The psychologists' answers can be divided into several groups.

1. State of the psychotherapy market, as a service, ways to attract clients, level of competition.
2. Market quality: assessment of the professionalism of Russian psychologists, the demand and prospects of various areas and schools of psychotherapy;
3. Clients of a psychotherapist. Who they are and what problems they come with, the dynamics of changing attitudes towards psychologists and psychotherapy.

1. Most psychologists rated the level of competition in the psychological services market as high. At the same time, the overwhelming majority (79% of respondents!) admitted that they lack clients. Some believe that young professionals are more likely to lack clients than those who already have extensive work experience. According to our estimates (PN), this is not always the case, because often young specialists are better at promoting and attracting clients, and they are willing to spend more effort on work for less money.
Private practitioners have more difficulty finding clients than centers. Commercial centers lack clients, while government centers have no shortage of clients. This fact is apparently related to the prices for services in government centers, where consultations are usually free.

Among those surveyed, there is also a point of view that clients come when the psychologist himself is internally ready to accept them into his life.

How do psychologists attract clients? What do they think works best?
Here psychologists are surprisingly unanimous. 100% of respondents to the question “Where do you find your clients?” They answered “on personal recommendation.” The main way to attract clients (except for personal recommendations) is the Internet. This is a personal website or other methods of Internet promotion.

Other methods included:
Belonging to a professional community, participating in radio and television programs, participating in presentations, charity events, as well as conducting master classes in universities.
Respondents also noted the effectiveness of outdoor advertising for psychological centers, advertising in the subway for state psychological services, promotion of services through similar organizations and centers with related activities.

2. We found it interesting to find out what our fellow psychologists think about themselves. Given the level of competition and fragmentation in our field, it is not surprising that only 1.75% of psychologists rated the level of professionalism of their colleagues as high. 56% of respondents gave an average score, and 20% gave a solid two for professionalism and quality.
It is difficult for us to evaluate this result. Is it due to the distrust of colleagues towards each other or a truly sadly unprofessional approach to psychotherapy in Russia? Is this due to the fact that psychotherapy is very young in Russia and is in its infancy? Or is it because psychological education has experienced a boom in the last few years and there is an increasing challenge of releasing “quick-baked” psychologists onto the market? In any case, we only welcome interest in psychological education and psychotherapy in general, and we urge our colleagues to be more tolerant of each other.

It is no secret that most psychotherapeutic schools and trends practiced in Russia today are a product of Western society. We thought it was important to think about What distinguishes a Russian specialist - psychologist from the rest? And you know, everything is the same - the incomprehensible Russian soul. To the question “What strengths of the work of psychologists in Russia can you note?” we received answers: empathy (in first place), “Russian mentality”, “our brightness and individuality”, “readiness to help”, selflessness (cannot but surprise, considering that we are talking about professional psychological help! (PN)) , enthusiasm, value of human relationships.
In addition, among the strengths were the willingness to constantly learn, improve skills, develop, openness to new things, the desire for an integrated approach and the presence of professional communities.

A huge number of directions and schools were named that psychologists use in their work. The results (in descending order) are as follows:
1. Gestalt - 30%
2. Analytical approach - 19%
3. Art therapy - 17%
4. Existential - 14%
5. Family systemic therapy - 12%
6. NLP - 12%
7.
A. Psychodrama - 11%
B. Behavioral therapy - 11%
8.
A. Body-oriented - 9%
B. Symboldrama - 9%
9.
A. Transactional analysis - 6%
B. Logotherpy - 6%
C. Ericksonian hypnosis - 6%
10.
A. Humanistic approach - 5%
B. Client-centered approach - 5%
11.
A. Jungian - 3%
B. Cold dynamics - 3%
C. Psychocatalysis - 3%

They also noted imago and thanatotherapy, fairy tale therapy, sand therapy, Hellinger constellations, acmeology, positive therapy, Lacanian psychoanalysis and even classical hypnosis.

Most psychologists do not use just one method, but practice several directions at the same time, an integrated approach, believing that each client has his own method.

