This article explains one way to assess the influence which Saturn has in a chart, and therefore how strong or weak it is, through the calculation of essential dignity.
Managing Client Expectations
Author: Alison Price – Published: November 2024
Client Expectations
When starting or running your astrology business, one of the most crucial skills you can develop is managing your client expectations. Clients often come to us seeking definitive answers about their future or quick fixes to life’s problems. As astrologers, we walk a delicate line between illuminating potential paths and avoiding overpromising. In this week’s newsletter I want to share my thoughts on the challenge of client expectation management and offer you some practical tips that have worked for me in the past.
Jupiter vs Saturn
Great expectations are shown by Jupiter in your chart and what you actually get is shown by Saturn. We all know that these two planets play a role and have their place, but in the realm of client expectations your customer wants Jupiter and you have to tell them they’re getting Saturn.
Expectation 1
People want fame, fortune, clever kids, beauty, hope, longevity and the perfect mate – Jupiter. The astrologer sees stress, oppositions, constraints and a natal promise that suggests otherwise – Saturn.
Expectation 2
People want a five-hour reading covering everything in their life and constant phone follow up calls for months – Jupiter. The astrologer provides a one-hour session within certain parameters with a focused topic approach and limited follow up – Saturn.
Expectation 3
People want good news – Jupiter. The astrologer carefully explains about the transiting Pluto square their natal Sun which they have in orb for the next 12 months – Saturn.
Reality
I’m not saying give bad news, what I am saying is you need to control your client’s expectations before the session so they are ready for what you have to say. Tell them you possibly can’t see pots of money, a vigorous lover, a new job, or (God help us) their death. Rather tell them that you can see potential energy, opportunities, trends, support and openings which suggest certain situations, people, emotions and attitudes that are indicated to unfold for them. Always avoid specifics.
Services
What You Offer
Not every astrologer will offer the same services and by services, I mean types of consultations. The options for astrological services are varied here are some examples:
⠀
- Natal chart reading
- Printed written natal report
- Transit reading
- Relocation reading
- Trauma reading
- Solar return reading
- Love reading for two people
- Children’s reading
- Parent child reading
- Rectification service
- Career counselling
- Party style group readings
- Mid-life crisis reading
- 20-minute on-the-spot reading
- Health and wellbeing reading
⠀
The list goes on. What you can offer will depend on what you know most about and feel comfortable doing. In my time as an astrologer over the years, I’ve offered all the above at different times, but that’s changed now. I’ll explain in a moment.
Multiple Choice
The problem with offering too many things is that it becomes confusing for your potential clients to choose. Studies have shown that we struggle to decide when offered too many choices through overchoice.
Astrologese
Astrologese refers to the specialized language and terminology that we use in astrology. It’s the inside words we use like transit, antiscia, solar return and retrograde. It’s the jargon of our craft. While you can happily talk astrology at your local astrology group or an online astrology forum, the general public can quickly be turned off or confused with too much astrologese especially at the beginning. Many astrological concepts sound complex or mystical to those people (your potential clients) who are unfamiliar with then.
Keep it Simple
Say you offer forecasting and have two different services one called “Transit Reading” and other “Solar Return Reading.” Mrs. Average does not know the difference between transits and solar returns and so she can’t choose. But that’s not the worst part, she doesn’t know that it means forecasting or predicting the future in the first place. The worst part is, she passes on you and moves to the next astrology website that is simpler and speaks to her.
Solution
Option 1: General
Only offer three choices. For example, if you do general astrology:
- Birth Chart Reading
- 12-month Forecast Reading
- Love Life for Couples Reading
This list is quite clear and everyone can understand what they are signing up for.
Option 2: Specialized
Your specialized area if you have one. For example, if you do health care related astrology:
- General Health and Vitality Reading for Peak Wellbeing.
- Mental Health and Dependency Recovery Strategy Reading.
- Optimal Exercise and Diet Reading for Your Health.
Here you are reinforcing your hard-won advanced astrology skills in a certain area – health. You are setting yourself apart from the generalist astrologers out there in the wild.
Option 3: Time
Here you offer options for a quick in-and-out reading. Your potential customer can choose a short to the point reading. For example, if you only do natal chart work.
- Mini Reading for everyone (15 minutes).
- Midi Reading for everyone (30-minutes).
- Maxi reading for everyone (60-minutes).
This is a brilliant way to get them into your ecosystem before they have to invest more time and money than they feel comfortable doing.
Ask Questions
Why Ask Questions?
You wouldn’t go to a doctor with a headache and say, “Give me a general examination and see if you can find the problem.” Your doc wouldn’t have a chance and you’d think she was no good and worst, you’d tell everyone you met about how Dr. Doolittle was useless. It’s the same for astrologers and their clients. You need to ask questions of your client before you cast the chart.
General
If my potential client says, “Tell me about my chart!” I tend to refuse to do the reading and suggest they ask a Facebook group. Ny them answering your questions it makes them think about what they really want to know. You can be on thin ice if you cover everything that the chart shows you, all in the space of one hour.
