When it comes to your ideal client, or any client at all, how do they think? What is it that motivates them to book a session? Why book it with you and not another massage therapist? When they do book with you, what outcomes do they hope to achieve? What problems do they expect you to be able to solve?

If you feel bombarded with our questions, good! These are the kinds of questions you have to ask if you want to start thinking like your clients. By shifting from a you-focused mindset to a client-focused mindset, you can begin to anticipate their concerns, needs, objectives, objections, and more. This helps you to be more proactive and offer solutions that suit them, leading to greater alignment between what you do and what they’re looking for.

Let’s talk about how you can start working on this superpower (having a client-focused mindset), so you can set your practice apart, offer amazing services that suit your clients, and foster stronger relationships with your clients so that they will want to keep on coming back.

Identify Your Clients’ Needs

Make no mistake—when clients book a session with you, it’s because they have a goal in mind. They come to you so you can help relieve their physical pain, recover from an injury, or unwind after juggling multiple project transitions resulting from a stressful, month-long business merger.

These surface-level needs are certainly important, but they’re often connected to some underlying, deeper personal motivation. You’ll do fine by focusing just on these surface issues alone.

However, if you really want to help your clients, you should concern yourself with these deeper motivations. Granted, you aren’t going to be able to treat all of these underlying needs, but if you can peer a little bit deeper past the surface level, you’re going to be able to add exponentially more value to your clients.

For example, let’s say you have a client experiencing chronic back pain. They come to you and express that they want relief from this tension, and this is likely all they will share or all they know how to share. If you go just a little bit deeper, though, you can probably see past the surface-level request for temporary relief. Maybe they want to live a life where they aren’t held back by this pain and they can regain their ability to enjoy physical activities they’ve given up on. Maybe it’s even simpler. Perhaps all they want to do is get through a full day of work without discomfort.

To give another example, let’s look at the busy professional who can’t seem to wind down due to the physical and mental stress of her job. Stress relief is crucial, but what if we go a little bit deeper and address that need a little more fully? Maybe she wants more than stress relief; she also wants to overcome her stress-induced brain fog, feel a sense of control over her life, or sleep better and more restfully.

How to Find Out Their Deeper Concerns

Here’s the good news—this information isn’t unobtainable. If you can talk to your clients, empathize, and understand them a little better, you can find these underlying needs. Another factor that might keep clients from sharing more is they don’t know how or they don’t even realize they want more.

To be clear, it’s also not your job to hammer it out of them! So, let’s talk about how you can get to a place with your client where they feel comfortable sharing their concerns with you and how you can uncover the potential underlying layers.

First of all, start by reflecting on why your clients choose you over other practices and therapists. When they do come to you, what are they saying, and do they seem to have anything in common with each other? Are they using the same phrases like chronic pain or stress relief? How do they describe their concerns and their ideal objectives? If you can recognize their patterns, you can probably find the same underlying desires. You can use these patterns to inform how you structure your services so you can tailor them to your target market.

As for opening up the discussion, the key is to use open-ended questions and follow-ups. You might not be able to glean all of this information in the first session. That’s okay! Focus on listening and being empathetic, and grow your relationship with your client. You can use questions like, “What did you want to focus on today?” or “What’s the most important goal for you with this session?”

To take a page out of Michael Bungay Stanier’s “The Coaching Habit” book, one technique you can use is to ask a simple yet powerful question. After your client has shared their concerns in full, go ahead and ask, “And what else?”

What this does is it actually helps to shift your client’s mindset a little bit so they can think beyond the surface-level concerns. You’re on the right track If you get a response that starts with, “Well, now that I think about it…”

As for follow-up questions, you can ask, “How did you feel after the last session?” Then, you can use their feedback to adjust your approach or ask more questions to find better ways to serve them. If you can get to these underlying concerns and long-term goals, you can offer services that address both to create happier, more satisfied clients.

Anticipate Client Concerns

Another area that can benefit from better understanding your clients is to anticipate and address client concerns.

Even the most enthusiastic clients might have concerns that keep them from booking a session with you or signing up for one of your service packages. The concerns tend to be the same, with some common ones being affordability, skepticism about massage therapy, or logistical challenges like finding the right time slot in their busy schedules.

That being said, there are ways to lessen the impact of these thoughts, as long as you can address them proactively and meet your clients where they are. This will be different from practice to practice, but you’ll see some objections are more common than others. Let’s cover a few of them.

