How to persuade clients to commit to a body contouring maintenance program
How do you prolong the great results you deliver to clients with non-invasive body contouring treatments like cavitation, laser lipo, cryolipolysis, RF and vacuum therapy butt cupping? Professionals know that to preserve results, body contouring maintenance treatments are needed. The problem is that once our clients get the improvement they want, it can be a ‘hard sell’ to convince them that it’s going to require further commitment to sustain their results.
But body contouring maintenance programs keep clients happy and grow your bottom line. So in this article, we’ll show you how to persuade more clients to make that long term commitment and participate in a body contouring maintenance program.
In this article, you will learn
- The Physiological Processes that Counter Body Contouring Results
- The Body Contouring Maintenance Program
- How to Persuade your Clients to Participate in a Body Contouring Maintenance Program
Why you need a body contouring maintenance program
It’s a fair guess to say most of your clients get at least one of these beauty treatments
- Get their hair colored, straightened or otherwise improved
- Get manicures and/or pedicures
- Get eyelash extensions
And if so, they need maintenance due to physiological reasons
- Hair grows and returns to its normal state within a few (4-8) weeks
- Nails grow, polish needs replacing within a couple of weeks
- Eyelash extensions fall out after a few weeks (50% at week 4, 100% by week 6-8)
Your body contouring treatments require the same attention, respect, and time and investment given to maintenance. See our EDITORIAL COMMENTS at the end of the article
The physiological reasons your clients need body contouring maintenance
The Aging Process
- Many of the body issues our clients want to improve are caused, at least in part, by the aging process.
- As body contouring professionals, we deliver treatments that sometimes temporarily reverse the aging process.
- However, we cannot stop the aging process. The aging process continues after our treatment protocols end.
- Maintenance treatments re-create the temporary aging reversal and slow the aging process down extending the results.
Muscle Mass
- Our clients start losing muscle mass in their 30’s, and the amount of muscle lost increases at each decade.
- Any muscle gained with our treatments will gradually go away without our continued intervention.
- A proper body contouring maintenance program prolongs the increase in the muscle mass achieved with our treatments.
Stress
- Most of our clients are under a good deal of stress; some even suffer from chronic stress
- Stress creates bad behaviors such as overeating, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, etc. which can work against any improvement we made with our treatments
- A maintenance program with carefully scheduled maintenance treatments helps to counteract the damage done by stress.
Hormones
- Your client’s estrogen levels start falling in her 40’s and continue to decline through menopause.
- A decrease in estrogen levels increases and redistributes fat, changing the body from hourglass to apple shape.
- Regular maintenance treatments work against the hormonal changes to perpetuate your client’s results.
Genetics
- Genes control everything.
- Our treatments can make improvements despite genetic programming, but we cannot change genetic programming.
- change genetic programming.
- So when we take the ‘dip out of the hip’ or reduce fat or enhance the buttocks, it is temporary. Genetics will take hold after a while.
- Maintenance treatments put up a continued resistance to genetic programming and conserves the results we achieved.
Sedentary Lifestyle
- The overwhelming majority of our clients lead sedentary lives.
- This lifestyle produces excess fat, weak and underdefined muscles, a poorly functioning lymphatic system, and poor skin quality.
- A return to a sedentary lifestyle after treatments will reverse great results.
- A body contouring maintenance program assists in canceling out the changes brought about by a sedentary lifestyle.
Sleep
- If your clients fit the national average, close to one-third of them suffer from chronic sleep deprivation.
- And most of your clients do not get an adequate amount or quality of sleep.
- These conditions can lead to weight gain and insufficient lymphatic function.
- Maintenance treatments help to negate these changes brought about by inadequate sleep.
What should a Body Contouring Maintenance Program look like?
It’s important to reward and incentivize your clients who opt to sustain their results by participation in your recommended body contouring maintenance plan.
