Most clients who book appointments with you both enjoy whatever service you provide and can clearly see the benefits of this service. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have booked in the first place.

For example if a client books a massage, they can clearly want a massage and they know they will feel better afterwards. Or for someone who gets their hair cut, they know their hair is going to look better for it and they can look in the mirror afterwards and get proof of this.

What is the possibility that when that person comes in for their massage they think… “Gee this is great, my sore calf muscle is finally relaxing a bit. But you know what, after this, I’m not going to book in for at least another 6 months because I actually enjoy hobbling around when it hurts a bit”?

Not very likely. When that person books in for their massage they know its going to help them and they’ve got every intention of coming back again to ensure their calf muscle is fully rehabilitated.

And when that person comes in for their haircut, what’s the likelihood of them thinking… “Wow, I love this new haircut but I actually quite like it when the style grows out and there’s lots of split ends. I don’t think I’ll book another hair cut for at least 8 or 9 months”?

Again not likely or they wouldn’t have bothered booking their haircut in the first place.

In reality those people are probably thinking “gee, I must book in for often, my hair looks fantastic” or “wow my muscle is really relaxing, I must ask if I should come back next week to get it completely back to normal”.

So in our marketing processes, we need to educate our clients.

Show them you are the expert and give them the knowledge to understand how they can help themselves. It’s like the Chinese Proverb “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

If you take the time to build those relationships and you teach your clients WHY their hair starts to look a bit icky after a few months and HOW it is going to benefit them to book in more often, then they will make that decision themselves that they ought to book in more often.

And if you then start showing them what they can do in their day-to-day life to keep their hair looking good until their next appointment… they will respect you and trust your opinion.

And then if you are in regular contact with them, they will never go anywhere else. Because they trust you, they like you, you’ve been helpful to them and you take the time to share your expert knowledge with them.

Spring is finally on it’s way and it’s reminded me of the importance of planning for success…

Last year I got out in the garden and did a complete overhaul. I watched several of those garden DIY shows, drew myself a little plan and then followed it.

I took quite a bit of time creating my plan and it included year round plants as well as seasonal flowers so that the garden would be enjoyable all throughout the year.

It was hard work but really great fun! Our garden had been a little neglected over the years so out came all the old weeds and out came the big dead tree. We then carefully tended to the remaining healthy plants and implemented our garden makeover. A lovely little water feature went in along with quite few plants and a dozen or so bulbs.

Quite a bit of work later and it was done.

Now months later I’d completely forgotten we even planted bulbs but sure enough a few tulips started poking their heads above ground a little while ago and now they are in full bloom. That lovely splash of colour reminded me strongly of the importance of forward planning.

The successful entrepreneurs of the world didn’t get there by accident. They planned to get where they are. Some of them have had a bit of good luck along the way but all of them dared to dream of success and then put steps into action to get there. If they hadn’t followed their dreams up with planning and action they wouldn’t have got where they are. Simple as that.

If you want to reach your goal turnover or your magic number of regular clients, you need to follow their lead. Decide clearly what it is you want then go for it.

Make a plan of how you are going to get there. Where is the extra income going to come from? Exactly how many new clients do you need per week? And where are you going to find these people?

Then go out and follow your plan. The plan might change or evolve as time goes on but just get started and then follow your plan with determination.

Tulips don’t just magically appear, you need to plant the bulbs that create them and you need to make sure you do that in the right type of soil.

The same goes with clients. Sure some of them will just rock up on your doorstep but they are few and far between. To get a large and loyal client base that regularly book and buy from you, you need to learn what works then create plans that will make this happen.

If you just sit and wait for a horde of people to arrive at your door, you might be waiting a while. But if you get out there, give your potential clients a reason to want to find out more and then spend the time build a relationship with them, you will find your business growing quickly in exactly the direction you want it to.

I’m very excited to share with you today the live event I mentioned last time…

I’ve been working on this for months and it is going to be amazing. For an entire day in June you can discover my Blueprint for Marketing Success at this exclusive Workshop LIVE and in person.

This isn’t a seminar where you listen and wonder how you are going to implement everything… this is a hands-on workshop where I’ll share with you my best marketing techniques and we’ll then individualise them for YOUR business.

