The best time for massage therapists to raise their rates
Some of the biggest questions massage therapists have to do with pricing. How to set prices, how to raise prices, how much to raise prices, how to tell patients about price increases, and more.
Pricing is a sensitive issue that can cause therapists a lot of anxiety and worry. And because the success of the business is vitally dependent on the business bringing in enough money, it’s important for pricing to be correct from the very beginning.
If you need help determining what your prices should be, start with How to Determine Your Prices. If you set your prices based “the market” and not your expenses, click over to How to Determine Your Prices and work through that worksheet to figure out what your prices need to be. If that means you’ll need to notify your customers about a price increase, read How to Change Your Prices for help with how to notify your customers.
In this post, I’m going to teach you when to raise your prices. There is a lot of confusion about exactly when a therapist should raise his or her prices. There are also a lot of questions around how to do that, especially how to tell customers about the change, and I address that in How to Change Your Prices, so be sure to read that next.
A lot of therapists reach a point in their practice where they begin to feel it is time to raise prices. They start to feel that way either because it’s been a long time since any increases were made, or because what they’re charging doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.
Unfortunately, many therapists are poorly informed on the state of the business side of their practices, so often they are not able to identify the reason for what they’re feeling. That’s why the time you’re spending on MyMassageTeacher.com learning about business practices is so important. You’re setting yourself apart and setting yourself up for success in practice.
Through this post, I’ll walk you through the events that might cause you to need to increase your prices. You do need to increase your prices over time. It is absolutely ridiculous to think that you can run a successful business and charge the same price the entire time.
In the massage industry, pricing is a touchy subject because the industry as a whole is constantly berated by the public for being “too expensive.” You may have that view yourself. I often hear therapists say, “I can’t afford $60 for a massage.” Or $70, or $90, or whatever the rate is—whatever their own rate is.
This is a problem of perspective, and you really need to work on looking at this issue with a long-term view. Here is an example. At the time of this writing, I charge $100 per hour. Most people immediately think that’s too high.
If I treat a patient complaining of carpal tunnel symptoms in five sessions, she has spent $500 with me, probably in a short period of time. And that is a lot of money, right?
But is it? Her other option was to go back to her doctor ($25 copay), get referred to MRI ($400 copay), visit a surgeon ($35 copay), have surgery ($700 out of pocket), have a post-op check-up with the surgeon ($35 copay), and possibly a follow-up with her referring doctor ($25 copay). This doesn’t include any prescriptions she would have or cost for bandages, splints, etc.
Assuming the surgery was “successful” (meaning it stopped the symptoms she had), she has now spent $1,220 out of pocket over several months. And this is really something to think about considering about one-third of carpal tunnel surgeries fail. So is massage really that expensive?
Setting Your Prices
If you have never spent any time determining how to set your prices based on your expenses, that is where you need to start. I recommend you visit How to Determine Your Prices and work through the process. You might not be charging enough now, so rather than an increase, you’re due for a correction. You’ll still need to notify your customers, and How to Change your Prices will be helpful for how to roll that out with your current customer base.
If you know the state of your business, you know what your rates should be based on your expenses, and you know it’s time to raise your rates, then let’s move on to the best time to raise your rates.
Rise Your Prices Annually
Without exception, every therapist needs to plan to raise his or her rates every year. This is where nearly all the therapists I talk to go wrong, and this is something that would solve almost all their problems around raising their rates.
“When do I raise my rates?”
“How often should I raise my rates?”
“When do I know it’s time to raise my rates?”
All of these questions have the same answer: raise your rates annually.
Why Annually?
Your Expenses Have Increased
If you have been shopping at a store you like for a long time, is your favorite item there the same price today as it was when you started buying it? No. You may know that store well enough to strategically shop sales, use coupons, and redeem rewards, and so purchase your items deeply discounted these days, but think about and compare the base, non-sale price.
Year after year, prices go up. The cost of gasoline goes up, the cost of food and groceries goes up, rent and utilities go up, on and on.
And when you run your own business, all those things your business has to pay for go up in price.
You’re A Better Therapist
Additionally, each year you’re in practice, you gain one more year of experience. Have you ever stopped to do some back-of-a-napkin math and figure out how many people you had hands on last year? Think about it. If you hold twenty appointment hours a week, and you work all fifty-two weeks of the year, that’s over a thousand appointments!
