In a world filled with filters, Facetune and PhotoShop; it’s becoming more and more likely that clients may visit your clinic with unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved with Botox and dermal fillers. As a responsible aesthetic practitioner, you have a duty to ensure your patients understand whether the results they have in mind are possible and to adjust this to a more realistic level if needed. It can be difficult to know how to accomplish this, so to help, here are MATA’s top five tips for managing client expectations in aesthetics.
1. Maintain An Honesty Policy
Although of course having a book filled with clients is an admirable goal, there is no substitute for having and keeping a reputation of safe, responsible aesthetics practice. If a client comes to you with an impossible request, then be confident in your ability to tell your client exactly what you as a practitioner can achieve with aesthetic injectables, and refrain from overselling what you or the product can do. Even the best practitioner has limits, and it will only benefit your clinic to make sure your clients understand this.
2. Have a Real Conversation with Your Clients
Although consent forms are a legal necessity for your clinic, they should never take the place of a real conversation with your clients which covers the risks and rewards of their chosen aesthetic treatment. This conversation will not only allow you to identify any unrealistic expectations and manage them appropriately, but will also ensure that your clients commit to the procedure from a fully informed position.
3. Make Use of Visual Aids
It’s likely that you already have a stock of before and after photos from your existing clients to allow you to provide treatment continuity. If you have the necessary permissions to use these images for business purposes, then these before and after shots can give prospective clients a real look at the changes that are possible with aesthetic injectables.
Having a Lookbook of before and after images covering a variety of treatments will also help illustrate that some looks take time and multiple visits to accomplish. Clients may visit you with the expectation that lips can go from thin to Jenner-style voluptuous in a single treatment. Being able to show them that this isn’t possible, with reference to real cases, will often make your client far more receptive to building a treatment plan with you.
4. Be Aware of Apps, Influencers and Advertisers
With the rise of apps that allow the face and body to be heavily filtered and reshaped, even in video; influencers and advertisers have been in the spotlight for promoting looks that are unrealistic or even physically impossible. Maintaining a professional awareness of image-editing apps, the effects they can create, and even having a bank of unedited vs edited images available, can all help you manage client expectations in your aesthetics practice.
5. Feel Comfortable Saying No
It’s inevitable that during your career in aesthetics, some clients will simply not listen to your advice regarding treatment. Although it may be tempting to carry out the procedure; when the results inevitably don’t match expectations, these clients can and will cause problems for your business. In the end, it is far better to let these clients go than to lose your reputation as an aesthetics practitioner.
Improve Retention, Results and Revenue – Adding a Skincare Line to Your Clinic
If you’re looking to improve retention, results and revenue at your clinic; there is one simple step you can take – adding a line of pharmaceutical grade skincare products.
Incorporating take-home skincare products that complement your aesthetic treatments into your clinics’ offering can come with a range of benefits:
- Adding a pharmaceutical skincare line can create a medium to high profit margin revenue stream at your clinic, to help recoup income from missed appointments or unexpected clinic closures.
- Offering skincare products will allow you to take a holistic approach to your clients’ needs, ensuring that the successful results of your treatments are continued at home.
- As long as the skincare product visibly benefits the client, it will positively keep your clinic at the front of their mind for treatments even in between visits, improving client retention.
Here are the first steps we believe you should take when offering professional skincare and topical treatments to your clients
Choose Your Products
Take the same time and care in choosing pharmaceutical grade skincare products as you would have for the devices and injectable products already at your clinic. Research products fully; checking for active ingredients used (retinoids, vitamin c, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, etc), along with ensuring that their ingredients and manufacturing process is in line with your clinics’ ethos (for example, cruelty free, vegan, low plastic or recyclable materials), and that the product branding matches in with your own (alternative, punk type packaging wouldn’t mesh with a sophisticated setting, and vice-versa).
We would recommend that you keep your initial product selection small, and focus on products that will enhance the treatment outcomes of your best selling treatments alongside being convenient and easy for your clients to use.You can always increase the products you offer at a later stage, once you have an better understanding of client product needs and preferences
Merchandise Your Products
If you have taken the time to research your new skincare products, then it doesn’t make sense to hide them away. Integrate the skincare line into every element of your clients’ clinic visit – use images of the products in your promotional literature and social media, have them well-displayed in your waiting area or reception, and have them on show and to hand in your treatment rooms. All of this will show your clients that the skincare line is an important part of treatment, rather than something to be treated as an afterthought.
Start Selling Your Products
Before attempting to sell these skincare products to your clients, ensure that you (and your employees) have a complete understanding of the skincare products; from ingredients and manufacturing processes to the benefits of the product and how they fit into a clients’ skincare and aesthetic treatment regime; along with any contraindications and which client group the product is optimal for.
Once you are confident you can answer any question asked, then the product can be introduced to your clients. Build the products into your client conversations from the very beginning, when discussing their skincare needs and concerns. Let clients see and feel the products and ask questions, and even let them apply small amounts of the product if this will not interfere with your treatments. Together, this approach will help drive product sales.