Opinions are divided regarding promising areas. As a rule, each specialist considers his own method to be promising. Some believe that the popularity of Gestalt therapy is on the decline, while others, on the contrary, believe that the future lies with Gestalt, since it combines the main directions and allows you to achieve results in a shorter time.
Psychotherapeutic work in groups, trainings and short-term counseling and (the vast majority) an integrative approach were named as promising areas. Perhaps this is due to the accelerating pace of life, when a person wants everything at once. But this does not mean that clients are not ready to go to therapy for a long time.
In our opinion (PN), it is strange that none of the respondents noted coaching as a promising direction, although many talked about the popularity of short-term methods of psychotherapy.

3. The most controversial part of our research is the questions regarding the psychotherapist's clients. Here, considerations of confidentiality of our profession and a certain modesty inherent in our psychologists in matters of treating their profession as a market for services, in which there is always a client and a certain target audience for each of the services, immediately come to mind. Perhaps, to some, the information given in this section will seem as useless as the average temperature of patients in the ward, but we still decided to find out who the psychotherapist’s most frequent client is, what worries him, according to psychologists?

So, a typical psychotherapist client looks like this:

In first place in terms of the number of requests are women from 25-28 to 40-45 years old, with higher education, usually middle managers. Active, often interested in psychology itself, many are single or divorced;

And in last place are children and teenagers - from 3 to 20 years old.

Among the main problems With which our contemporaries turn to a psychologist, the problem of relationships is in the lead, in second place are fears, anxiety and various phobias. Further in descending order - problems of finding oneself and self-determination, self-realization, psychosomatics, depression, self-doubt, various types of addiction, midlife crisis, stress, chronic fatigue, conflict, aggressiveness and auto-aggression.

There is a certain number of requests regarding the establishment of long-term relationships in homosexual couples and the problem of gender identity.
For children, this is a lack of friends, disciplinary problems, difficulties in adapting to kindergarten and school, children's fears, and separation problems in adolescents.
If we talk about the dynamics of symptoms and conflicts, psychologists have noted that recently the number of depressive disorders and phobic neuroses, as well as neuroses associated with the concept of success and narcissistic dissatisfaction, has increased. Many psychologists say that it is becoming increasingly difficult for modern people to feel, and that their clients’ senses are blocked. Parents increasingly do not know how to limit their children and simply cope with them; they place great emphasis on the child’s intellectual development, completely forgetting about the world of his feelings. Children are increasingly experiencing hyperactivity, neuropsychiatric disorders, overload with knowledge, various activities, sections, as well as sexual abuse.

At the same time, many assess the degree of readiness of our population to seek psychological help as rather low. Psychologists note that among the population there is no understanding that you need to pay for a conversation. That is, many still have a very vague idea of ​​psychotherapy as a profession. Many psychologists believe that in large cities the willingness to seek help is higher. But the experience and statistics of the Psynavigator indicate the opposite. In our “Leave a request to select a specialist” option, many more requests come from the periphery than from capital cities.

Among the reasons for the population’s reluctance to go to psychologists were:: in most people’s minds, a psychologist is still “equal” to a psychiatrist, and if a person turns to a psychologist, this makes him feel inferior. The corresponding attitude can often be seen in those around you. Men are more wary of psychologists than women. But at the same time, they also have interest and curiosity. More trust in a psychologist arises if doctors, teachers, social workers recommend contacting a psychologist. Educated people with a high level of reflection are more willing to go to a psychologist. It's interesting that some people see psychologists as people with unresolved problems of their own. Also noteworthy is the fact that people still often go to a psychologist with expectations of healing help and hope for a miraculous healing.

At the end of our study, we asked our colleagues to express their wishes and comments regarding the survey topic. They are very interesting and we did not consider it possible to shorten them to fit into the format of this article. So read them

The client came for a consultation, did a good job, left and... did not return. Why? What can be done to attract clients to long-term therapy? Perhaps my experience and thoughts will help you.

I have been working as a psychologist for more than 10 years, of which 4 years were full of advisory and correctional work (4-6 times a week, 2-4 clients a day), in the remaining years, teaching at a specialized university, conducting courses and seminars came first, doing business, etc. By education I am a teacher - psychologist, psychology teacher. I work in an integrative approach, and so far the only completely mastered system of psychological work is working with active imagination (working with images).

