| I am a practice building coach who specializes in helping
psychotherapists, coaches and alternative practitioners learn how to
market their practice. I believe that many practitioners do not
embrace technology and find marketing cheesy and beneath them. So…
they end up short changing themselves by not allowing the technology
of the day to help them in their work. We were not taught to market
or use business skills and technology in our practices. I can hear
many of you moaning as you are reading this, “If I wanted to learn
those skills, I would have gone to business school.”
I believe these technologies and skills do not make us less
people oriented, in fact, I think they help us put our energy into
helping people. Some of you may be like me and love technology but
you never thought of making it part of your practice and there are
others who can barely send out email. In both cases, you can learn
how to harness the power of technology to promote your practice in a
new way.
I write this to say that we need to learn to market ourselves and
our profession for so many reasons. People need to know that we are
out there so they can connect with us and they need to know that
they hiring a skilled worker, and that means someone worthy of a
decent wage. Plumbers make more an hour than we do and that is
entirely about perceived value.
Hillary Bodkek, President of the New York State Society for Clinical
Social Work recently said that, “Behavioral health care people who
don’t have a large enough voice are going to get crapped on, so to
speak.” (Psychotherapy Finances, Sept 06).
You can no longer sit back and hope that your professional
organization is doing enough lobbying for you. Marketing can help
you create a perceived value in the public’s mind. Marketing has
such a bad rap in our profession that we need to fundamentally shift
our idea of marketing to a tool that can help us on a macro level to
get our message out; that we are here to help people and on a micro
level, websites help prospective clients find you. All the while we
are creating a perceived value (it is real too) and thus we can be
paid a livable fee. |
