How to Get Massage Clients: Referrals

When I opened an office in my town physical therapists in the area hated me. I spent months pestering them for a meeting—but I literally couldn’t even give my massage away.

Then I met a PT named Charlie—and it looked like we were a match made in heaven. We shared similar views on health and wellness AND Charlie didn’t accept insurance, which meant his patients were used to paying out of pocket.

Easy Referrals

But I’m getting ahead of the story, and I need to backtrack. Early on in my career I knew enough to build relationships with other health professionals and businesses. These relationships would be sources of potential referrals.

Fortunately for me at the time, I didn’t have to go too far to find a health professional who would refer clients to me because I rented office space from a chiropractor. Our mutual referral efforts were based on value not out of some business obligation. She did good work and she thought that I did good work, so referrals back and forth was a no-brainer.

At the same time, I had another office in an independent fitness center. Most of the personal trainers, yoga teachers and the aerobic instructors were high caliber. I had no problem referring to them and they would refer clients to me.

There was another bonus to having an office connected to a chiropractor and a fitness center. For the most part, the people that walked through the front doors of both places wanted to feel better. They were ideal massage clients.

From a marketing standpoint, I was located in two meccas of qualified leads (customers who had the key characteristics of someone who would purchase my services).

Not So Easy Referrals

But the town office was like being on an island. I had to actually go out and find referrals sources, which meant cold calls.

Fun…

So I called a list of physical therapy groups.

I got crickets.

I worked my way through the list again. Not a peep.

One more time.

Nada.

Okaaaay… Time for the pop-in and card drop-off.

And this is where things really took off, right?

Not even close.

I had one email exchange with the head PT at a local NovaCare. But eventually he stopped responding to my emails.

Another month or so of calls and drop-ins netted me a demo massage event at a PT office near my office.

They loved the massage at the PT office. Alright, now we’re getting somewhere, I thought!

Not so fast. My follow-up with gift certificates for the staff didn’t produce a response nor did my follow-up phone calls.

Bad Cold Call List

Cold calling is crap!

Well, that’s what I thought after 6 months of banging my head against the wall. But after I had some time to think about things, I started to realize that cold calling wasn’t necessarily the problem.

It was who I was cold calling that was the problem.

I remembered that the health professionals who referred to me in the past valued massage and didn’t have a go-to massage person to refer to.

But my cold call list had only one criterion: any business that showed up in a Google search.

So, I went to my chiropractor list and looked for a chiro who valued massage, didn’t do massage in her office and didn’t have a go-to massage person.

It actually didn’t take me that long to find someone, Bernie, a chiro who had an office about 2 miles from ours. The Google search showed that he probably didn’t offer massage, and when I talked to him, bingo, I found out that he was cash/check only and was massage-person-less.

I set up some demo massages at his office. The rest is happy history that you can read about here.

PT Retry

Now it was time to apply the same search methodology to PTs, but here’s thing, I didn’t need to search at all. I knew a Bernie (someone who was hungry for patients and didn’t accept insurance) in the PT world already—Charlie.

So, I sent Charlie a couple of clients and he was super-responsive to my questions. The clients loved him and he did a great job. Like a gambler at the slot machine I waited for the jackpot signs to pop up, but every time I pulled the handle (sent Charlie a client), I came up empty. Charlie didn’t send me a client.

Alright, maybe Charlie just needed time to feel the reciprocity connection, but after a year it was still a one way street. Now what?

Bitch and moan.  Correct. But what about after that?

Re-evaluate. Charlie was a solid PT to refer specific clients to—clients with back pain and clients who could pay out of pocket. But that still left most of my clients who needed a PT out in the cold. So, I needed to have more than one PT. Interestingly, this time, the PT found me.

PTA to the Rescue

A new client, Shanice, came in with a neck and arm issue. As I was doing her intake, she said that her PT, Leslie, had referred her to me. Strangely, I did not know Leslie.

So, I asked Shanice if it was okay if I coordinated her care with Leslie. Shanice was 100% on board and I did. Leslie was nice and she laid out her treatment plan and how I might support her work. This was exactly what I was looking  for in terms of developing a business relationship wth a PT. Not too long after, a PTA, Toral, came in for an intro massage.

Toral liked my work and she rescheduled. The PT referral world was looking more promising. And sure enough, more PT clients started to come my way. When I went back to look at the intake to see who was referring clients to me, I was a bit surprised. It wasn’t Leslie. It was Toral. My first steady PT referral source was not actually a PT, it was a PTA.

I’m NOT telling you this story to encourage you to engage PTAs over PTs. Both can be good referral sources. I’m telling you this story to encourage you to look at your current client list and coordinate care with clients who are seeing a chiropractor, personal trainer, PT or a PTA for a condition that you’re treating as well.

The other day a chiro referred one of his patients to me, Kara. Kara had been going to a massage therapist for many years, but that massage therapist changed jobs during COVID. So, the chiro referred her to me.

I don’t know the chiro. But guess what? I will know him soon. I immediately sent him an email thanking him for the referral, and I requested a time to chat about Kara’s care. When we chat about Kara, I will also find out more about his business. If we’re a good fit, I have another chiro I can refer to, and he has more confidence in referring to me.

Cracking into the health practitioner referral world takes some outside work and some inside work. Yes, you need to get your name out there. Cold calling and emailing can help with that. That’s the outside work.

The inside work is on your clients intake forms. It’s the line on the intake that says something like, Who referred you? If you don’t have that line on your intake, put it in.

There’s a Heart Here

Okay, this is sounding all business-y, I know. That’s because it IS business-y.

For one simple reason. If you don’t have clients walking through your door, you’re working for someone else. And that’s more than okay if you like working for someone else. But if you don’t, you gotta be business-y.

And here’s the thing about being business-y:

You don’t have to sacrifice your first born.

You don’t have to use your clients for financial gain.

And you don’t have to refer a client to another health practitioner to simply meet a quota.

You control the shots. Morals. Ethics. And business model.

Get Clients Sooner Than Later

So yes, when I searched for a chiro I was business-y. I found the chiro that could refer to me BUT if our health philosophies didn’t jibe or if I didn’t respect his work, I wasn’t going to refer to him.

The same thing applies to PTs—if I don’t like the PT’s work, I’m not going to send her clients.

If you need clients ASAP don’t waste time trying to build relationships with practitioners who are not going to refer to you. Start looking for the good ones outside your office (cold call/email) and inside your office (during the intake if there’s a chance to coordinate care).

The Accelerator Program

This is my game plan to coordinate care and to take a massage business to 60+ K: The Accelerator.

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