The first six months to a year of my consulting practice were spent in bewilderment: the consultations were successful, but the majority of clients did not return, although some of them (the notorious 20%) with the help of word of mouth created about 50% of the flow of clients in the future.

It should be noted here that all this time I worked for myself, did not have a well-known name, or any serious investments in advertising (creating a website and paying for its hosting were the main costs).

Recently I returned full-time to advisory and correctional work. Now I’m looking for new methods and reviewing the old ones.

Now I will not dwell on how to attract a client to the FIRST consultation (or first training), I will tell you about the steps I take at the first consultations.

What did I do and am doing consciously?

1) I inform you.

A) Each client at the first meeting when clarifying the request and discussing the contract. I am informing you about the possibilities of the work system, about what exists (this is probably very important!) PROGRAM of individual work (in the system it is called “Base”*), consisting of 15 lessons. Approximately every third client has decided and still decides to take the “Base” (note: most clients ultimately completed no more than 10 lessons of the program, some return after a few months for 1-2 lessons to continue the “Base”). It is these clients who create the so-called. “flow”, signing up 1-2 weeks in advance.

*The names of some of the “Base” trainings: “Birth (reprogramming your life)”, “Childhood grievances”, “Death (working with fears)”, “Removing blocks in the body”, “Man and woman”.

B) About your capabilities/skills in addition to the “Base”: for example, conflicts, emotional “letting go” of a significant person, correction of children’s fears, etc.

C) About courses, seminars and trainings taking place at the Center where I work (I rent premises). I’m talking about the capabilities of my colleagues – related specialists.

Naturally, I say all this in an informational mode (in no case “you need”, “you must”), I simply hand over an information sheet about something.

2) Internally, I “let go” of the client in advance, I don’t “crave” his return, I don’t dream that he will become a regular client, even (especially) if I understand that he REALLY needs it. Perhaps this point should have been put first. Everyone knows this, but at meetings of our “Psychologists Support Group” the issue of countertransference often comes up.

3) I assign homework. Simple, effective, interesting exercises (often from psychosynthesis, Gestalt psychology, etc.). Probably, this part of the work does not directly relate to promoting your services. But, it seems to me, it helps that the client, having resolved the pressing issue, continues to remember about working together, advertises me as a specialist to his friends and acquaintances and/or comes again.

What new steps am I taking now?

1. Completed training in another work system(my new “love” is understanding my Purpose and my innate inclinations to fulfill life’s tasks), I’m trying to understand how a PROGRAM can be built on its basis, is it necessary to do this))), I am integrating (connecting) both systems that I have studied and “lived” ;

2. Starting to use Skype(mainly to work with foreign clients), I am making my first attempts to work in English.

3. Started conducting psychological counseling courses in the form of webinars.

4. I plan to make an audio and/or video recording of some exercises and techniques.

5. I study the experience of my colleagues in modern self-promotion, and I definitely try to use the methods that interest me.

Psychology as a business. How a psychologist can promote himself Chernikov Yuri Nikolaevich

Working with the client base

Working with the client base

Your customer base is your everything. A client asset is one of the most important tools for earning and promoting. By and large, these are your clients: potential, actual, and even those who do not yet know about your existence.

The fact is that it is necessary to work with any of these categories of clients and build long-term relationships. And this is probably one of the most important points, because your financial and professional success directly depends on the quality of your communication with potential and actual clients.

The main tool for establishing relationships with clients is regular newsletters. We looked at the technical aspects of the organization in Chapter 2, and now we’ll talk about the strategy and principle of mailing.

The basic principle is “inhale – exhale.” The essence comes down to this: giving to people is taking from them. This means that the mailing materials are structured in such a way that first you give people useful information, and then you “take it” - make a commercial offer.

A good strategy is when you send three letters with useful content, with useful articles, with useful seminars, and in the fourth you make a specific commercial offer like: “Dear friend! You received three letters, and if you liked it, please come here: we have a training on this topic, an information product, we have something that you can purchase and learn a lot more about it. You will not only learn, but get results like these if you use this training, this product.”

The principle of “inhale - exhale” is that for every three useful letters there is one commercial one. In this case, the mailing list should consist of at least two letters per week. Thus, you have two weeks for the entire cycle. You should pay attention to some subtleties.

