How to Build Massage Clientele
From the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP):
Their Question:
In your experience what are the most important business things a massage therapist should do for retention and growth?
Our Response:
Excellent question!
#1 is to produce happy clients. If you have therapists working for your business, then the key becomes to hire the best therapists around and keep them.
Our business has a 100% therapist retention rate (excluding those who move off the island) and many very happy customers thanks to their outstanding skills & expertise. The qualities we look for when looking for therapists are:
- superb proprioception
- effective skills (I should still feel the positive effects of the interview massage the next day).
- professionalism (especially timeliness)
One unusual thing that we do is to individually match each client with the therapist best suited to meet their needs because (as we hopefully all know) different therapists are good at different modalities. So it only makes sense to match Deep Tissue specialists with clients who want Deep Tissue massages, Lomi Lomi specialists with Lomi Lomi massages, & so on and so forth.
We also prioritize our therapists' well-being and make every effort to understand and meet their needs, which is exactly what we expect them to do in turn for our clients. This seems to work. :)
...
From an individual massage therapist's perspective, to grow your clientelle, you need to advertise in a way that will attract customers well-suited to your skills. To retain them, you need to provide excellent and effective work. If you're good enough to actually heal them, they may no longer need your services, but they'll refer their friends and word-of-mouth advertising is the best there is.
Professionalism is very important too - honor & keep your commitments - as is clearly discovering what your clients want to get out of their massage(s) and fulfilling that.
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