What Makes You Special?

  I’ve written this blog for several years now, but I enjoy coming back to a subject I hold dear: succeeding in this field. I was part of a discussion today about what differentiates massage therapists. A colleague of mine who is outside the field raised the question: “How do people find good massage?” I think it’s a fascinating query, and one that isn’t easy to answer. Historically our members tell us their primary means of finding new clients is word of mouth. As I’ve repeated to countless groups of students over the past 16 years, word of mouth is a tried and true method of advertising, but it’s not as simple as it sounds; it requires a sender and  receiver. You have to have a fan in order to have that someone extol your virtues. Consider that there are 320,000+ massage therapists in the United States, and 237 million adults; so, on average there are approximately 740 adults for every massage therapist. I bet if you listed all of your “regular” clients (defining broadly, those who have visited you more than once), you would find you have a decent number already. Good for you. But what if those folks gave you three or four “potentials” to contact and you could use their names as references? You’d be on your way to a pretty robust prospect list. What would you say to entice those prospects to become “try-ers”? Is it just price? Environment? Location? You? Put another way, if I visit your town, why should I get a massage from you? Feel free to share your thoughts below!   Road to Boston: Week 6 I utilize a pretty cool website and app to keep track of my training—runkeeper.com. You can use the app as a GPS to track your distance, and you can even choose a playlist for your run, augmented by a serious-sounding female voice who interrupts all too often to give progress reports. I use the app on occasion, but I don’t love running with my smart phone, so I most typically use it as a training log. You can even plot routes using Google Maps. Using the log helps me see the entries building up. Do you use a scheduling tool for your sessions? Analyzing a full schedule, or full training log, can serve as great reinforcement/motivation.   Prefer to receive more from Les in small doses? Follow him on Twitter — @abmp_les.