For example, the highest email open rates are observed from Tuesday to Thursday from ten to twelve o'clock in the afternoon. People come to work, look at their mail and notice your letter. Therefore, all sales letters should arrive either on Wednesday or Thursday. It is very good to send people some long-form content, for example, on Friday from ten to twelve. And then on Monday or Tuesday morning you send again something useful, but more “small”. That is, you send more voluminous material closer to the weekend, less voluminous material at the beginning of the week.

Letters should be short and clear. When sending each letter, you must remember what action the person should take after reading this letter. Never send letters just like that. Even if you share something with someone, it should have some kind of call to action. As a rule, this is a transition to your site to study content.

Principles of your communication

An important point is the communicative act with the customer base. There are several nuances here, the observance of which is mandatory for productive work with the client.

1. Correctly addressing letters. Many people make the grave mistake of sending letters somewhere “to the masses,” guided by the thought: “I have a base of five hundred people, and I’ll write to them all.” No! Letters should be written as if you were addressing them to a friend. A formal tone is inappropriate. Of course, it is better to use the universal “You” in your newsletter. Although some people use "you". The choice of “you” or “you” is determined by the age of your target audience. But in most cases it is better to use "You".

2. Feedback from subscribers. Periodic, targeted collection of opinions is necessary. How? In the form of surveys. For example, you can ask why a person did not take part in the training or attend the seminar; what you liked and what you didn’t like; what he wants and what he doesn't want. You can ask for advice on improving service, etc. The main thing here is regularity.

3. The "three - three - three" principle. What does it mean? A third of the material you send is usually news information. For example, what’s new, what trainings are expected. The second third is useful content (lessons, articles, recommendations, etc.).

And the third, non-obvious block, which many often miss, is information about yourself. You talk about yourself as a living person, and not about an automatic mailing robot, about how you live, what is happening in your life. About how you study, what events you participate in, what new things you learned, your impressions of the training you attended. Your reviews of the books you read and your opinions on various events go well here.

So, a third is news, a third is useful content, a third is information about yourself.

Principle of utility

When you write a letter, remember that the main criterion is its usefulness.

The key thing to remember is that each letter is a little “recipe”—little instructions for “cooking” something. It's good when every letter contains useful advice on how to cope with a specific situation. You can use any information you like, for example, “How to relieve stress when you sit for a long time at work.” Remember that people read newsletters only when they are truly interesting and original.

Client base structure

Conventionally, the customer base can be divided into three parts: passive - 80% (people who almost never open your emails), active - 17% (people who show some activity, buy some products), fans - 3% (customers , who are always with you, at all trainings, seminars, etc.).

Don’t be upset if, with a base of a thousand people, only thirty come to your trainings, if from 5 to 15% of the total number respond to your comments and letters. This is normal, there is practically no other way.

Remember that response from your customer base very much depends on what you give people. If the materials sent are irregular or are complete nonsense, very soon many clients will cease to be such.

The key word here is “consistency”: there should be at least two letters a week.

Of the 80% of inactive clients, 25% are so-called deferred maturing clients. They can still become active if you regularly interest them.

I'll tell you an example from my own experience. There is a project called “Infobusiness2.ru”. I didn’t even read their newsletter for a year. I periodically visited the site, listened to something, but did not buy anything. A year after registration, I matured, appreciated the quality of the materials and began to buy almost all the trainings.

There will also be such maturing clients in your database. Over time, they will start shopping because they are already used to you. Even if the client hasn’t opened 90% of your emails, he’s gotten used to you.

There is also a downside when the client gradually loses interest in you. The so-called decay period, which lasts on average eighteen months.

The client base needs to be periodically cleaned to eliminate passive subscribers – people you don’t need and who will never become clients. To do this, you need to make sure that people unsubscribe themselves. There is an unsubscribe link in every email, a person must click on it to unsubscribe. A universal tool for cleaning the base is aggressive selling, when you bombard a person with offers to buy your product or service for three to four days. People who lose loyalty will immediately unsubscribe from your mailing list.

