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4. You’re unhappy with your salary at a massage practice or spa and want to ask for a raise.
According to Linda Babcock and Sara Leschever’s Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide, you may lose more than $500,000 by age 60 if you don’t negotiate your first salary.
However, you may have to build leverage first. “If you’re relatively inexperienced without a big following, you may have to grin and bear it and build up your clientele,” says Bob Mecca, a fee-only certified financial planner in Mount Prospect, Illinois.
When it’s time to talk, ask to speak to your boss in private. Discuss common goals, objectives and challenges. Describe ways you’ve already added value to the practice, and brainstorm about how both of you might grow the business. “By adding value, your request will be viewed as investment spending rather than gifting,” Scarpino says.
Dialogue 4:
“I’d like to discuss my compensation. When I started here I had no regular clients, but now I have at least 25. I know you have increased expenses as well, so I’d like to talk about how we might be able to increase business, together. I’m open to other forms of compensation as well, such as health care coverage.”
5. You need to fire a client for any number of reasons.
Sometimes things just don’t work out. How do you relay this to a client in a way that doesn’t leave you uttering a million “mea culpas?”
“I actually helped another therapist with this recently,” says Scurlock-Durana. “The client wanted really deep work, which the therapist could give only to limited degree.”
We decided to reframe the problem. “I said, ‘Let’s find the client a therapist who actually suits him better’-rather than saying ‘I have to fire him.’” The therapist found two to three good deep tissue therapists in her area and was able to refer her client on with no bad feelings.
It’s a good idea, says Scarpino, since people talk. “How you handle the firing may have an impact on your future business,” he says. You’re also freeing your client up to find a better match.
“In a way, I think it’s unethical to work with someone who we cannot come to care for in some way,” says McIntosh. “We don’t have to become buddies, but if we can’t find some caring we really need to say something like: “You know, I just don’t think I’m the best therapist for you. Let me refer you to [name here].’”
Dialogue 5:
“I am sorry, but this just isn’t working out for us anymore. I don’t seem to be the right person to provide you the full benefits of a massage. I am sure there is someone else who might be more in tune with you and I’d be happy to refer you.”
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American Massage Therapy Association®
