Massage Your Mind Blog

The final essential quality to look for in an ideal referral partner for your massage business is...

P stands for Promoting. In other words, they are currently engaged in promotional activities in their own business. This lets you know they are looking to grow their business and makes it easier to create win-win-win relationships.

So now you have the 4 key qualities to look for when choosing referral partners. To recap, they are:

P = Purposeful
E = Enthusiastic
R = Respectful
P = Promoting

PERP!

And remember, the more the potential referral partner knows you, trusts you and believes in you, the better. It may take some time, but you can literally fill your practice with one great alliance.

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 10:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of additional qualities to look for in an ideal referral partner for your massage business are:

E stands for Enthusiastic. They are enthusiastic about massage, about your services as well as for the partnership.

R stands for Respectful. There has to be mutual respect. They have to have respect both for you as a professional as well as for the massage profession as a whole.

One more essential quality to come...

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 7:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

So, how do you go about finding great referral partners? Good question. Let's start by looking at the essential qualities to look for in the ideal referral partner. Here is an easy way to remember. They must be PERP!

The P stands for Purposeful. They must have services (or products) that are purposeful for your target market. There has to be a connection with the people in the community that you are drawn to serve.

In other words, they have the same target market as you, but offer services that are different but complimentary to your own.

For example, if your target market is pregnant women, referral partners could be maternity clothing store owners, midwives, Lamaze instructors, obgyn doctors, pre-natal exercise instructors, and any professional or business that serves pregnant women.

Next I will share with you the other essential qualities to look for in an ideal referral partner for your massage business. Till then…

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 4:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The third key to getting lots of referrals from other businesses in your area is to have a system by which your referral partner introduces you to their customer or client base in a professional and consistent manner.

For example, if you partner with a health club, every new customer of the club gets a discount coupon for a massage.

If your referral partner owns a maternity boutique, you might write a short article for their monthly newsletter that also promotes your pre-natal massage services. In addition, they may feature you on their web site three times a year.

If your referral partner is a chiropractor, when booking patient appointments their staff may be trained to say, "and have you seen Amy yet for a massage?"

So, if you don't have a system in place for getting referrals from other professionals, you could be missing out on lots of new massage clients.

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 8:45 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The second key element to creating successful referral partnerships with other professionals and businesses in your community is to have a written agreement between you and your new referral partner.

Now this does not have to be elaborate or complex. In fact a simple paragraph or two outlining what you are both agreeing to can be sufficient.

But having it creates a high level of professionalism and really makes you stand out from other massage therapists who may be approaching the same potential partner.

It will also clarity things and help eliminate any misunderstandings.

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 8:43 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Forming referral partnerships with key professionals in your community is absolutely one of the most effective and powerful strategies you can use to build your massage practice.

Not only is creating referral partnerships a long term and sustainable way to build a business, it can happen fast. And it is efficient because you are working with the principle of leverage.

A referral partnership is a relationship or partnership with someone in another business that refers clients to you. There are two types of referral partnerships, primary and secondary.

Secondary partnerships are casual, for example, if you focus on sports massage you could leave your business cards with the owner of a sporting goods store where their customers can see them.

Primary referral partnerships on the other hand are more formal, professionally structured relationships.

There are three key elements to their success. Firstly, the partnership has to be win, win, win. In other words, it has to benefit you, your new referral partner and their clients or customers.

Want to know what the other two success keys are? Over the next few days I'll be sharing them with you, so do check back.

Posted by Elizabeth Brown at 8:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)