1. Massage Therapy is like any other business, your numbers tell the story of your success.
Unlike working for someone else, you define your success, so take some time to think about what you want to do this year. Is your practice already where you want it to be? Then great, you might think about raising your rates by a dollar or two, do you need more clients? How many? When will you see them, or will you hire someone to help, now is a great time to play with these numbers and figure out what you want for the year.
When you know what you want, pick at least 3 and no more than 5 things to track.
- Our total weekly appointments- for the whole team together
- Individual therapist appointments and the ones they decline( so if they miss their own targets, they can see how choices affect their goals.
- Declined appointments
- Website ranking for keywords
- Income and expenses weekly.
At Health Span we track those 5 things weekly yours might be different.
Therapist success is everything
Therapist Success is everything here
Because our company is founded on therapist success, our focus is tracking that. When we have happy therapists, they provide better service, and develop better relationships with our clients, each other and us.
2. Massage Practice 101 – Be Present and client focused
Massage therapy can be a lot like meditation, when outside thoughts enter your mind gently push them away. Listen to the body of your client, focus on the muscle tone, and what is happening, and let everything else go.
By really focusing on your clients, you will enjoy your practice more, and will feel much more balanced at the end of the day. But more importantly your clients will feel nurtured and restored.
3. Be Rigorous about time
Massage Practice 101
If there was one thing that I wish was taught in school, it would be this. Be on time, if for any reason you are late, communicate that to your clients.
Clients are busy too, and fitting in an hour or two for a massage appointment might be hard for them. Respect their time!
Then respect your own time, if a client is late, especially habitually then end the appointment on time, gently explain you have another commitment that can’t be moved. That’s all.
4. Provide value for your clients
Too often the advice we get on building our practice ignores the needs of our clients, or our fear of being taken for granted rears its ugly head, and instead of focusing on how great we should be making clients feel, we think about how much we can charge.
Start with giving clients all the time they paid for, upgrade your skills to suit the needs of your clientele, if you work mostly with younger families, take a Maternity Massage workshop or Pediatric Massage. If a great client is diagnosed with an illness do some research. Not only are you providing great value to your clients, you are opening your practice to a specialty, referrals, and more.
5. Massage therapy that focuses on Client Comfort.
Massage Practice 101 – Client comfort is key and often overlooked.
Put the headrest under their neck, use a table warmer, make sure your kit has both scented and unscented oils, are they warm enough? Easy right?
In my 25 plus years of working with clients and therapists, I can tell you that only 1 in 25 therapists buts the padding from the face cradle under a clients neck, and 99% of the time a client loves that.
What can you do to make a client more comfortable?
Make sure your clients are comfortable on your table
5. Know your competition
Massage practice 101– know your competition, which in our market is vast, you don’t have to know them all, but is anyone doing anything super cool? who are the really big players in your market, are they doing anything that you really admire? Or anything you want to avoid?
Find our who your friends work for and ask them what is really great about where they work.
It is tempting to go looking for dirt, that is a bad idea, most of the trash people talk about a place they work or used to work is tainted, and you aren’t trying to be like your competition in the ways they fail but to learn from their success.
