach. Given that the majority of people become your clients because of a positive first experience with you, it’s vital that your marketing plan include informal ways for people to get to know you and your work.

Cherie Sohnen-Moe is an author, business coach and international workshop leader. She has been in business since 1978. She was in private practice for many years as a massage and holistic health practitioner before shifting her focus to education and coaching. In her coaching/consulting practice, she has worked with individual therapists to small wellness centers to day spas that have multiple locations. She has served as a faculty member at the Desert Institute of Healing Arts and the Arizona School of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and is an adjunct professor at Clayton College of Natural Health. She has written more than 100 articles that have been published in more than 15 national and international magazines. She is the author of the book, Business Mastery, which is in its fourth edition, has sold more than 325,000 copies to date with 650-plus schools requiring it as a text. She is also the author of Present Yourself Powerfully and The Art of Teaching. She is co-author of The Ethics of Touch, with more than 300 schools requiring it as a text. She is also a contributing author of Teaching Massage: Fundamental Principles in Adult Education for Massage Program Instructors, and was interviewed for a chapter of SAND TO SKY: Conversations with Teachers of Asian Medicine. Sohnen-Moe is a firm believer in education and as such serves on the exam committee of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB) and is a founding member of the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education (AFMTE).  She can be contacted through her website, www.sohnen-moe.com.