Whether you’ve just started your business and are struggling to get clients calling you or whether you’ve been going a while but just can’t get your income to where you want it to be, this is the workshop for you!

However this event is ONLY for Therapists, Stylist, Beauticians, Healers, Alternative Practitioners & Wellbeing Business Owners who are excited by the idea of earning more while providing fantastic service AND who ready to take their business to the next level.

It will just be you, me and a small group of other business owners all working towards the same goal. Going through step-by-step what you need to do, how to do it and then customising it for your business.

You can ask questions, get involved and go home knowing you’ve got everything you need to create a continual stream of new clients into your business and regular clients coming back… all bringing you more income while you have more time to do what you enjoy!

I can’t wait, I’m so excited and I hope you are too! Find out all the details and reserve your place for this exclusive workshop by going to www.wellbeingbookings.co.uk/workshop2008.

Since this is such a hands-on workshop and I want everyone to get one-on-one attention, I’m having to limit the spots available to a small group of people. So if you want to attend this extraordinary event, don’t miss out. Claim your spot now at www.wellbeingbookings.co.uk/workshop2008.

If you read my article a few weeks ago, you’ll know that over Easter I painted my living room a lovely cream magnolia colour.

I’m a big fan of the property programs that are on telly at the moment so I while I was feeling all excited about how fresh and pretty my living room was looking, I decided I was also going to do a subtle feature wall.

Now I’ve never used wallpaper before and to be honest, I’m normally not a big fan of it but in the DIY store I saw this cream swirl pattern that looked fantastic next to the cream paint and I decided I would give it a try.

So I did my homework - I logged onto the DIY store’s wallpaper guide and read it from start to finish. I then measured, re-measured and measured the wall again and put all the information into their online calculator and discovered I need just less than 12meters.

So I dragged my partner back to the DIY store, got 2 rolls (20 meters worth) and happily strolled out to the car feeling as if Sarah Beeny would be ever so proud of me. Then very irritatingly our car wouldn’t start and we spent several hours fluffing around trying to get it going.

When we finally got home and got started hanging the wallpaper it turned out that we were 2 entire drops of wallpaper short. So now I’m stuck at home without transport and missing a strip of wallpaper about 1meter wide all the way down the left hand side of the wall. After hours of car problems and with wallpaper paste everywhere I was unimpressed to say the least!

Maybe the calculator malfunctioned. Maybe the calculator doesn’t work properly. Or maybe since I’m a wallpaper novice, I just got it wrong. I thought I had read everything and measured everything twice but perhaps I still got it wrong? Who knows…

What I do know though is that it wasn’t a great experience.

So here’s something for you to think about this week…

* Do you make sure your clients understand the services you offer fully?
* Do they properly understand the benefits and how to achieve them?
* Do they know how often they ought to book in?
* Are they buying the products that will give them best results?
* And most importantly, will they ask for help when they need it?

If the answer to any of these is no, what systems do you have in place to deal with this?

Taking action to make a booking or purchase a product is ultimately only a decision that your clients can make for themselves. But if you are able to ensure you provide them with every bit of help they might need, you are likely to end up with much happier clients as well as a higher income.

Here’s another great question, this time from Becky…

It’s been another busy week for me this week. I’m preparing for a fantastic live event that I will tell you all about as soon as I’ve finalised the details. It’s really exciting and I can’t wait. I’ll email you with the details as soon as I’ve got them because it’s so great you’re going to want to put this date in your diary straight away!

In the meantime, Becky sent through a great question this week so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s quite a common problem… how do you promote your services without discounting?

PS… Do you have any questions of your own? If so, please do send them through and I’ll do my best to include them in a future issue!

