Therapist: “I know exactly what is happening in the skin, I just don’t know how to say it.”
This is the trouble of articulation through explaining education, and it’s happening in our treatment rooms and consultations.
When was the last time you listened in on your therapists during consultation, skin analysis or the close of their treatment? If your answer is one month or more ago, chances are you’re unfamiliar with the conversations, or lack there of, happening in your business.
During a recent class we watched, the educator showed the class a diagram of 6 images during the phase of pustule production. These six images were perfectly explainable and well drawn for explanation from therapist to client. Upon the educator asking the students to explain each image individually, the students froze and were unable to put into words what the image was trying to say.
Likewise this same message is seen when overhearing therapists diagnose and prescribe to clients. Fresh air statements that have no tanglible weight to the client such as ‘hydrate’ and ‘nourish’ are often thrown around in conversation and nine times out of ten, used in the wrong context.
Rightly so, the client often uses the word sensitive to describe her fitzpatric type 4 skin which has been over exfoliated and stripped of natural barrier lipids, as they are uneducated in the skins conditions. If a therapist was to articulate to the client that perhaps she doesn’t naturally burn in the sun, have a tendancy to redness, blush upon becoming embarrassed nor experience sinus problems, whilst housing a european background, therefore her compromised barrier, leads to her being sensitised, this would be a better conversation to have had.
If the articulation from therapist to client is refined and articulated in the correct way using visual tools such as brochures, products and charts, the therapist should have no problem getting the client their ah-ha! moment, which evidentially leads to further product prescriptions and repeat business.