Life, Outsourcing, and Massage Therapy – Part 2

In part 1, we discussed general busy-ness in our clients’ lives and the reason people outsource. I also introduced the idea that we as massage therapists are contracted as outsourced wellness providers. So what can we do with this?

Extend Our Reach (and Role)

So what is your role? As a massage therapist, most people would give the simple answer of “giving massage to my clients”. Close, but too vague. Sure, that is how we go about it, but really we provide wellness, stress-reduction, and all of the other benefits that our clients experience out of our work. When I say that we need to extend our reach, I mean that we need to fulfill our wellness contract. If our clients have put it into our hands to be responsible for a part of their wellness, then we better see that it gets done!

First off, communicate what it is that you are doing. “I provide wellness”, “I improve athletic performance”, whatever your mission is. Make sure your clients know it, and then let your clients know what it is that you do to get them there – that you will proactively help them with their well-being.

Being a proactive partner in your client’s health implies action on your part. I see far too many therapists that sit back and wait for clients to come to them, wait for clients to rebook, or wait for clients to respond to their marketing. Although marketing might seem to be a proactive approach, really you do something and then you have to wait for the client to respond. Gaining clients proactively is a whole new discussion, but what about the clients you already have? What can you do for the clients you already have a wellness contract with?

Be An Active Partner

Let me paint a picture for you. You enroll in a class. You show up for your first day, excited about all the great things you are going to learn. The teacher sits you down, hands you a textbook and says, “I’ll be over there if you have any questions”. How would you feel about that?

Figure out what role you can play in helping their wellness goals to become a reality. One answer is to take on some of the responsibility yourself. And I mean the responsibility for making the massage session even happen. Make sure that for every client you have, you have a plan. Make sure that that plan is well communicated and understood by both you and the client. Make sure that the plan is as much the clients as it is yours. Maybe even have them sign it (not a binding contract!) to give it a little more weight. Then help them to fulfill it. That may mean telling them straight out that if you haven’t heard from them for two weeks, you’ll call to check in with how they are doing. It may mean sitting down and planning out their session schedule so you can have a number of appointments set up and in both of your calendars. It means following up with them by phone, email, text-messaging, and smoke signals. Get the client’s agreement of course from the start. We don’t want to harass them!

This approach may seem pushy to you. However, I have found that clients appreciate the concern. I’ve called clients that I haven’t seen in a while and it’s like they’re reading from a script every time – “Oh, hi! Has it really been that long? I really need a massage! I’ve just been really busy. Thank you so much for calling! Can I come in…?”. I think it’s because they outsourced this part of theiw wellness to you in the first place and they are happy to have you do it for them.

Reminder cards can work, but it is still putting the task of remembering on them. Don’t forget, they have to remember, it has to be at a convenient time, and it has to be urgent for them to pick up the phone. Make it as easy as possible by remembering and picking up the phone for them! I know I’ve found services like Genbook (a free online scheduling service) to be great boosts, because it makes it so easy for them to get an appointment AND it sends reminder emails (or text messages too if you pay for the upgrade). Remember, it isn’t their job to keep you in business, so do the remembering for them!

Outsourcing Wellness = Opportunity

I haven’t seen many therapists take this approach to their practice. However, if you look at it this way, you could expand it to include business wellness programs, government health programs, and more. The important thing there is to demonstrate benefit, and that means a lot more than your clients walking out saying they “feel better”. You need some proof. Use research from the Massage Therapy Foundation, the Touch Research Institute, or the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork to back up your claims. You want to translate those studies into something meaningful to your clients. Stress-reduction may not mean much to them, but maybe helping with insomnia might.

The key is to remember that people outsource work to people who can do it better and more efficiently than they can. I would start taking a look at the different programs out there to promote wellness, pain reduction, sports performance, or whatever your specialty is and develop a program to compare and compete. Ask yourself, “how can I make this easier, more effective, and more time efficient for my clients?” and “What can I do to help my clients take advantage of massage work and stay on track?”

My money is on the fact that if you start being more proactive about your clients’ wellness it’s really a win-win for everybody.

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Life, Outsourcing, and Massage Therapy – Part 1

Just reading the title, you may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about. Well, you may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog. Life happened. Life is still happening. I teach, I have a family, car repairs, sports massage events, I’m in school taking classes, and I’m working on setting up a business. I just got busy.

The thing is, so do our clients. Often, as massage therapists, we wonder where our clients go. The truth is that many times it has nothing to do with the client not wanting to come back. Life just got in the way. Very few people I know have large blocks of time in their schedules to do with what they wish. MTs often fall prey to thinking that they are only competing against other massage therapists. Some who see a little bit more realize that they are also competing against other niche products like chiropractic, pain relief, and stress-reduction activities. But in the broader scheme of things, we are fighting tooth and claw with almost every other business (and even person) out there for one thing. Time.

Time and Our Service Economy

We are competing with sports events, TiVo, concerts, charity events, kids’ recitals, theme parks, you name it. Time is our clients’ most precious commodity. It seems that all too often, even when you want to get together with a friend, they have to check their schedule and pencil you in in three weeks. More and more, people are just so busy they can’t get away for anything.

What does that have to do with the service economy? Few would deny that massage therapy is a profession that rests firmly in the service sector. Whether you look at it as health care or a luxury, it is still a service. In one of my business classes recently, I learned that the rise of the service economy in the U.S. really began after World War II. What ended up happening is that incomes rose so that people had more to spend. At the same time, a counter-trend was occurring in that people had more demands on their time. The result was this, people began to pay others to do time-consuming services that they didn’t wish to do. Things like dry cleaning, painting the house, dining out increased. People began outsourcing more of their needs to others.

Outsourcing

The way I see it is that our clients have outsourced some of their care needs to us. We provide a therapeutic service and can rattle off all kinds of therapeutic benefits for massage therapy. We’ve been contracted to provide something that our clients want or need, but either can’t or don’t want to do themselves.

Think for a minute about the things that you want or need and can’t/won’t do for yourself. A person could get in shape without a personal trainer or a gym membership, but isn’t it easier to pay the membership or have somebody else guide you? Massage is kind of the same. People could reduce their own stress, there are many forms of massage that people really could do for themselves. But that isn’t really the issue. It’s time and focus.

General Busy-ness

A month ago, I wrote about my TFL and my plan for addressing it. I was going to chart the progress and write about it here. I know this stuff. I teach this stuff. I recommend it to my clients. Did I do it? Nope. It wasn’t important enough to me at any given moment to do much. Oh, I worked on it a few times. I got some massages at my school. But did I do the entire protocol that I laid out for myself? Sorry.

The point is that our clients are the same way. It’s not that they’re lazy, or uncommitted, or that they don’t want to be healthy. It’s that they have a gazillion priorities and their health is only one of them. Proper nutrition requires a lifetime commitment while McDonald’s only requires a commitment of $5, right now. When so many people demand so many things, something has to give. Unfortunately for us, for many people that seems to be massage and taking care of themselves.

And Back to Outsourcing

The answer to busy-ness for most people is one of two things. Put it on the back burner to be ignored or forgotten OR… outsource it. Our clients are outsourcing part of the wellbeing to us. We just need to know the best way to go about it for our particular group of customers. So what can we do to fulfill our contract as outsourced wellness providers? I’ll save that for part 2… (nice teaser, eh?)

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