- Return all phone calls within an hour or two at the most. People will be easily impressed. Allow time every few hours to do so.
- Ask each client when they leave “Do you want to reschedule for next week? I have openings xxxxxx.” You would be surprised how many massage therapists overlook this.
- Get a massage yourself every week and pay for it (ok trade is ok but beware of trading as it has it’s downfalls). If you are expecting clients to come to you each week and pay and you won’t do it yourself why would someone want to come regularly to do. I also have learned the most from getting regular massages – more than most workshops and trainings. I learn more about how to talk to clients and get a better perspective of what they might feel when I do different things or not do some things.
- Carry business cards with you at all times
- Teach couples massage classes or set up massage exchange systems in your church or community
- Keep your advice to yourself and take your own advice
- Be on time for all of your appointments. It really shows that you respect the client and yourself
- Start and finish your appointments on time ( see above).
Archive for News
Simple Massage Marketing Tips
Tipping Massage Therapists
After a very interesting discussion on tipping on my Yahoo Group for www.massagepracticebuilder.com I have gathered some of the information to share it here on the blog.
Is it appropriate to tip a massage therapist?
Is it appropriate for a massage therapist to encourage tipping?
Is it appropriate for massage therapists to accept tips? Should you even mention tipping on your website, policies or anywhere in your office? What is the best way to do so if you choose to do this?
Massage Therapists for the most part are licensed health care professionals. We can work in hospitals, clinics and treat injuries in some states. We start our own business and charge what we need to make. Some states still do not recognize that we are health care professionals. There also is considerable question as to whether or not we should be categorized as health care professionals as that encourages more licensing and legislation – more rules and regulations. Massage therapists also work in spas and salons and places like Massage Envy that do not pay the massage therapist a decent wage. They are sometimes only paid when they have a client and paid minimum wage just waiting around for a client.
From a contributor:
The origin of tipping is attributed to sixteenth century England where
containers with the inscription “To Insure Promptitude” were placed in
coffee houses and pubs. Tipping has become a phenomenon that is purely
voluntary and often associated with service that will be received in
the future, empathy for the worker, and compliance with social norms.According to a research paper co-authored by William J. Boyes,
economics professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, the number
one reason for tipping is to ensure good service in the future.
Subsequent reasons were, “to be fair to servers”, “to not be
embarrassed” and “because everyone tips”. Leonard Green, an authority
on tipping says that many tips are given as a representation of
judgment as to what constitutes a fair or equitable wage, and part of
what constitutes a fair wage is independent of the amount of the
charge, reflecting compensation for simply being there when necessary.So with that being said, is it any reason why we don’t tip our
medical providers? We expect good service from them because 1. Their
educated to the degree that they are expected to provide a near
perfect service 2. They are well compensated for their service and 3.
And it is not a social norm to tip your doctor.
Tips in the food service business reflects the low pay of waitresses and waiters and influences the service they provide. They work to get their tips. They have to be nice and do whatever the customer wants to get a good tip. If they don’t – well there goes their income.
Is tipping a reflection of our beliefs about money? Do we charge less than we need to make to try to get clients in the door and then hope for a tip? Do you feel resentful being paid less or not getting tips?
Some spa and salon owners that include tips in the so called ‘salary’ may be doing so to avoid paying you more. They may not really understand the value of the massage therapist in building their business. A well paid massage therapist will get more clients in the door than an underpaid one.
What does it mean when you work at one of those spas and the client doesn’t tip? Does it mean you didn’t give a good massage? Does it mean the client couldn’t afford it? ( Who really can’t afford an extra $5-10 really?)
I stopped worrying about tips when I started charging more for my services. I also think that tipping has a way of putting the receiver into the category of waitress/waiter, spas and people who cut hair/nails which is more of a pampering service. These people are usually underpaid for what they do. They need the tips usually to survive and especially waitresses who work their tail off to ‘please’ people sitting at their table so they can get a big tip.
Massage done in the health professional category should be charging an appropriate fee and and making enough money that they wouldn’t ‘need’ tips to survive. Would you work less harder if you thought you weren’t getting a tip? Would you work harder if you knew you were getting a tip?
Does the concept of tipping lead to more sexual advances when people think that if they give a good tip they will get a happy ending?
What is an appropriate way to convey your policy on tipping? Here are some good examples from the discussion:
“Are tips required?” and then answer
with: “No. Although greatly appreciated, tips are not
required.”
‘Clinical clients may not
tip, wellness clients may tip is so inclined, Thank you.’
“Gratuities graciously accepted”
So again there really isn’t any right or wrong about accepting or not accepting tips. It depends on your situation, where you work, how much you charge, how you view yourself – as a health care provider or a service provider and your beliefs about money.
Massage Apprenticeship Programs
I started my first website www.thebodyworker.com after gathering information to start an apprenticeship program for a friend of mine who didn’t want to go through the standard massage school routine. Here in WA State it is allowed under our licensing.
Keith Grant speaks highly of the idea of apprenticeship programs in his white paper on the Issues of Massage Governance saying :
“actual practice requires very limited memorization of facts. The massage
practitioner must have the deeper understanding required to find information as needed and
then to be able to use it to make therapy decisions in the face of ambiguity. Research indicates
that the environment that seems best able to foster the understanding leading to usability has
much in common with traditional apprenticeships [19, 20].”A recent posting on the Body_Work Yahoo Group informed me that apprenticeship programs are alive and well in Australia.