And on top of that, you will likely have completed continuing education.
So each year in business, your business expenses increase, you become better and more educated and therefore better able to treat the people who are paying for your services. Doesn’t it seem pretty obvious why you would raise your prices?
Choose When To Raise Your Rates
I suggest setting your target for the month you started your practice, or perhaps the month when your schedule began to fill in. For example, maybe it took you two or three months to really get a few appointments a week on your schedule. You could choose that month. I started full-time in my practice in August. Every year, I raise my rates effective October. Next year, I’ll look at doing it in September.
If you don’t know when you started, you could do this one year after the last time you raised your rates.
If it’s been over a year, or if you’ve never raised your prices, figure out your new rate, give your customer base notice, and put your new rate into effect. For more on how to tell your customers about your new rate, read How to Change Your Prices.
You always want your customers to expect a rate increase. If you’ve been renting an apartment year after year, you expect notification of an increase to the rent, don’t you? It’s expected. Because the business’s expenses have increased.
“But I’ll lose clients!”
One of the biggest fears therapist’s have about increasing their prices is that they will lose some of their customers.
How do you think your apartment complex feels about you choosing not to pay the increased rent and moving out? They don’t waffle and offer to lower the rent if you’ll just stay, do they? They tell you goodbye and immediately begin the hunt to find someone to rent your old apartment. And the new guy is paying the higher rent, and probably even higher than the increased rent they offered you.
Whenever you raise your prices, you will lose some people. This is always scary. Each appointment is precious to us, and that goes triple when we’re self-employed. But the reality is, when someone drops off, you need to focus on finding someone to fill that spot and pay your new (higher) price. Because there are PLENTY of people out there who will be happy to pay your new price.
Inappropriate Reasons to Raise Your Rates
Generally speaking, any mid-year increase will likely fall into this category. The exceptions to this guideline are extremely rare.
Plan on annual increases. Raise your prices every year, at the same time of year. This way both you and your customer base know the increase is coming.
You can plan to factor in the additional training you’ve done that year, the expected increase in your expenses, and plan for future expenses like expansion costs.
This is how professional, organized, and well-run businesses operate.
Massage therapists have a terrible reputation in the general community for several reasons. I’m sure you can list them as readily as I can. The only one to mention in this post is the reputation for being unprofessional, unorganized, and generally having no business sense. This is because business practices are only touched on in school and not given enough time, because there is really no bar for entry for massage therapists going into private practice (which is actually a good thing), and because there are so few affordable resources for therapists to plug into when they are ready to go into business for themselves, and few of those resources are specific to the massage industry.
But that’s obviously why you’re here. You’ve found an industry-specific resource that will help you learn what you need to know to become successful in business, and to operate professionally.
Part of that includes annual rate increases. So if you haven’t ever taken time to figure out what you actually need to charge based on your individual expenses, go back and do that now. If you don’t raise your rates predictably each year, pick the month you’re going to start doing that and plan for your first increase. If you’re not sure how much it should be, make sure you know how much you need to be charging and go from there.
Conclusion
Organized, professional, and intentional businesses raise their rates regularly to accommodate for their own increased expenses, as well as to plan for future endeavors, such as new equipment purchases or perhaps expansion.
Planning for annual rate increases takes the pressure off of you to bring home a decent salary while struggling to bring in enough to do so, and it takes the stress out of how and when to roll out rate increases. Making it an annual part of your business, you can expect it, plan it, and be ready for it well in advance.
Whether or not this type of business stuff was taught in your massage program, it is your responsibility to learn it, and to use it. And you’ve come to the right place. I’ve been where you are, and I’ve made all the mistakes. Working through the lessons on MyMassageTeacher.com will help you avoid those mistakes and be able to run your business like a competent and confident professional therapist.
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Catherine Nelson, LMT, CST, CKTS, is a long-time massage therapist with a long and varied background in Western medicine. She is the founder of Del Sol Community Wellness, The Master Institute School of Massage Therapy, and MyMassageTeacher.com. She specializes in CranioSacral Therapy for PTSD and anxiety, medical massage therapy for injury rehabilitation, and sports massage therapy for all phases of training and competition. She can be reached directly at Catherine@DelSolCommunityWellness.com.
2008 Blue Mesa Ct., Loveland, CO 80538 | (970) 218-7179 | www.DelSolCommunityWellness.com
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