Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72121
"Boulder is a city of about 100,000 people," he says. "We were seeing about 3,600 new people per year and we'd been in business five years, that's about 15,000 clients. But if we're getting 300 new clients each month, the fact we're not growing means we must also be losing 300 clients a month. Where were those people going? At this rate, we only had a few more years before we ran out of new people in Boulder to work on." He began to look, he says, for "the hole in the bottom of the boat." The problem, he decided, was not in the clinical skills of the massage therapists he employed. As far as he could determine, they all knew what they were doing. Rather, the problem lay in the therapists' ability to communicate with clients: to find out exactly what problems the client was experiencing, what the client expected from the massage, how the client was experiencing the massage, and—most critical of all—educating the client to the potential benefit that a repeat massage could offer, then booking one. "We found that communication is more important than any other skill, yet it's something massage school graduates are woefully unprepared for when they enter the massage therapy field," says McCuistion, who is also a certified massage and neuromuscular therapist and associate instructor at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy. As he began to identify what was causing that "hole in his boat," McCuistion instituted new policies that, in effect, caused a paradigm shift at MassageSpecialists.com, which now has two studios in Boulder and one in nearby Denver. He designed a communication flowchart (see The Road Map, page 60) and instructed his employees how to systematically determine what the client wants and what the client feels he or she is receiving. He devised ways to objectify and quantify clients' symptoms and their level of improvement following treatment. At the end of a session, the therapist's suggestions for future bodywork are written on a prescription pad, which helps communicate the message that massage is more than a simple indulgence. McCuistion even asks the massage therapists on his staff to sign a "satisfaction guarantee" contract. If clients don't get what they're expecting, or leave dissatisfied, the massage is free. "It's not a guarantee that our massage therapist can fix something. We're not guaranteeing an outcome," McCuistion says. "We ask them to guarantee that they'll communicate effectively during the session, so there's nothing they miss." The emphasis is on getting new clients to leave as satisfied clients, and thus become repeat clients, and then to become regular clients. At the end of each client session, MTs at MassageSpecialists.com write their suggestions for future bodywork on a prescription pad. It's also about getting massage therapists to stop being shy about spelling out for clients just what benefits additional bodywork can offer, getting them to own that expertise, and being willing to pick up the phone and call clients to see how they're doing postmassage. "What gets in the way is massage therapists' belief that they love what they do and they can't believe people pay them to do it. What gets in the way is asking clients to come back and spend even more money on something that's expensive," McCuistion says. "But why do we think massage is expensive? If I have a migraine, and I can come to you for a massage and afterward I feel so much better I don't have to buy migraine medicine, that makes massage a lot less expensive. So why shouldn't I communicate that to the client?" CULTIVATING STICKINESS At MassageSpecialists.com, McCuistion closely tracks each therapist's monthly numbers. He knows how many new clients each therapist sees each month, and how many of those come back for a second visit within 30–90 days. He realized that the busiest therapists weren't necessarily the best therapists. Thus, the therapists who are paid the highest hourly rate are those who bring back the most repeat customers, because those are the therapists McCuistion is most interested in maintaining as associates. "It's the 'stickiness' factor we now reward," he says. "In the past, we created a culture of entitlement. The longer you were with us, the more you were paid and you got better shifts. But that didn't recognize how you were actually doing in Celebrate ABMP's 25th anniversary and you may win a refund on your membership. ABMP.com. 59