You can act differently. For example, send letters that you are having a grand event, and a real one, that you are putting your whole soul into this training, that it is so cool that you yourself are ready to buy it twice. You send a lot of commercial offers and in some letters you say directly - if you are not interested in this topic, please unsubscribe from my mailing list.

Principles for organizing effective feedback

How is feedback built with the base, how to receive a response?

There are several ways.

1. Polls on problems.

For example, I recently conducted a survey on the TOP 10 problems of a psychologist, consultant or trainer in psychological practice. They painted such canvases there!

This method allows you to collect deep feedback, thanks to which you see a portrait of your client, what he faces, what issues bother him. Only on the condition that you create a detailed survey that excludes the answers “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.”

2. Stimulation of client response.

To ensure dynamic and correct feedback from customers, you need to hold competitions with incentive prizes (at least occasionally). This arouses interest and increases the loyalty of current and potential clients to you. What kind of competitions could these be? Let me give you a couple of examples:

a) request for advice. You ask people from your base for help with something. For example, I recently took a survey on the topic “What is your favorite book title?” People take part in such events with pleasure and give good advice;

b) sending letters from the so-called no-reply address. That is, an unanswered address. It is better if your mailing is carried out from an address that you never visit, but someone else, for example your assistant, visits. It is better for you to never see letters that come to this address. You can probably guess why. There are a lot of negative opinions and insults that will only hinder your work. The same thing happens on a blog; often comments with unpleasant content are written there. You need to understand that this is normal and not focus on it. You should respond to rude people in the comments as politely as possible or simply ban them and delete them.

Client base: quantitative and qualitative composition

Many people are chasing large bases - 8-10 thousand subscribers, or even more. But here we need to talk not about the number of clients in the database, but about the ability to sell to so many people, the ability to establish contact with them. Even with a relatively small base, you can make good money if your customers are loyal. Therefore, there is no need to chase the number of people in the database; quality is paramount. For example, I earned my first million from a base of nine hundred people. And I know examples where more than a million dollars were earned on a base of one and a half thousand people.

A good friend of mine who sells influencer technologies has a small base, but the response is 40%. That is, every time he sends out a commercial offer to his clients, 40% buy from him. This is a crazy conversion!

A paradox arises here: the larger your base, the less response it gives. The response is an indicator of the quality of the material you produce. Therefore, work on the quality of communication with clients, provide more useful content, and they will be happy to purchase services and products from you.

Do not write to the database on the principle of “just to unsubscribe.” You need to work with the database every day, trying to attract an increasing number of clients, regularly test new types of advertising, launch different features - viral marketing, interesting questionnaires, etc. Something should happen every day. You can relax when you have at least 20 thousand subscribers in your database and good contact with the audience, then there will be no problems with recruiting for training, constant consulting, etc.

By following these simple instructions, you will very soon achieve good results.

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Maintaining a client base - registration sheets The task of maintaining any client base is to ensure that not a single contact is lost. It’s great if you have a CRM program in your club (on the Russian market there is a special product for maintaining the company’s client base “Profile”

Psychologists have their own techniques for how to position a client. The visitor's chair is a psychological anchor, the specialist's family life is vivid illustrations, the therapist's imperfection is a way to start a frank conversation. It’s useful for managers from any field to read!

- Anna, psychologists probably have special psychological techniques for attracting new clients? Share.

If we are talking about attracting new clients, you must clearly understand what audience your service is intended for. It’s just that you, as an excellent specialist, with a desire to give advice left and right, unfortunately, are not enough. People are well aware of what they need, and they are not ready to pay money for you to please your professional ego; in this case, there will be no clients. Here are the main components to ensure that the work is effective and there are always clients:

Choose an area of ​​work for yourself, a segment in which you are effective, as well as your target audience, and write step-by-step instructions for work;

Swipe several free promotions, where you talk about what you do;

- How to organize the work of the office so that the client has a pleasant impression: he does not have to wait long for an appointment, fill out paperwork, etc.?

Of course, interaction in the office should be comfortable, and it is desirable that the time required to fill out papers is minimal. To do this, all papers must be written, agreed upon and printed in advance. There should always be water in the office, the opportunity to drink tea or coffee, milk, and something minimal for tea, for example, cookies. I believe that another important secret is the client’s chair - this is a special psychological anchor. This is where a person returns, so I would pay special attention to this.

