There Are Only Three Ways to Increase Your Sales
This blog post is for massage therapists in private practice and clinic owners who want a more profitable practice.
How do you get more profitable? It’s a simple process, really. You have to make a lot more money than you put out for expenses. The greater the difference between your sales and your expenses, the more profitable you are.
The formula is simple:
Sales – Expenses = Profits
There is not a lot you can do on the expense side of that equation. You have fixed overhead costs that stay the same, no matter how many clients you see, like your rent and your massage equipment. And you have variable costs. These variable costs depend on how many clients you see and include supplies like the cost of lotion or your linen cleaning service. It’s hard to decrease your expenses dramatically. You need a space to work out of, and you need supplies.
So the logical place to increase your profits is by increasing your sales. So let’s look at the sales end of the equation. This is a problematic area for most massage professionals. Most are simply not getting enough new clients through the door and are failing to maximize sales to their current clients.
On a more positive note, because this is a weak area, you have a great deal of leverage – you can have a tremendous impact on your profits with minimal work.
So how do we increase sales?
There are only three ways to increase sales…
If we look at this question in a systematic way, you’ll see that there are essentially only three ways you can increase sales. Here they are:
1) You can get MORE NEW CLIENTS.
If you want more water in the bathtub, you open up the faucet and fill it up. You always need to keep pouring new clients into your practice because the plug in your “practice bathtub” will always be leaky, and your client tub will empty over time if you don’t keep the faucet running.
But the tub doesn’t have to be leaky. You can improve your client retention rate. If you can retain a customer for another year, it is one less new customer that you have to get. It is a very direct relationship. So client acquisition and client retention are really two sides of the same coin.
2) You can get new and existing clients to see you MORE FREQUENTLY.
If your average client sees you six times per year and you can get them to see you nine times instead, you’ve just increased your sales by 50%. So if you were making $20,000, you’re now making $30,000.
3) You can get new and existing clients to SPEND MORE with you on each visit.
In other words, you increase the average transaction value. So, for example, if your average treatment length is 50 minutes and you can bump it up to 60 minutes, you’ve increased your sales by 20%. Or if you increase your price from $50 per hour to $60, you’ve increased your sales by 20%.
If you focus on just one of these areas, you’re going to make more money. For example, if you increase one area by 20% (let’s say you focus on getting new customers only,) then your income increases by 20%. So if I were making $20,000, I would now be making $24,000.
But something quite magical happens when you focus on all three areas at the same time. Let me illustrate what happens with a concrete example.
The magic multiplier effect
Let’s say, for example, that you increase each area by 20%. Last year you saw 100 new clients – this year it increases to 120. Last year each client saw you an average of five times – this year, it increases to six times. Last year each person spent $50 per visit – and this year, they spend $60.
Those aren’t big increases. They are all very realistic and very achievable, wouldn’t you agree?
So what’s the impact on your sales? Do they increase by 20%?
No.
Do they increase by 60%? That seems more logical because you get 20% increases in three areas.
The answer is still no.
Your sales will increase by 73%!!!
You see, there is a magical multiplier effect. Instead of adding those 20% increases, you multiply them. You don’t have just linear growth; you have geometric or exponential growth. What does that mean?
It means you make a lot more money with a lot less work!
Your sales have gone from $20,000 all the way to $34,560, with small (and very achievable) increases of 20% in each of the three areas of your business.
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Is this really possible?
It’s more than possible. In fact, I’ll show you with actual figures from one of my clinics how you can double your income without getting any additional new clients.
Double your income with no new clients
These are real numbers from two different therapists in one of my clinics over a six-month period. Both therapists started at about the same time and had equal numbers of new clients coming in. But I won’t consider new clients right now because I want to illustrate how you can double your income without new clients. Instead, I’ll focus on the other side of that coin: client retention.
I coached both of these therapists on increasing their income within the clinic. They didn’t invest any money or do any advertising, networking, or promotions that most people would consider marketing. Really, I was just teaching them how to interact with their clients so that their clients would get the maximum benefit from their services.
There was one big difference between these two therapists. Therapist A was very resistant to implementing my ideas. On the other hand, Therapist B had a very open attitude and was pretty willing to try any suggestion to see how it would work. Here are their numbers on those three areas mentioned above:
Retention (the percentage of clients coming back in the next six-month period):
Therapist A: 52%
Therapist B: 63%
Difference: +11%
Frequency (the average number of client visits in the six-month period):
Therapist A: 1.83 visits
Therapist B: 2.96 visits
Difference: +60%
Money spent per session (as the result of longer session lengths):
Therapist A: $43.99
Therapist B: $47.52
Difference: +8%
When you add it up, the difference in sales between these two therapists is not 8%, 11%, 60%, or even 79%. The total difference in sales: 92%!
Therapist B made 92% more than Therapist A. That’s almost double the income with no additional new clients. He just used some simple techniques and tactics to help his client benefit in a fuller way from his massage.
And did you notice I said “his”? Therapist B was a man. Therapist A was a woman. That should help dispel the myth that men are disadvantaged in this profession. (So stop whining, guys.)
Would you like to increase your income dramatically?
Increasing your income is easier than you think when you use the right strategies and tactics. And for over 20 years, I’ve been teaching massage therapists and bodyworkers simple and effective ways to increase their income dramatically.
One of the most powerful coaching programs I have ever conducted was called “60 Clients in 60 Days”. It outlined in detail a simple way for any therapist, even if you don’t like marketing or sales, to fill their practice quickly.
Recently, I turned that coaching program into an affordable course now available at Massage Mastery Online.
More than just helping you get more clients, it takes you through a strategy to increase sales in all three ways I’ve outlined. It utilizes that magic multiplier effect to maximize the income from each client to get exponential increases in sales. And with the holiday season coming up, this is the perfect time to get started with this strategy.
If you want to improve your income dramatically, check it out.
By the way, although this blog post is aimed at those who are in private practice, you don’t have to be in business for yourself to benefit from this course. If you are working for someone else as an employee, but things are a little quiet, you can use many of the strategies in this course to get more clients and have them come in more often and spend more with you on each visit.
Article written by: Eric Brown