There are only two treatments that a therapist can perform for a client – average or exceptional. Which one are you or your therapists performing behind closed doors?

The treatment is without a doubt, the most important thing you can do for your client with regards to the client journey, however today we are speaking about providing an exceptional treatment, not just an average treatment.

It’s essential here that you perform an exceptional treatment – why? Because all of the hard work you have just done to take the appointment booking, impress the client with your presentation, connect through your consultation and educate through your diagnosis will all be thrown out the window if your client receives an average treatment. If they receive an exceptional treatment on the other hand – their world and life is changed for the better.

Before we get into the difference between an average and an exceptional treatment, I want to ask you a quick question – when was the last time you had a treatment?

Chances are you’re probably thinking pretty hard right now – am I right? When was your last treatment? Was it in training? Maybe you went to product knowledge or practical training and you swapped over with another therapist while you were learning? The reason I ask this is because so many therapists (and business owners mind you!) don’t have regular treatments themselves – which baffles me, because if you’re not having regular treatments yourself then how can you upskill or gain new knowledge – plus, the most surprising part about the entire scenario is that you’re not practicing what you preach!

The best way you can learn how to provide an exceptional treatment is by having regular treatments yourself. When you have an average treatment you might think to yourself ‘well, i’m glad I don’t do that’ or ‘okay, that doesn’t feel quite right, I won’t use that move on my clients anymore’, versus if you experience an exceptional treatment, you’ll likely come away thinking ‘how can I give my clients that same experience?’

Your treatments should be a combination of practicality from what you have learnt in beauty school (effleurage, basic cleansing and nail clipping, for example) with the addition of your businesses signature touches such as asking your client to take three deep breaths before starting the treatment today, or your signature facial cleanse sequence and lastly, should also host your unique touch – this can only come from experience.

I emphasis on you having a treatment because when you’re having a treatment, you will notice if a treatment is performed with grace or not. Grace is the smoothness and elegance of movement – like a contemporary dance almost. It is how a therapist travels through the treatment.

Grace encompases things like how you open and close doors, the way which you apply the headband onto a client’s head, or place the blanket on the client while you’re draping them. It’s the way you apply the hot towel to remove a solution, your application of oil and the fluidity of the treatment. Every step you take and every move you make – in the famous words of sting – i’ll be watching you – no i’m completely joking, but it really is such an important aspect of the treatment!

Now, you may be sitting there thinking, ‘how can I apply a headband or the blanket in any different way than i already am?’, and for that I will give you an example. A headband can be applied two ways, the right way and the wrong way – there’s no inbetween. The wrong way is to have the headband already placed on the bed for the client when they walk into the treatment room, and once they’re settled into the bed saying “Mary just pop your head up for me – yep perfect and down – that’s great”, while you apply the head band on their head.

We should never be asking the client to do things for us – we should be doing things for the client.

The right way to apply the head band would be to place the headband next to the clients head on the left hand right of the bed, gently lift the clients head up with your left arm and with your right arm, reach under their head and pull the headband behind their neck and through to the otherside. Place the head down and then fasten the headband.

This may seem meticulous, I know, however it’s these teeny tiny details performed with grace that transport your treatments from average to exceptional.

Enter presence. Now this may seem a little ‘woo woo’, but stay with me for a minute. You know when you’re out at a public place and there’s a lot of people there and you can ‘feel’ someone staring at you, or you can feel eyes on you – that is presence. Someone is looking at you and by doing that, they are giving you their energy.

We can feel energy whether we believe in it or not, which means your clients know when you’re present in their treatments. You may be thinking ‘Tamara, I am always present in my treatments’ however, I have been a therapist my friend – I know what it’s like in the treatment room. We think about all kinds of crazy things like; what am I having for lunch, what am i wearing saturday night, I really need to hit my targets, why hasn’t he texted back and so on – this is all not being present with your client because your energy and your thought is elsewhere!

Now i’m a practical woman so i know that 100% of the time your thoughts cannot be with your client, however I am asking that when it’s time to perform the treatment, you place your intention onto your client and you say to yourself, I am going to give my client my energy for the next (insert amount of time) so that she receives an exceptional treatment.

There are four metrics a client measures a treatment on – they are Service, (what was the treatment like, average or exceptional?) Time, (did I get the full treatment time?) Value, (am I happy to pay x amount of money for y service) and Results, (was the outcome what I expected?).

When we look at time, it’s unfortunate that our industry has set a precedent for time based treatments. Our clients are now more frugal with what they spend their time and money on, therefore you need to be maximising every minute of the treatment time. If you perform an average treatment, your clients are likely to complain about the missed few minutes you spent waiting for the room to become available, where as if you perform an exceptional treatment, your clients will be so smitten by your treatment, that they would have achieved the same relaxation and results in that time.

With regards to your value metric of the clients expectations, this is what they believe is worth paying for or not. If you are asking basic consult questions, giving them no education and are not present in the treatment – is it worth the money, am i getting value? No. Versus if you ask them

A brilliant quote from Maya Angelou reads ““I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” and this could not be more true of the treatments we are performing.

When you perform an exceptional service, your clients will listen to your recommendations, they will return to you for future treatments and you will connect with them on a deeper level. This is the difference between an average and an exceptional treatment.

For further information and explanation, be sure to tune into the Beaute Industrie Podcast episode #5 of seven for our mini series; the 7 essential steps that turn an average treatment into an exceptional experience, brought to you by The Global Beauty Group.

Next Wednesday we look at Step number #6 exploring the close for the purpose of prescribing in the treatment room, connecting the prescription back to the client concern, as per client lifestyle indicators and behavioural types and learning how to overcome objections.

Until next time, Stay Connected

Tamara Reid