The location of the psychologist in relation to the client is also fundamentally important: if you want to act in the position of a coach (trainer) with step-by-step guidance, then you better sit on the right; if you work more with emotions and experiences, then the specialist should sit on the left. I think that the office should contain information about you, your regalia, certificates and diplomas. People don't always ask, but when they become acquainted with your professional competence, it encourages clients to trust you. Also pay attention to the color scheme of the cabinet, because color affects our perception. Still, I am for light and calm tones.

- How to build a chain and control execution?

The work strategy is as follows:

1) Client call. Someone calls with a ready-made solution, someone wants to ask clarifying questions in order to decide whether a specialist is suitable for a person or not. In this regard, I always try to answer calls myself, the only exception being when I’m working, so I warn you to write an SMS, and I will definitely call you back when I’m free and tell you all the details of our further interaction.

2) Register a client for a specific time. I try to be flexible and ask questions when the person prefers and when they really can, and then we coordinate the meeting in accordance with my schedule. For urgent meetings or those who are particularly impatient, there is the possibility of a telephone session. The quality does not suffer from this; unfortunately, people have a hard time deciding to do this right away, later realizing that it is even more convenient than a personal meeting.

3) Coordination of all documents and reminder to the client on the eve of the session about the meeting. All are living people, and the psychologist may well clarify whether the client will be there tomorrow in order to plan his time more accurately.

4) Session. The process of work itself takes place. Signing documents, paying and making an appointment for the next meeting.

5) In the case of my psychological work, the opportunity to ask clarifying questions or ask something again outside the session. I believe that especially with new clients rapport is important and some minimal assistance between meetings may well be useful not only to the client, but also to the psychologist, in order to understand how correctly the client follows the recommendations and whether everything is correctly interpreted. In my opinion, responsibility should be divided between the client and the therapist 50-50, since 50 percent of the responsibility is on the client for implementing the recommendations, and 50 percent of the responsibility is on the psychologist, he must be responsible for the correctness of the recommendations. The same rules do not apply to everyone, and a flexible therapeutic position is necessary.

- The face of the brand. What are the requirements when hiring an employee who is the first person visitors see?

This is the administrator. It is best if he is a decent young man. In my practical work, 60 percent of women and 40 percent of men use psychological services, so The face of the brand should be interesting and charismatic, with an active life position, delicacy and correct speech.

Also, this employee must have the basics of sales, basic computer knowledge, maintain a customer database and, most importantly, answer questions or resolve organizational issues.

In today's market, which is oversaturated with psychological services, it is becoming increasingly difficult for psychologists-consultants and trainers to promote their services. People are not recruited for trainings; clients in counseling are situational and chaotic.

If you experience a shortage of clients for long enough, it will be terribly demotivating and, sooner or later, you will quit your favorite activity, or you will be interrupted from time to time. It even becomes offensive. You have truly valuable knowledge and experience, you are ready to help people, but people, somehow, don’t really need your help. What's the problem?

There are some basic mistakes that almost 90% of all psychologists, consultants and trainers make, because of which there are few clients. And this article talks about the main mistakes and ways to solve them. Marketing will help us with this!

1. Wide positioning

When a psychologist says that he is just a consulting psychologist or a leader of personal growth trainings, this is incomprehensible to a potential client, especially if he is “not in the know” in psychology. Perhaps your friends and colleagues know what you are doing.

But those you just met will definitely not understand you right away if you have this position, because they are “not in the know.” But help is often needed by “mere mortals” who, at most, have read about psychology - Carnegie or something else from popular literature.

How to solve this problem of broad positioning? Just! You need to specialize. In order for your services to be used, you must be a narrow specialist in a specific topic for a specific target audience.

For example, there are trainings on time management. If you simply state that you provide time management training, then that is very broad. It’s best when you specialize in certain types of people: time management for executives, housewives, doctors, etc.

That is, you specialize in a specific topic and its target audience. The same applies to counseling psychologists. For example, you deal with parent-child relationships and work only with mothers who have typical problems with teenage children.

When you state this way, the client recognizes you as an expert on their problem. Who doesn't trust experts? After all, when you have a specific problem that you cannot solve on your own, you naturally look for a specialist specifically for this problem. And here, the client’s brain works in the same way, so he turns to you.

