Early in my massage career some customers worked me over, and I dropped my massage rate for them.
My guess is that a big part of me discounting my massage rate came from a lack of confidence.
You may feel the same way if you’re a compulsive massage rate discounter, too.
But I’m going to sidestep the lack of confidence thing right now.
Why?
Well, for one you’ll get the bends taking that deep of a dive into the recesses of your psychology without some professional help.
And we’ve only got another 1,000 words or so to get you to toughen up on your price.
So, here’s how I’m going to sidestep self-confidence: We’re going to look at confidence as a situational phenomenon.
Sometimes you have it and sometimes you don’t.
You have a great day at work. You rock as an MT, right?
Have a bad day and you’re thinking about a career change.
You can’t count on confidence to get you through being firm with your price.
So let’s attach our thinking to something more permanent, like a plan you refer to when you start to feel yourself giving in.
My plan has these layers:
- Truth
- Lies
- More lies
First, before I get into the truth layer, I’m not saying don’t ever slide on your price.
Little old men and ladies, people who you feel compassion for because they’re in pain and you want to help them, family and business connections—these are ones you may want to slide on.
I’m saying create a strong, firm-price habit so that your default position is “firm price” which will allow you to fight off the bargain shoppers and pushy people.
Believe me, it’s waaay harder (if not impossible) to start with a wishy washy price-mindset and move to a firm price-mindset during the course of a conversation.
Onto the truth layer of sticking to your massage rate.
Layer #1: Truth
Start creating a firm price habit by making sure that viewers can see your prices on your website.
No writing prices in 8pt font at the bottom of your Services page.
By making your price very visible on your website, you’re doing all the firm-price work upfront. If a customer has been to your website, he should know exactly what he’s going to pay before he walks into your office.
If a customer calls to book, make sure she knows your massage rate before you end the phone conversation.
We have an intro rate. I let the customer know our intro price and then I let her know what she’d pay for her next visit.
So being clear about your prices on your website and when booking will silence the person who is not an overly aggressive discount shopper.
But what about the let’s-make-a-deal person who simply thinks he can work you over?
Layer #2: Lies
Joe owned his own company and had 30-ish employees. After the massage he asked me: “Hey, Mark, do you offer package deals?”
I knew that Joe had read our website thoroughly because my wife had a conversation with him where he had said to her that the content on our website was what drew him in.
He straight up knew that we didn’t offer a package deal. And that our discount was already built into our pricing because we had a no tipping policy.
Joe was trying to work me, and didn’t want to hear about what we were already doing for him.
My first response was a truth: “We can’t afford to offer another discount”.
That didn’t throw Joe off stride for one second.
It was time to unpack the lies.
Here are some of my go-to lies:
- My ____ (fill in with wife, husband, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancé…) would kill me if I ______ (offered a discount, gave a package deal…).
By the way, Joe used this one on me to start the conversation. He said that his wife wouldn’t let him get a massage every week if he had to pay $X.
- Our expenses have really shot up.
- Our business is on a super-tight budget.
Truthfully, I forget what I told Joe. But whatever I said was good enough to make Joe regroup and work a different angle.
He then said, “I’d like to send my employees to you maybe as a reward kind of thing or have you come out to my office.”
Okay, so that kind of nebulous promise of employee gifts and special events rarely works out.
Show me the money, Joe.
I said something like, “We do things like that with a lot of companies in the areas.” (And they don’t ask for discounts.)
Joe wasn’t done with me.
“We have a great website team. I’m sure one of my guys could make yours really look like a big business,” he said.
“But, Joe, you said our website content drew you in.”
“It did.”
“Well, then it’s sorta working without being super fancy…”
Confused dog look, then he said: “Yeah, but we could get you good, professional pictures…[wheels turning as he thought]…and we could get it so that you rank high and get more traffic.”
“But we’re first in the organic search already and rank in the top 5 in the local search.”
Crickets.
It was apparent that Joe had no idea what the difference was between local and organic searches.
Joe backed off (and is now a bi-weekly client).
But I was ready for more “working me down” with more lies.
Layer#3: More Lies
He could have said: “I have a lot of people I’d like to refer to you.”
Response: “I appreciate that, but we’re really swamped.” (We don’t need clients.)
Which brings me to the ultimate answer to staying firm on your price: You need to have new clients coming in all the time.
When that happens you won’t fear losing the customer who is trying to work you because you know that another client will be ringing your phone soon.
If you don’t have new customers coming in check out my Build a Massage Business Mini Crash Course.
And if you need a website so that you can create your first layer of Firm Price Defense this is my Webiste DIY guide.
Sticking to Your Massage Rate
My bottom line with customers who want me to lower my massage rate is this: Some are true bargain shoppers.
And if I’m not the cheapest, they’ll go elsewhere.
Fine.
I don’t want them. Let them find someone else.
But for the ones like Joe whose DNA says “get the best deal possible all the time”, you just need to back them off.
Try the truth first.
If that doesn’t work: Lie.
Then more lies.
Practice that a few times and I’m pretty sure that you won’t crack.
Need more help?
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Hi Mark! Loving your course and your writing. You are a genuinely kind soul & I wish I were local to you! I noticed you mentioned a “no tipping policy.” I’ve never heard of that before. Have you written about it?
Hey Hillary! I’m glad you like the course and posts, and thank you for supporting my work! It’s comments like yours that keep me going:-)
Regarding the no tipping policy, I have not written about that before. Hmm…maybe I should…but for now here’s a brief explanation of the rationale behind a no tipping policy.
My wife, Lisa, and I are experimenting with a different type of business model that includes no tipping. The first piece of no tipping is about the MT. We pay our MTs a higher wage than industry standard since they aren’t getting tips when they work for us. The upside for the MT is that she doesn’t have to rely on tips (which can be unreliable) as part of her income.
From a “doing the best job you can” standpoint, with no tipping there is no unconscious favoring of the client who tips more than the client who doesn’t.
From a customer standpoint, we feel that most clients like the idea of not having to worry about how much of a tip to leave.
From a marketing standpoint we are hoping to tap into a market of customers who can now afford massage because we lowered the price some.
From a perception standpoint we are trying align ourselves more with the medical field (where there is no tipping) rather than the spa industry (where there is tipping).
Those are the basic concepts behind the no tipping policy.
By the way, Lisa and I do take our CE classes on the road. Last month we were in Seattle. Let me know if you have an interest and maybe we can figure something out. Thanks, Hillary!
Mark