Who the hell is stupid enough to raise massage prices during the middle of a pandemic?
Yep, that would be me.
Why am I raising my rate?
The obvious answer is that operating costs have gone up. There’s PPE, HEPA air systems, more laundry, more electricity, and more time to disinfect in between clients.
The less obvious answer is that we don’t know how long we’re going to be carrying on with higher operating costs. It may even be the new norm.
But you know all that already. The part you’re concerned about is what happens when I do raise my price?
In other words, will clients start walking?
Here’s my guess: If you’re raising your rate by $5/hour, your clients are not going to walk—even during the middle of a pandemic.
How Not To Fear the Price Raise
By the way, a $5 increase doesn’t have to apply to everyone. If some of your clients are struggling now because of a work stoppage or work loss, you can always make an exception to the rule and keep those clients at your pre-pandemic rate.
And if there is someone who is completely outraged that you’re raising the price of your massage to cover increased operating costs, he can always go somewhere else, which brings me to another good reason to raise your price now: Who are they going to go to?
There’s less competition. Not only is there less competition, but from what I’ve observed there’s less availability of massage therapists in general.
Many massage therapists that I’ve talked to are not carrying a full load because they’re trying to figure out their new work rhythm.
To me, that means it’s NOT a buyer’s market in massage. It’s a seller’s market, specifically for the massage therapist who owns her own business.
But what if you’re just starting out, should you raise your price now?
Raise Your Price Advice For New Therapists
Well, do you have confidence in your work?
If not, then no. Instead of raising your price you should gain confidence by getting really consistent with nailing the appropriate pressure with each massage.
Once you do, your clients will love your massage and your confidence will soar.
If you’re just starting out and have confidence in your work, go ahead and raise your price, but you may want to offer a discount intro massage just to get the person through the door.
Here’s the strange thing about raising prices, in some ways I think it’s easier for new massage therapists to raise prices than it is for seasoned massage therapists.
How’s that?
Well, if you’ve only been with Helen for a year, she may have never told you how she scrapes together every extra penny she has to be able to afford one massage a month.
But if you’ve been with Helen for ten years, you know exactly what she does. She uses her tax refund money, cuts coupons and never goes out to eat so that she can see you for 60 minutes of feel good every first Tuesday of the month at 5 pm.
And that’s why you haven’t raised your price on Helen in ten years, right seasoned MTs?
But again, you don’t have to raise the price on Helen if you don’t want to. You make the price rule and you decide on the exceptions to rule.
Raising your price can also be cathartic if you use it to prune out your less than ideal clients.
But there’s a caveat here: If part of your objective is to prune your current base with a price raise, you need new clients coming in—the clients who are willing to pay your price.
You Must Have New Clients Coming In
Always having new clients coming in is the key to schedule control and client security.
Three weeks ago when we re-opened, I didn’t book my week solid with all the people banging at my door to get in. Like many other massage therapists I wanted to see how I was going to manage flow and operations with all the extra stuff that now needed to be done.
So, I had the instant problem of too many clients and not enough spaces open. Besides my regulars I had several new clients waiting in line to come in.
Normally, I would keep the new clients waiting, but this time I didn’t. I booked my A-list regulars (consistent repeats paying full price who I really like working with) and I put my B-list regulars (clients who change appointment times, are not fun to work with and/or pay a discounted rate) on the backburner. I then inserted new clients in the schedule gaps.
And guess what, just like before the pandemic some of the new clients are becoming regulars; however, these new clients are now at my new rate ($5/hour higher).
This gives me a good problem—less space for my B-list regulars. And when I hit the B-list regulars with the price increase, I won’t be worried if some of them walk because the new clients who I want to work with will be taking their place.
By the way, if you don’t have enough clients because you’re starting your business or have gotten used to a massage practice that is barely making it, I have a thought experiment that can help you move in the right direction to bringing in more clients.
Thought Experiment: What If I Had To Move…
Imagine that you suddenly had to move and you had no choice where you were going to move to. At this new location, you have a massage room that you rent for cheap. You are not allowed to work for anyone else as a massage therapist and you have one month to figure out how to pay rent and pay your bills doing massage in your massage room.
What would you do to bring in clients?
Here’s what I do.
I’d run a special, like a Groupon, to get fast income.
If the space came with an opportunity to put up outside signage, I would have that sign up immediately.
I’d aggressively target 2 to 3 health professionals to be primary referral sources.
I’d put up a website.
I’d claim my business on Google and build out my Google My Business page.
I’d claim my business on Yelp and build out my Yelp page.
What I like about this thought experiment is that it has built-in uncertainty, just like our current situation of working during a pandemic. And the point of it is not to cause you more stress. It’s to give you a sense of how prepared you are at bringing in new clients right now during Covid-19.
If you don’t have a punch list like I do, then you’re probably not prepared to bring in more clients now.
If you need to start thinking in a bringing-in-clients way, so that raising your price is a secure move, check out Covid -19 Massage Reopening: Rebuild with Online Reviews.
Here’s the last thing I want to say about raising your price: It won’t be psychologically uncomfortable for long.
The psychological discomfort of raising your price happens when you imagine telling your clients that you’re going from $60 to $65 OR $65 to $70 OR $75 to $80 OR $85 to $90.
But what happens when you play out that thought?
Thought Experiment: Raise Your Price By $5/hr
See yourself doing a $5-more-an-hour-massage. Are you doing a worse job than when you were at a cheaper price?
No.
In fact, you’re probably unconsciously upping your game because you’re, well, making more money and feeling more valued. I’m not saying that you were underserving your client before the price hike. I’m saying that, in general, happier massage therapists produce better work than unhappy massage therapists who feel undervalued.
Now, let’s take this a step further.
Take that extra $5/hour and multiple that out for the week. If you do 20 massages a week that’s an extra $100 a year. If you work 50 weeks a year that’s an extra $5,000 a year.
Do you see your quality of work going down in your head?
Or is your focus on your client getting even sharper because your hourly rate is an exchange, and you’re making sure that you’re holding up your end of that exchange?
Thought Experiment: Raise Your Price Even More
For fun, imagine increasing your rate by $15/hour.
What happens in your brain now?
Sit with it.
Is your mind automatically figuring out ways to balance out the exchange. For instance, currently you may balance out the exchange by never shorting clients’ table time but as you raise your price by $15 an hour you may now see yourself responding faster to appointment requests.
There’s no right reaction to this thought experiment. It’s just a way to get you beyond the negative kneejerk reaction of raising your price so that you can potentially see how you might balance the exchange equation in your mind.
Oh, I lied. I said that I only had one more thing to say, but I have something else to say and it has to do with raising your price and attracting the client who can afford that price before something bad happens.
When we, humans, have control over the Covid-19 situation what are national economies going to look like?
If you’re in the US with me, I think it’s prudent to plan for a worst-case-scenario, like a market crash.
Who can afford massage during a crash?
Not people who can barely afford your massage now.
Again, they can be your charity cases during tough times.
Now is the time to line your schedule book with Recession/Depression proof clients. Raising your price will help you find them.
Okay, now I’m done…for now.
If you want to raise your price with me during the Covid-19 pandemic, here’s my recipe.
Raising Your Price In a Nutshell
1. Don’t focus on all current clients.
2. Prioritize your A-list clients and new clients coming in.
3. Have mechanisms in place that bring in new clients so that you can feel secure about pruning B-List clients.
Here’s my experience with raising my price:
4. If you’re not in my email group to get my weekly information that is currently focusing on “how to not die or kill anyone and make more money during Covid-19”, then join. It’s free:-) and you can unsubscribe anytime.
