business for people who just want to do the work they love
Registration is open!
A 6-week live-online course helping your build the three pillars you need to fill your schedule (and your bank account).
This is the BETA version of this class, so it’s marked off by 35%! But I’ll want your feedback and reviews to make the discount work for both of us.
Once I teach the class, I can submit it for CEs, which I can grant to you retroactively.
Starts June 7.
Want to know more?
haba.thinkific.com/courses
We don’t offer clients a class of water because we need to. We do it as an act of hospitality, of care.
Offering to book your client’s next session can also be an act of hospitality, of care. They don’t have to remember to do it, they don’t have to wrestle with your online booking or play phone tag, they don’t have to do anything but check their schedule from the comfort of the chair in your massage room.
Hospitality is good for the client. It can be good for us too.
I’ve been talking a lot lately about how rebooking is natural and normal and healthy and professional.
AND I also totally understand that it’s awkward, weird, and uncomfortable when you start out. There is SO MUCH MORE than just the words coming out of your mouth when you’re having that rebooking conversation.
Is your vocal tone professional and confident?
Does your body language say “yes, you need this”?
Are you making eye contact in a way that is not-too-intense but also not-too-avoidant?
Do your words convey confidence while also giving the client a gracious way to say “no” if they don’t want it or can’t afford it?
Before you started this conversation, did you have a chance to get firmly grounded in your best professional-self-ness?
Is your smile welcoming and not wobbly?
I get it! We, as a community, don’t talk about how all the parts of you have to be aligned for this conversation to go well. All the things we have to learn by practice, practice, practice. So if this is STILL feeling awkward you’re not alone. Rebooking didn’t come naturally to a lot of us when we got started. Maybe it still doesn’t. But it can with practice. It really can.
When do you think the re-booking conversation starts? At the end of the session?
Nope.
It starts with your *marketing*! How do you explain your practice? How do you talk about the results you can help clients achieve?
Do you talk about the kinds of situations that are chronic, which suggests that you can’t get them where they want to go in one session?
Do you talk about your ability to support your clients in an ongoing relationship?
Do you present yourself as a special treat, suggesting that your massage can be a “when you want to do something special” kind of thing?
What kinds of people are you talking to in your marketing? Are you reaching out to people who need an ongoing relationship with their massage therapist?
You aren’t just trying to draw clients to you with your marketing, you’re setting up expectations for the kind of relationship they can have with you.
When your marketing promotes a long-term relationship or promises the ability to work with chronic or gnarly conditions you are already saying that you’ll be ready to talk about re-booking with them when it’s the right thing to do.
Does your marketing suggest the kind of relationship where re-booking is appropriate? Where it’s even a nice act of hospitable customer service?
Take a look at your marketing. What is it telling the client about the kind of relationship you’re looking for?
When you think about your sessions, does the “therapeutic” part end when the client gets off the table?
Nope.
The therapeutic part of your session starts with the intake, not when you put your hands on the client. The intake is where you begin interacting with the client as your therapeutic professional self. Asking questions, gaining clarity, and most importantly planning the session. What, therapeutically, are you going to do to help the client achieve their goals today?
The hands-on part of the session is an education for you and the client about what the body can do and will accept.
Then we get to the end of the therapeutic session — after they get off the table — where you talk with the client about what you learned in the session from their body, how they experienced your professional therapeutic work, and where the client goes from here. Depending on the goals they came in with and what *they* learned about their body during the session, that can play out several ways:
* Goals met, no more sessions
* Goals met, self-care / homework suggested
* Goals met and client would like to do this again. Offer to book session today as a convenience so client doesn’t have to remember it when they get home
* Discovering that the goals can’t be met in one session, discuss how to move forward with more massage sessions. Offer, as a convenience, to book those sessions today to ensure the client gets what they need when they need it
* Discovering goals can’t be met by you, refer to another practitioner (MT, chiro, PT, dentist, MD, etc.)
Notice that in NONE OF THESE did I suggest that “MT realizes they could make more money off this client so they push re-booking”. Because re-booking, when done professionally and from within a therapeutic relationship, isn’t about you making more $$$$$$. It’s about you doing what you’ve been doing since they walked in the door — giving them your best professional attention and advice, which may include more sessions to achieve their therapeutic goals OR as an act of hospitality.
QUIT talking about re-booking as an activity focused on your profits. QUIT thinking about it as a way to grow your income. HONOR it as the necessary wrap-up of your professional therapeutic responsibilities to your client and as an act of hospitality-based customer service.
