Sometimes a new client is just a push of a button and a few questions away.

Many business development experts urge you to create an elevator speech of 30 to 60 seconds so you can tell anyone in a short trip that can elevate your business by adding your fellow passenger to your client roster http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1024.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/elevator_speech_dos-donts.html

Once you’ve created an elevator speech, I suggest you create elevator questions.  I believe you can get more clients by asking provocative questions than lecturing someone on what he should do.  People are told what to do by bosses, spouses, commercials all day long.  When a person asks what you do, tell him, and if he shows interest, instead of telling him that he should get massaged, ask him, “Do you have pain in your body?”  When he says yes, which he will because–if he’s an adult in the 21^st century who commutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or is bumped around by straphangers in urban subways and railroad cars, or has a boss, a spouse, or a kid–he has pain in his body. Then ask, “Would you like to be free of pain in your body?”

If you ask him where the pain is, he’ll tell you.  The next step is to ask if he’d like to book a session to relieve that pain.  Of course, he would, although he may say that he needs to think about it.  Let him.  Give him your business card, then ask another two questions: namely for his card, and for permission to call within a week if he fails to call you.  Why?  So you can direct the matter instead of being reactive.  Then call seven days later if he forgets.  When you remind him who you are and how you met, ask him again if he’d like to be free of the specific pain that he mentioned.   As  Hamlet said, “That’s the question.”

Wouldn’t you love owning a business where everyone wanted what you offered?  Even giants like Microsoft aren’t in demand by everyone. But there is a business desired by virtually every adult–it’s called massage therapy

That’s because everybody has a body.  And most of those bodies are in lots of pain and dis-ease.  As a business coach for massage therapists, I’ve privately worked with more than 150  LMTs, and I’ve had to take their focus from making ends meet to see the big picture—that everyone they meet can become a client. Missing this insight causes LMTs many financial struggles.

Realizing that virtually everyone wants your service makes you enthusiastic and bold.  (Enthusiasm and boldness create new clients more effectively than clever marketing.)  Tell someone at a party that you’re a massage therapist, and she’ll likely discuss the pain in her body, and you’ll likely laugh and reach for spinach dip. More confident LMTs reach for a business card.  The ones I coach ask when she’d like to come in for some relief from that pain in her body.  Landing a new client can be that simple.

That’s why it’s important to get into conversations about what you do, the second question strangers ask.  Don’t just give your card and ask her to follow up. Do what the Japanese do and get her card, too, and ask permission to call if she doesn’t call you within a week.