Becky’s question

Rebecca
Hello! I am probably going to join up today, however, I have a question that you may wish to use, if so, feel free.
You have mentioned that we shouldn’t give our services away. I have a new “far infrared” massage bed that I’ve added to my practice, and I’m unsure of how to market it most effectively. Do I give a first session free - 15 minutes? Do I put a coupon in my newsletter?? Part of the issue is that the makers of this product give away a month for free - unlimited use. I am not planning to do this, their focus is to sell machines, mine is for therapy. However, I am at a loss with how to proceed. They charge $25.00 a session and $150.00 a month after the free month. I am about 1 hour away from the nearest “sales” store, and I suspect that people would use the bed more on a weekly basis than on a daily one, but I’m not sure. We are open 4 days a week, and not here for evening hours. One of the questions I always have when I type up my newsletter is what to offer on special! I usually tie it in with the body of the newsletter somehow. Not too many people are taking me up on the coupons, but I am hearing
that people love the newsletter and copy it and take it to work with them. Still waiting on those bookings though!!

Well, I thought I’d get your advice and I must say I really have found your ideas very beneficial for my practice. I am starting to get reviews on the newsletter, and I love the idea of a “CD” that I can send with clients….. I have so much info to give after the first visit, that they either don’t remember it or don’t read the handouts I give. My intakes are 2-3 hours long, and that’s a long time to hold someone’s attention and also educate at the same time!

I really appreciate all you offer at such a great price. It really is of great value.

Also if you have any other ideas on how to get people to book in that you haven’t seen in a while, I’d be grateful!
Take care
Becky Rupert, ND

My response

Dear Becky,

Thank you for your email. It’s great to hear from people personally! I’ll definitely share this with everyone on the next newsletter as its a great question…

It’s no secret that I’m a big advocate of not discounting and charging full price as I genuinely believe great service should be rewarded. However there are all sorts of ways to do ‘freebie’ type promotions and ‘added value ‘or ‘gift with purchase’ type promotions which can bring in both new and existing clients while still ensuring the client values the service being given.

If you’ve got very little or no cost to the use of the massage bed you could definitely look at doing a ‘first session free’ promotion. If you sign up you’ll learn all about how to do a successful freebie promotion in the first Masterclass. It goes through step-by-step exactly what to do and you even get a template that I’ve used in my own businesses and have found to work wonders.

The main thing I’ve always found with freebie-type promotions is that if I just do a flyer or a poster about something clients just see the word free and very few of them rebook. However if I format the offer as a voucher and physically give out vouchers rather than flyers, then the clients tend to see the voucher as an object of value and they therefore then value it and are more likely to rebook.

Think about when you’ve received a voucher for something from a friend or family member. Did you spend it? Did you place value on it in your mind? Probably yes. You don’t know whether they paid to get the voucher or not yet you still spent it and you still placed real financial value on it.

The same thing happens if you create vouchers to give out in your business. It might be for a service like the massage beds that doesn’t cost you much but if you put on it ‘Valued at $25′ the client will value it at $25. There’s of course all sorts of other things you need to do as well but to create a voucher for your freebie promotion rather than a flyer or poster is a great start.

Great news about your newsletter and its fantastic that your clients are printing them out! I bet they are also forwarding it to friends and family so you might want to put something on there like ‘Been forwarded this email? Subscribe for yourself here…’.

There are still a few free Masterclass Courses left as signup bonuses for the VIP Membership so if you join, you can learn all the steps to how I set up my freebie promotions so they attract new clients but still made a profit.

Keep up the great work. It sounds like this is going to be an amazing year for you!

Best wishes,
Rebecca

Instead of going away, this year I spent my Easter weekend redecorating our living room. I love a bit of DIY and I really enjoyed getting stuck in. The finished result looks great but it took me quite some time to decide on a paint colour.

I knew I wanted a neutral colour but I had no idea how many shades of cream and off-white there are… Buttermilk, Stonewash Cream, Country Cream, Neutral Pale, Clotted Cream, Eggshell, Crumpled Linen, Crushed Cotton…

It took me about 3 hours (much to my partners dismay!) to finally choose a colour before we could go home and get painting.

When we were all finished I got a cup of tea, put my feet up and settled in to read my copy of the Evening Standard magazine from a week or so ago. Now if you read the Evening Standard magazine you’ll know the article that caught my attention.

In the issue for 14 March, Helen Kirwan-Taylor talks about the sheer indecision that can occur when faced with 25 plus shades of off-white paint. Her experience as a design writer has shown that when faced with too many choices, consumers simply freeze and very often walk away with nothing because they can’t make up their minds.

