Dear Fellow Therapist,

Referrals are one of the least costly methods for acquiring new massage clients that you will ever be able to add to your business. If you are already getting a lot of referrals from your existing clients than you are doing a lot of things right.

Referrals typically come from primarily one of three sources:

1) Existing clients.

2) Business allies, associates, or networking contacts.

3) People you know socially: your friends, your family, significant others of your friends, etc.

Your primary source for getting new clients by referral is going to be from your existing massage clients. If you don’t have a whole lot of existing clients, referrals can quickly improve things for you.

If any of your business building efforts included networking to get other business professionals to refer to you, this will help a lot.

Focus on getting complementary business professionals to refer to you first. This will produce the quickest results.

One of the complementary business professionals is actually other massage therapists. If you are a specialist, it’s easy to give and receive referrals from other bodyworkers. That’s because you probably are not in competition with them.

For example, if you specialize in an area like chronic pain relief, then most massage therapists aren’t competing in the same niche trying to get the same clients.

The frequency of referrals can be intermittent if you are not using a referral system.

There is a big difference between having a referral system and just plain referrals.

A referral system is a systemized process you use to encourage other people to refer to you.

I highly recommend you use a referral system for several reasons.

If you rely on strictly on word of mouth advertising, or people to refer to you when they think of it…

…most people won’t ever think of you.

People are too busy in their own lives to be concerned about the health of your massage business.
Maybe, once in a while, if you knock the socks off a client with your work, they may refer to you their business ally or a friend.

With no referral system, there will be no predictable stream of referrals coming in.

Let’s compare this with someone who is using a dedicated referral system. You really deliver an awesome massage to a grateful client. Using a dedicated referral system you are telling her who she can refer, based on your areas of expertise.

It sounds simple but it’s an incredibly powerful marketing method. In fact, I believe in it so much that I’ve created a live training on referral systems.

It’s almost ready to be announced and when I do… I’ll share over 20 different referral systems that you can easily plug into your massage business and start using right away.

Look for more detailed information on the live training next week.

Until next time,

Mike Humphreys