Sometimes a new client is just a push of a button and a few questions away.

Many business development experts urge you to create an elevator speech of 30 to 60 seconds so you can tell anyone in a short trip that can elevate your business by adding your fellow passenger to your client roster http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1024.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/elevator_speech_dos-donts.html

Once you’ve created an elevator speech, I suggest you create elevator questions.  I believe you can get more clients by asking provocative questions than lecturing someone on what he should do.  People are told what to do by bosses, spouses, commercials all day long.  When a person asks what you do, tell him, and if he shows interest, instead of telling him that he should get massaged, ask him, “Do you have pain in your body?”  When he says yes, which he will because–if he’s an adult in the 21^st century who commutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or is bumped around by straphangers in urban subways and railroad cars, or has a boss, a spouse, or a kid–he has pain in his body. Then ask, “Would you like to be free of pain in your body?”

If you ask him where the pain is, he’ll tell you.  The next step is to ask if he’d like to book a session to relieve that pain.  Of course, he would, although he may say that he needs to think about it.  Let him.  Give him your business card, then ask another two questions: namely for his card, and for permission to call within a week if he fails to call you.  Why?  So you can direct the matter instead of being reactive.  Then call seven days later if he forgets.  When you remind him who you are and how you met, ask him again if he’d like to be free of the specific pain that he mentioned.   As  Hamlet said, “That’s the question.”

If you build it, he will come

 “If you build it, he will come.”—The Voice, in A Field of Dreams

Recently, while communicating on my Facebook coaching page for massage therapists (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hillsboro-Beach-FL/Business-Coaching-for-Massage-Therapists/329153699118), an LMT in New York State asked me how to get more clients.  I asked her how many more sessions she wanted to do each week, and how much time she had for them.  She said she wanted 10 more weekly clients.  A business coach for massage therapists, I proceeded to teach her a secret for manifesting that I teach in some of my CE courses, that wasn’t mentioned in The Secret, the best-selling video and book.  In other words, you heard it here first.

Step one, I told her, was to block off time in her calendar for these 10 new clients.  In her case, what made the most sense was to add two more clients at the end of each of her five workdays, say, from 3—4 PM, and from, say, 4:15—5:15 PM.  In and of itself, that doesn’t automatically cause 10 new clients to ring her up on the phone and ask her for late afternoon appointments—at precisely the time when she wants them.  But, I told her, here’s the kicker: if no new client shows up on Monday from 3—4 PM, when you’re “expecting” him, then work on marketing your business at that time.  Since it’s already blocked off for massage, it becomes more possible for such a person to learn about you and reach out for you.  Ditto from 3—5:15 PM when there’s another open slot for such a person.

You can also use part of that blocked-off hour to do some “inner” work to help manifest such clients, such as affirmation and visualization exercises, among others.  These I’ve already explained in previous blog posts.  Build new clients into your consciousness and schedule book, and happy manifesting!

Service is everything

The Giant grocery store in Silver Spring, Maryland is unlike every other supermarket I’ve ever been in throughout the country–it lacked a customer relations department.  That’s because Giant has awakened its inner giant: it has a Solutions Center.  The difference is palpable.  Customer relations are what stores offer, solutions are what customers desire.  

Massage therapists can immeasurably benefit from this significant distinction.  LMT ads in wellness magazines, often feature just business cards plunked down in the publication.  They communicate what the LMT does, rather than what the prospective client receives.  Advertising in this way is a missed opportunity and a waste of hard-earned money.  

What LMTs need to understand is that most people wouldn’t recognize their myofacial if its release hit them in the head.  “Neuromuscular” sounds technical for someone who just wants some relief from shoulder pain. Massage therapists should conduct shop talk with other therapists, but should use plain English to clients and prospects. To paraphrase the old acronym: KIST—Keep it Simple, Therapist.

If you meet me at a party and you ask me what I do, I won’t tell you that I’m a life coach—even though that is what I do.   Instead, I’ll tell you that I help people create breakthroughs in their finances, businesses, and relationships.  In other words, I describe the results that someone can expect by working with me.  That gets people’s attention quickly. 

If I meet you at that party and I ask what you could tell me that you relieve pain from people’s bodies.  And if I’m feeling pain in mine, you can bet your sweet myofacial that you’ll have gotten my attention in the proverbial New York minute.