Becoming a massage therapist is such a mix of learning anatomy and science and learning to apply this to a wide variety of conditions and working with clients as people which brings a whole other challenge in creating professional boundaries. This can’t really be done in any training program no matter how many hours one puts into it. It is really just like any other profession – like going to law school doesn’t make you a lawyer or accounting school doesn’t make your an accountant or even having a child doesn’t make you a parent. It is more about the process and the process continues until you stop acting in whatever roles you have chosen or in death.
So I am in the process of researching apprenticeship programs and how to set them up and what would it take for licensed states and even unlicensed states to accept apprenticeship training for licensing requirements. I would love to hear others thoughts and experiences on this.
Deane Juhan- Job’s Body
Carl W. Nelson | July 18, 2007Keith,
I remain most grateful to you for your gracious manner and your numerous insightful contributions. Your reference in #25 to Deane Juhan prompted me to write the following:
Deane Juhan is the author of the landmark bodywork classic: Job’s Body: A Handbook for Bodywork (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press) 1987; Expanded Edition, 1998; Third Edition, 2003. Of the first two editions, over 80,000 copies have been sold. This well-written book gives a richly detailed picture of how and why the body responds to therapeutic touch, providing a reader-friendly yet scientifically reliable and detailed introduction to the human body. The book surveys bodywork practices showing how they can alter deep-seated patterns of body and mind.
After three and a half years as a doctoral candidate in English literature (specializing in William Blake) at the University of California – Berkeley, in the late summer of 1973 Deane Juhan had his initial experience with Esalen Massage as an impromptu gift from Ken LeBlanc, a member of the Esalen Massage Crew. This event took place on a Saturday evening in one of the communal tubs within the Esalen Hot Springs Bathhouse forty feet above the ocean surf pounding at the bottom of the cliff at the coastal center of Big Sur. Deane knew in some premonitory kind of way that one of the significant events of his life had just happened. This led to a sudden change in his career.
Then, after three and a half months from landing at Esalen and after having served as a night guard there for about two months, he took a weekend workshop on Esalen massage presented by Bill Liles. Deane describes this transforming event: “Bill walked over and stood by my table where I was trying to reproduce what I thought I had seem him do, and he just stood there and stood there. I was starting to get very nervous and finally he just put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I can’t correct what you are doing. I have nothing to teach you. You’re a natural. You just keep doing what you’re doing.’ Nobody had ever said anything like that to me about anything I’d ever done. I mean I wasn’t a natural at anything I’d ever tried to do. It was all hard work. And it really hit me, it was another one of those slaps across the side of my head. And I said, ‘Maybe I should do this, because nothing I’ve ever felt has ever felt like this and I’ve never been rewarded as quickly and as sincerely for anything I’d ever done like this.’ This just seemed like the thing to do.†Bill suggested to Deane that he apply for a job on the Esalen Massage Crew whereupon working on four crewmembers he was immediately accepted and found himself with a full schedule as a professional.
Deane has described Bill Liles as the one who first showed him how to give the Esalen Massage experience to others, as one of the best massage therapists that’s ever worked at Esalen, and has described him, too, as a poetic therapist. I, too, like numerous others, feel the same way. Later, Milton Trager, M.D., selected Deane as one of the first five practitioner-instructors to teach his work.
So Deane Juhan with not more than 20 massage classroom hours from a master became a professional on the world-renowned Esalen Massage Crew! From this light the New York requirement of 1000 massage classroom hours to become a massage therapist is absolutely absurd.
In Touched by the Goddess: The Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual Powers of Bodywork (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press) 2002, Deane Juhan presents a collection of essays with a passionate call to the global community of somatic practitioners to recognize deeply and fully the value of their work, and to share that recognition as far and wide as possible. He views the impact of skilled and nurturing touch from a great variety of perspectives – political, social, individual and public health, the purely physiological and scientific, evolutionary, and philosophical. His early training was academic, and he has devoted his life to the study and research of somatics, as well as to its practice and teaching.
Websites for massage therapists
A website is worthless unless it is found by search engines. If it isn’t getting you a few new clients a week or month it isn’t doing it’s job.
In order to have search engines find you there are many different things you can do – most of which I outline in my Free Ebook called “Creating a Website that works” that I have available at my website www.workless-playmore.com
The basic things are:
- Choosing a domain that says what you do and where you do it (massage-denver.com)
- Using keywords, descriptions and proper naming of file names for your pages
- Creating high quality content – at least 30 pages. This can be done gradually over time.
- Use a rss system or blog to notify the search engines when you add new pages or posts
- Create Google and Yahoo site maps and submit the site maps to the major search engines ( do a search for google and yahoo sitemaps and find free software that can create these or this comes with your SBI site automatically and it is updated regularly)
- Submit your site to search engines
- Get high quality links from other service providers in your neighborhood.
- Add your link to free directories
-Write ezine articles for the free articles directories
- Study your traffic results and find out what keywords people are using to find you. (SBI has a in depth system for doing this and even will tell you what pages to add to your site)
- Wish or just use SBI
So it takes time and energy to get your site to the top of the search engines and a nice looking , expensive site is really worthless if it isn’t getting found by search engines.
Most people just want an 8-10 website to promote their practice and that is a great way to start and all you need if you use SBI and their complete action guide. I just did a site last month for someone in Manalapan NJ -manalapanmassage.com and it was on the first page of Google in 4 days after submitting it to the search engines using the proper search engine optimization methods outlined here.
Let me know if you have any questions or are interested in hiring someone to do your site for you. I am making myself available for massage therapists for $500 to create an 8 page website (that is in addition to the $299 fee to Site Build it!) After that you will have complete access to the site and be able to make changes, add as many pages as you want and take your time learning SBI and the steep learning curve.
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