Objection 1: Affordability

Clients might not be ready to pay for massage therapy, especially as they might view it as a luxury rather than a necessity. To address this from one angle, you could make your pricing highly transparent and even explain the value your services provide. You might share that regular massage therapy has scores of benefits, including stress relief, injury prevention, and improving their overall well-being.

If people still push back, they might be a good fit for one of your cost-effective package deals that is more approachable for new clients.

Objection 2: Skepticism

You will come across a lot of clients who are on the fence about massage therapy, especially if they express some sentiment to the effect of, “I’m not really sure it will work for me.”

Acknowledge that they feel that way, but then feel free to share some client testimonials or case studies where you’ve helped someone else in their position get awesome results. We talk about testimonials in every post, and we do so because they are powerful tools with which you can build your business, make more sales, and overcome potential objections. Use them in your marketing, on social media, and anywhere else where people come across your brand.

For example, if you’ve helped someone recover from a sports injury and they shared that they were back on the field in a few weeks doing what they loved, that might help someone set aside their objection or at least think about it.

Objection 3: Time and Logistics

The third most common objection is time. People are busy. You probably understand that better than most.

However, the fix for this one is pretty straightforward​​—make it easy for busy professionals to book a session with you, even if it is a shorter session. You might promote “30-minute targeted massage for busy professionals!” to those who are short on time but still want the benefits of one of your sessions.

For each of these objections, you can proactively address them before they even get in the door, showing potential clients that you understand them and can commit yourself to helping them and to create an experience that works for them and meets their needs.

Understand Client Motivation to Book Sessions

Before we dive into tailoring your services, let’s briefly talk about why they’re motivated to book sessions with you. We’ve already touched on the fact that their concerns are deeper than surface level and might span physical, emotional, or even social needs.

As we mentioned earlier, the key in your listening to them will be in understanding the patterns across all of your clients. If most of your clients come to you looking for stress relief sessions, and you aren’t really offering stress relief services or creating tailored stress relief packages, you’re leaving money on the table and your clients unsatisfied.

Identify these recurring themes and work them into your business. Use them in your marketing to address the clients who should come and see you for their high stress levels. Include little perks and benefits in your packages that extend your services to help them not just reduce stress but work on improving focus and bettering their sleep habits.

Speak directly to them in your messaging. “Trouble unwinding from your stressful job? Time to let go of physical tension, improve focus, and sleep better.” That’s just a suggestion, but the idea is that you can cut through the noise of other advertising to address what your people want and need, not just on a surface level, but deeper, as well. Just pay attention to the patterns and you’ll be able to draw in the right clients that you can build trust with.

Tailoring the Client Experience Around Client Goals

Now that you understand your clients better, it’s time to truly set your practice apart and apply what you’ve learned.

It starts with the marketing, which we’ve covered briefly above. If you’ve been following along in our posts, you know we always recommend leveraging testimonials, focusing on how you solve specific problems, and using clear and engaging language that makes the benefits of working with you clear. Skip the technical jargon and get right to what you can do for them.

You can also use what you’ve learned to improve the actual booking process. With the right online booking platform, the process to book with you is easier, and it can automate sending confirmation emails, and other important information, such as tips for stress relief, how to prepare for their session, and more, if you wish. It wouldn’t hurt if these emails signed off with a different client testimonial. Proactive communication helps alleviate any concerns they may have and helps to create a more positive experience overall.

When it comes time to have their session, you can create an environment that’s fine-tuned for maximum relaxation. You might use calming music, essential oils, soft lighting, and other small touches to improve the ambiance so that, when they arrive, they can feel comfortable. Listen to any feedback you get from your clients and adjust accordingly to refine your environment.

After the first session, and perhaps after every few sessions, send a brief email or survey to check in on how they’re doing, feeling, and progressing. This can help them feel like they’re being cared for even when they’re not at your practice, and you can use the feedback to improve your services going forward.

The Client-First Approach to a Thriving Practice

Understand your clients, and you’ll be able to build long-term relationships and meet client goals like never before. Not only will this help you to address their concerns (surface-level and underlying), but it will also help you create a richer experience where they will feel like they are seen, heard, and taken care of.

You might just find that switching to a client-first approach is one of the most important shifts you’ve ever made as a massage therapist. Don’t forget to listen well and to be empathetic so you can add value that exceeds your client’s expectations.

This will allow you to book more clients, establish truly loyal customers, and build a thriving massage business that keeps clients coming back.

For more help starting and building your massage business, check out our eBook “How to start a massage business in ten easy steps.” It’s packed with actionable insights and advice for starting from scratch and building up a profitable massage practice.