- Reward them with reduced fees for the maintenance treatments
- Offer a percentage off the regular price, a lower ‘set’ price, or extend the same discounted series treatment fee
- Honor that price for as long as they participate, it’s ‘grandfathered’
- Give them an acknowledgement and reward
- The clients who opt to participate in your maintenance program are being smart
- Tell them so!
- Honor them with a label and a reward, like Smart Sculpters Club
- With special discounts on certain services and/or products
- Send them a special thank you note for participating
- Give them a sense of belonging
- Belongingness is a fundamental need to be an accepted member of a group
- Honor them with inclusion in your ‘group’
- Make it official and give the maintenance program a name, like the Smart Sculpters Club
- Reward them with extra perks
-
- These clients are your biggest fans
- Reward them with extra perks like special invitations to events, small gifts, special tips, thank you notes
-
The Body Contouring Maintenance Program can be run like a Membership
You don’t have to, but you can set up and run your body contouring maintenance program in a way very similar to running a Membership…or include it as part of your Membership.
Get the steps to setting up a highly profitable membership
How to Persuade your Clients to Participate in your Body Contouring Maintenance Program
Persuading your clients to continue in your body contouring maintenance program after the treatment series concludes begins and ends with education.
PRO TIP: Some providers make the mistake of not mentioning the need for maintenance until the last treatment…or even worse, until the client is concerned she is losing her results.
Maintenance education must start at the very beginning and continue consistently throughout the treatment process.
Body Contouring Maintenance Education
- Use the Power of Repetition. Studies show that a message heard repeatedly is more likely to stay in the mind…and be believed and acted upon
Start educating when your client is a Prospect
- Education starts before you and your client meet, i.e. website, social media
- You should include information and education about your Body Contouring Maintenance Program in your website and on your social media
Continue educating with the Consultation Process
- Include mention of Maintenance in your consultation
- Tell her that you will get her the details when treatments start
- Avoid over-emphasis of the Body Contouring Maintenance program during the consultation because your goal during the consultation is to maintain your client’s excitement about undergoing the treatments
Continue educating when customizing a Treatment Plan
- When you customize treatment plans, you are creating structure to your provider:client relationship
- Make sure the plan includes mention of maintenance at the end of the treatment series
- As with the consultation, avoid over-emphasis at this time to avoid diminishing the client’s excitement about getting started
Continue educating at each Treatment Session
- Introduce the recommendation for maintenance treatments during the first treatment session
- Start with providing one physiological reason for that need during treatment session number one
- At subsequent treatment sessions, include other physiological reasons as basis for the need for maintenance treatments, but do not make maintenance treatments the main topic of the education during the treatment sessions
- Begin a stronger emphasis on the need for maintenance treatments at the next to last treatment session and the final treatment session
- Get a commitment for the Body Contouring Maintenance Program (or at least the first maintenance treatment) at one of these two sessions
Continue educating at the Follow Up Visits
- A successful Follow Up Visit is a perfect opportunity to get a commitment from your client for the Body Contouring Maintenance Program
- Your client is happy and excited and won’t want the results to diminish
- Schedule her first Maintenance Treatment even if you can’t get a commitment for the Program
Continue educating at the Maintenance Treatments Appointments
- Remind your client she made a great decision to undergo a maintenance treatment or participate in the body contouring maintenance program
- Continue to educate about the reasons she needs to continue with maintenance
Continue educating during a phone call to follow up
- If the client did not schedule for any maintenance treatments, calendar a phone call at about 4 weeks out from her last visit
- Ask her about her results and educate about maintaining the results with maintenance treatments
- Schedule her first maintenance appointment…or document that she declined
EDITORIAL COMMENTS
Most body contouring providers do not emphasize maintenance treatments. Are they worried that if they did, it would cost them the sale? When clients schedule hair, nail, eyelash, and eyebrow appointments, they fully expect to return for regularly scheduled maintenance. Isn’t the way our body looks at least equally important? As body contouring providers, we are the only ones who can change this practice. Start educating your clients now!
Visit www.bodycontouringacademy.com to learn more about growing a profitable body contouring business.