2. Student complex

The fact is that most psychologists love to learn and are eternal students. Learning is good and wonderful, but from the point of view of attracting clients, it is almost a useless thing, and even costly.

Many people think that if they study, they will be able to do training and consulting. And this training can continue for months or even years.

So, for your clients it doesn’t matter at all what certificates and papers you have. A person comes to you to solve a problem. If you really understand a topic, and understanding a topic isn't that hard if you've studied, it's very easy to establish yourself as an expert on a particular topic (even if you're still in the process of learning).

You may not have a certificate, but your potential clients won't care! You won't believe it, they don't care at all in 99% of cases. They need to solve the problem. And if you can really help solve a problem, you don't need paperwork to do it.

The main conclusion! Your education and the number of clients in your practice are not directly correlated. They are not related at all! You can argue on this topic, but it is true. And while you firmly believe that you still need to learn and then clients will appear, this is one of the most destructive misconceptions for your practice.

4. Fear of sales

The next mistake is that most psychologists are afraid to sell their services. They think that their services should be sold. It is not right. Clients will not come on their own and offer you money. In order to earn a decent living as a psychologist-consultant or trainer, you need to sell your services.

If you have already established yourself, have written several books, have publications, articles, then clients will believe you (or rather, not even you, but your brand) and break down your doors. But, if you are not yet a brand, then your services will not sell themselves. That's why you need to sell.

To do this, you need to study at least the simplest selling mechanisms. The simplest selling mechanism that you can use immediately after reading this article is the three-step mechanism.

Your specific proposal to solve specific problems for a specific target audience

Call to action (make some order or call you right now).

Most people live with many problems that need to be solved within themselves, but they put off solving them until later. Remember yourself. When do you go to the dentist? In most cases, when the tooth already hurts. But it was possible to come earlier and prevent this situation. The tooth will not start to hurt out of the blue. And the client needs to be reminded of this. As you know, prevention is always cheaper than cure.

Sales mechanism- this is a mechanism that reminds a person that he has a problem, it needs to be solved, and your proposal will really help solve it. And all this needs to be done now, otherwise tomorrow the tooth will fall out and there will be nothing to chew. And indeed it is. If you look deeper, selling is, first of all, an exchange of values ​​between you and your client, which results in money. And as you know, money is ENERGY!

5. Selling one. You sell one consultation or one training.

The fact is that if you are a consultant, it is impossible to solve a client’s problem in one session, no matter how cool you are. At a minimum, you need a month, at best, two or three, and sometimes more.

Therefore, when a psychologist offers one consultation at a time, the client pays money for it and, often, never comes again. Even if you agreed on a long-term job (say for a month), and there are a million reasons for this - you’re not in the mood, a pipe burst, you lost your phone, you were called to work, natural resistance to the process of change, in the end... the list could go on for a long time.

Therefore, if you are a psychological consultant, develop a program that solves the client's problem. Offer the client this program, offer a solution to his problem using the program. The program is perceived much better by the client than an incomprehensible one-time consultation. And it sells much easier than just a consultation.

For trainers. Perhaps you conducted a training, two-day, three-day or week-long, and the client left you. But it is impossible to solve a client’s problem even in one training; this usually requires a set of trainings. To do this, come up with a series of trainings, at least three or four, where you will develop your client and help him cope with the situation in a comprehensive manner.

You must understand perfectly well that the problem is not solved immediately and may have deep roots. Give people support if you are truly interested in making the lives of the people you work with truly better.

If you want to truly help your clients, you must sell programs (minimum 4-8 sessions) in consulting and a line of trainings if you are a trainer. Otherwise, you are just doing a hack (so, here a person turned up, came to you for a one-time consultation or training, you took money from him, but really didn’t help in any way). Sorry. Call yourself a psychologist, answer for it. And then, lately, there is simply immeasurable amount of hackwork on the market. Even certified. Let's provide truly high-quality services and take responsibility for the fact that you once decided to help people, heal their souls and hearts.

Conclusion: Specialize in specific problems for specific people, sell them programs and comprehensive solutions that will solve their problems.