This also applies to therapy and well-being businesses. When faced with too many solutions, very often clients will put off booking because they can’t decide what option to book in for.

How many of your potential clients have walked away not because they don’t want to book, but because they can’t decide which appointment type is best for them? When a client asks about further treatment options, do you give them 2-3 options that you think are the best solutions for them? Or do you hand them a price list with 30 options on it?

It’s certainly something to think about!

Something to do this week – go through your price list with an objective eye and see if there is anything you need to clarify or remove to make choices easier for your clients.

So how did my paint mission turn out? In the end I got Magnolia.

Dear Rebecca,
Thanks for a great conference call again last week-you are so inspiring!
I must admit though that I find your idea of doing a course of treatments at the same price as single treatments, rather difficult to come to terms with. With my facial toning treatments, I feel that I was able to get a few signed up because I greatly reduced the price to make it much more attractive to prospective clients because of the increased value i.e. firstly £225 for 10 sessions instead of £360.

The only thing I could add for free would be the collagen gel for home use worth £25 and a holiday voucher for £100 discount with many travel companies which Embody sent me from a cancelled promotion. Even with these, I can’t see clients eagerly paying £360!
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Best wishes, Cynthia, www.natural-radiance.net

Dear Cynthia,

Thank you for your lovely comments I love what I do and it is so wonderful to know that sharing what I’ve done helps others too.

To answer your question, everyone’s clients are slightly different so the only way you will know for sure is to try it yourself. But I can assure you that if you add enough value in a different way, they will pay full price. It just depends on what your particular clients will respond best to.

You could try the collagen gel and travel vouchers. Or you could ask some other alliance businesses to put in vouchers for their businesses (that both give your clients a gift and promote them). Or perhaps you could write a short guide about something that you could include as a mini-book.

Or if you don’t have time to write something, another idea is to download some free audio recording software and get a friend or close client to agree to you recording a conversation with them then include it as a free CD. You could pick someone that has a common problem (like ageing or stress) and then you do a full consultation with them finishing with giving them an action plan of how they can attack whatever the problem is for the best results.

To do audio recordings I use something called Audacity… really easy to use and is a free download from their homepage http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/. If you do this, don’t worry about sounding professional on CD, just speak normally and give the kind of advice you usually would with clients. The key is to be relaxed, listen, question and then give genuine advice.

Chances are your clients will love this. Most people love a good bit of reality TV and audio is no different. Not necessarily in the Big Brother type format but think of all the property type programs where they do a consultation and then they dispense advice/help and you get to see what happens. Your clients will be reassured other people have the same worries as them, will continue to reaffirm you in their minds as the expert and will be fascinated to hear all your advice.

The sky is the limit in terms of ideas of what you could include. Think outside the box. It might help to sit down with a friend and do some brainstorming as to what your type of clients will value?

If you can include items in the package that they really want, they will pay full price without even blinking an eye.

Regardless of how good services are, when they are discounted, clients value them less. Hard work and great service deserves rewarding. So long as clients feel they are getting good value as well as good service they will happily pay for it and continue to come back.

Good luck! Do let me know what you come up with and how you get on.

Best wishes
Rebecca

If you’ve taken me up on my offer of downloading my free ‘Top 7 Secrets to Massively Increase Your Client Base’ you’ll know all about Jane.

Jane is all those clients who take a look at your website or give you a call to find out about prices but they aren’t in the right place in their lives or minds to book right this particular second…

Jane is all those clients who you really wish would book in but they say they need to check their diary…

Jane is every potential client who found your website on Google but clicked away again before she picked up the phone…

Don’t ignore Jane. She (or he) wants to experience the help you can give them. She’s just not ready to book yet. But she will.

Make it your goal this week to put something on the home page of your website where ‘Jane’ and all the other Jane’s out there can sign up to your mailing list. Also make it a point to start asking all enquiries if they want to give you their email so you can send free health tips every now and again as well as details of any offers you may have in the future.

And then keep in touch. Because if you take care of Jane, you business will end up with lots and lots of them!

PS… If you don’t have your copy of my ‘Top 7 Secrets to Massively Increase Your Client Base’, there are just a few left at www.wellbeingbookings.com.