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Going for it

Therapists agree on the need for an "inside advocate," somebody inside the company who sees a need for company-wide massage therapy. Wallace, the Denver therapist, says she introduces herself to companies at which she knows somebody, so her foot is in the door and the ice is broken. She sometimes offers her contact a free 20-minute massage as another ice-breaker.

Miller says he and Zorda have their own method: they go straight to the top. "We seek the head honcho of the company," he says. Firstly, he says, it saves time by eliminating red tape. Secondly, it helps the therapist to better educate the company on corporate chair massage. "We found that many of the CEOs were war veterans and were used to the type of massage they got overseas," Miller says. As a result, he says, many corporate executives continue to perceive massage only as "dim lighting, soft music, on a table, sedated." His company, Connecticut Chair Massage, had to break the "corporate massage myth," he says. "We had to educate the clients." Massage schools are doing their part, too. Zorda, director of the massage therapy program at the Windsor, Connecticut, campus at the Branford Hall Career Institute, says his program offers a 30-hour course that focuses exclusively on seated massage. The course covers marketing, networking, price-setting and more.

"We often tell [students] that there's networking groups that they can get involved with," says Zorda, also a massage therapy evaluator for the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. "We're close to Hartford, and we have a lot of insurance companies and a lot of banks," he says. Therefore, they emphasize network groups that might be connected to those types of industries.

Selling it

Once inside the company door, Denver's Wallace produces a one-page sheet that explains what employees can get from her 20-minute chair massage, that employees keep their clothes on and that they won't be coated with oil or lotion, since neither are used. More importantly, Miller says, therapists must emphasize to prospective clients the ultimate advantage of workplace massage. "They don't care about how it's going to increase blood flow," Miller says. "They care how it's going to improve the bottom line, how it's going to enhance productivity."

Miller says he makes sure he's familiar with studies on workplace massage, such as those done by the University of Miami's Touch Research Institute, which show a correlation between massage, alertness and lower anxiety. "We show them studies," Miller says. "There's just limited research out there on workplace massage," he adds.

Kier points out, though, that much more is being written about massage in general-that more doctors are prescribing it, that people are using it not only as a luxury but to manage pain and that more insurance companies are beginning to pay for hour-long massages. Therapists who arm themselves with such articles can enhance their sales pitch. Kier says she is quick to speak at organizations about the benefits of massage.

She once was asked to be a massage spokeswoman of sorts at a Northwestern University conference on holistic health. "The more you can align yourself with other professionals who look at massage as a credible health benefit," she says, "the more I think that credibility and professionalism will generate corporate arrangements."

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