I am excited today to introduce you to Kimberly Sena Moore. Kimberly is one of those e-gifts that came along when I was researching online for a music therapist / client of mine. Kimberly is a Board-Certified Music Therapist and a Neurologic Music Therapist. She is also the owner of NeuroSong Music Therapy and a co-host of The Music Therapy Round Table podcast.
And, as you might expect from this list of accomplishments, she is a colleague who knows how to develop and market a small business. I’ve invited her to share some of her thoughts about what you, as mental health professionals in general, and music therapists in particular, bring to the experience of marketing a private practice.
Thanks, Kimberly, for so graciously accepting my invitation!
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A Guest Post by Kimberly Sena Moore, MT-BC
(If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.)
Music therapists have the potential to be killer marketers.
Yes, marketers.
Marketing is not the same as selling. That’s marketing at it’s worst. At it’s best, marketing is simply communicating to a prospect how you can help them solve a problem. And our training as music therapists helps us immensely as marketers. Here’s how:
- Learn their history. As
music therapists, we spend time during the assessment phase researching our client’s history. This background work helps inform the treatment goals we establish. These same skills should be used in your marketing efforts.When preparing for a new client meeting or establishing a new target market, do your background research. What are their needs? What other treatment services do they seek? What problem do they need help solving? - Build rapport. One of the first steps in the therapeutic process is to build rapport with your client–it’s how you start to develop trust in the therapeutic relationship. Guess what? Prospective clients need to trust you, too. By building rapport with them, you are beginning to develop a working business relationship. So turn on that therapy charm, practice your active listening skills, and be 110% present when with a prospect.
- Fill a need. In therapy-ease, we call this creating goals and objectives. In marketing-ese, your job is to help your prospect solve a problem. I once heard someone say you don’t buy a drill to buy a drill—you buy a drill to create a whole in your wall. Your clients are not interested in music therapy; they are interesting in improving their quality of life. Similarly, your prospects are not interested in music therapy; instead, they are interested in saving money and improving the quality of care of their patients. Be the person who fills the needs and solves the problem.
- Be a consultant. As a music therapist your work often extends beyond the session time to include consultative work. Maybe you train clients to do daily music-based exercises or maybe you recommend other services that may help them. Similarly, your job when working with prospects is not to sell them your services. Your job is to listen to them, to understand their needs, and to help them solve a problem. It may be that your services are not the best answer to their problem. So what!?! You’ll earn their professional respect by being honest and genuinely helping them in the best way possible.
- Follow up. As a music therapist, you keep the communication lines open with your clients. Whether through phone calls, progress notes, emails, or newsletters, these correspondences help your clients feel cared for and improves the value of your work. Why would you not do the same for prospects? Keep the communication channels open. Drop them a “hey, how are you doing?” or “I saw this article you might be interested in” email every few months. Even if they say “no” at first, these types of follow-up contacts improve the chances of them saying “yes” later.
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What an excellent post! Thank you Kimberly for sharing and Tamara for your excellent website – it is without question on of my favorites! Just to clarify, a music therapist’s credentials are MT-BC, rather than BC-MT (which would make sense, right?) We are Board Certified Music Therapists, but our credentials are MT-BC. 🙂
Hi, Amy! And, welcome back! Yes, yes, I know the correct credentials – just royally GOOFED! Sheesh! Thanks for dropping in and helping me clean up my act!
Kimberly! Thank you so much for taking time to let me introduce you to my readers here. And, I’m so sorry for starting it off with such a blatant typo right off the bat!
You’ve chosen such an important topic – not just for music therapists but – for ALL therapists. I think it’s easy for us to overlook the many business and marketing skills that we do bring to our work. We’ve simply called them other things or often failed to recognize their applicability to marketing our services and building our private practices.
I’m so tickled to have you hear and I hope you’ll drop back in often to share your thoughts and challenges. I’m happy to host you here and learn from you, too!
Kimberly, I loved your ideas! I tweeted the post to my network! I really like your idea of staying in touch with clients. I have just started a new special offer that I hope will help “solve the problem” as you so wisely put it: I’m offering to find another therapist for any client who tries a free E-mail session with me and feels E-Therapy is not right for them. I’m thinking it has the potential to become something permanent! You have great ideas! Keep sharing! I will be following your work for sure.
Hi, Stephanie! Welcome back! There you go again thinking out of the box! I’m wondering though how you are dealing with therapy clients who are out of state? Got any info to share?
Kimberly, thank you so much for sharing your ideas! By matching good marketing skills with the skills we already excel at as therapists, it makes marketing seem so much simpler than it did before. Thanks to you too, Tamara, for posting this!
Catherine! It’s so good to have your voice here! Thanks for dropping in to comment. Yes, I agree! I particularly like Kimberly’s point that in both marketing and our clinical work, we need to stay focused on filling a need. As professional caretakers and guides, we do excel at filling other’s needs. I think that’s often something that we forget when it comes to marketing!
Oh my goodness! I had been checking this article for comments, but for some reason missed the “comments” link at the bottom until now. Yikes! Thank you all for your discussion here.
@Stephanie I’m definitely intrigued by your e-therapy sessions. It’s something that the MT community is bouncing around, with mixed reactions. I personally feel there are some situations and clients with whom it could be VERY beneficial!
@Catherine I’m so glad these points made sense to you. I really think many of the clinical skills we learn are applicable to other professional areas–marketing, advocacy, etc. I hope this post gets you thinking a different way!
Thank you all again for your support and readership.
Kimberly
Hey, Kimberly! Thanks so much for starting this conversation with your terrific post and dropping back in to chat! It seems you’ve stirred the pot to help get us thinking a bit differently about the applicability of our clinical skills!
Kimberly,
Thank you for sharing your great ideas! They are definitely applicable to those of us starting a private practice!
Traci Hart M.A., LPC
Hi, Traci! It’s good to have you back here again! Hope you’ll drop in often to continue to conversations here!
Kimberly – Great article! I feel you raise a very good point in differentiating “marketing” from “selling.” Perhaps the fear of selling a service results in a roadblock to a therapist trying to build a practice.
Thank you for sharing your ideas, as they cross the lines into many therapeutic fields. Good luck!
Be Well, Leslie McCleary, LCSW
Leslie! Thank you so much for dropping in! It’s good to have your voice here, too! I don’t know about you but if I think about “selling,” I can get completely bumfuzzled. But “marketing” – marketing feels much more do-able . . . like I’m just educating someone about what I do rather than slickly force-feeding.
The one that stood out to me today was to be a consultant. It had me thinking of many other ways I could contribute to the community I work in, and also I find that varying what you offer (i.e. seeing clients, teaching workshops, providing lunch and learns) helps to keep me energized and fresh, as well as building a trust with clients.
Hi, Jill! Welcome back! You are absolutely right and that’s exactly why I started Private Practice from the Inside Out! I wanted something fresh and positive to offset the clinical work I do (with trauma and grief). Of course, the other incentive to diversify what you do – a little of this, a smidge of that, etc. – is that it makes for a stronger business. It’s not putting all of your dollars, energy, and marketing efforts into one basket so that you weather the economic waves much better!
I’m looking forward to hearing how you are expanding your services!