Expectations
If you don’t know what they expect, you can’t deliver a worthwhile reading for them. The goal is to have happy customers who sing your praises afterwards. You don’t want clients who say you were not much good because they were worried about their dying mother or their floundering marriage and you didn’t speak about it to them.
What to Ask
What is your full name?
What is your birth time?
What is your birth date?
What is your birthplace?
Where did you get this birth time?
Where do you live now?
What is the focus of your consultation?
How do you think I can help you?
What are you looking for in this reading?
Have you been to an astrologer before?
Did someone refer you to me?
How to Ask Questions
I think there are three ways to ask question of your clients.
Verbally
Verbally ask them if you see them face-to-face when they book a session with you. This is dangerous because they can change their mind and forget what they said. This also is a problem with getting the birth data because they can easily say April and you write down August. Or they say 6/7/1975 which can be seen as 6th of July 1975 or 7th of June 1975 depending on where they live. In the USA the month comes before the day and in the UK the day comes before the month. Tricky, tricky. It happens.
You can email them a page with all your questions on it that they have to fill in before the session. The issue here is that they never actually complete the form and the booked consultation date looms large and you still don’t have a focus for the session.
Calendly
Ask the question at the time of booking. I use the Calendly booking system where I can pre ask the questions I want to before they can make the booking. They can’t book a session unless they’ve answered the questions. You can see my bookings page here. There are other online booking programs and I urge you to check them out.
Privacy
Friends and Family
You need to be quite clear on your privacy and by privacy, I mean that you’re going to keep their chart confidential, and your mouth shut. This often comes up if you do charts for clients and then they refer their sister in for reading. They’re worried that you’re going to tell their sister what went on in their own session with you.
Astrological Community
Many of your clients will actually come from the astrological community. They are often hobbyists or junior astrologers and may find you at the local astrology group. And they need to know that when you are doing their chart, you’re not going to start discussing it at the dinner table afterwards. You have to be incredibly clear in your privacy policy that you do not discuss their chart with anybody. Not with their husband or wife. Not with their mother. Not with your friends. Not with your mutual friends. Not with anybody.
Privacy Statement.
You need to have a privacy statement already written out on your website that you can link to if anybody wants to know. I never discuss charts I have worked on with anybody. None of their family, none of my friends, no one in the astrological community, I don’t even discuss it with people in my house. It is absolutely confidential what is spoken about in my astrological consultation room. Don’t do it. Don’t discuss other people’s charts with other people. It’s a total no no.
Afterwards
Follow-up
Early in my astrological career, I was doing consultations and I casually said to my clients, well if you got any questions, you can give me a ring. This worked fine for quite a long time because nobody really gave me a ring. But then one day I had a client who did call me. She called me on the telephone at home early on a Sunday morning and woke up my whole family. In the following week, she called me three times in the evenings just as we were sitting down to dinner. I took the call. What could I do?
The final straw was when she knocked at my front door one Saturday morning, just as my husband and four young kids and I we’re going to go out on a picnic. It was at this point that I told her I could no longer support her in this manner. I suggested she make another appointment for a consultation so we can discuss all her fears. Now this is a particularly extreme example, but it does happen.
Solution
The way to handle too much after contact is to be quite clear about how your clients can contact you after a consultation or even if they can at all. You need to tell them which methods you are happy to accept.
For example, I’m happy to respond to emails from clients that I’ve had within thirty days after the reading. I give this period because people need time to think about what was said and mull it over as maybe there were bits that weren’t quite clear. After the thirty days have passed, I really can’t remember the birth chart. So, I have to go back to my records, dig the chart out, look it up, read my notes and get back into the feel of what the chart was all about and this all then becomes work for me.
I only return emails during business days. So, if I get an e-mail from you on a Friday evening (within the 30-day period), I’m not going to get to it till Monday morning. But this is quite clear, I’ve spelt it out ahead of time and in this way, I have managed my client expectations.
What I Offer
Overwhelm
In the past I have offered a myriad of astrological services. You name it and I’ve offered it. But what I’ve found is that people really only want two things from me, to get their chart read and to learn more astrology. I also taught formal classes for beginner, intermediate and advanced students for years and years. So last year I trimmed down my offerings to only two. Yes, I know I said 3 offerings earlier on for you, but I’ve tightened it up for my clients.
Consultations
For Everyone
I offer a one-hour comprehensive consultation which covers natal and forecast. This is for anyone in the general public and people who are new to astrology. In the consultation I don’t use astrologese. They get to choose the main focus of the reading and we go from there.
I prepare all the charts I’ll use like the natal chart, solar return chart, secondary progressed chart, solar arc directed chart, bi-wheels, eclipses and graphic ephemeris. I immerse myself in their chart beforehand and make sure I’m ready. I give my attention on their chosen focus and double check everything, birth time, birth date, transit times and stations. No waffle.
Coaching
For Astrologers
I also offer one-hour astrological coaching sessions for aspiring astrologers. People who use this service are individuals just like you reading this email. They are astrology students and professionals who want some help tweaking their own readings, filling in knowledge gaps, focusing in on specific parts of interpretation like the dispositor tree or antiscia or how to read a graphic ephemeris, or managing their astrology business. My coaching service has superseded the formal classes I used to teach. I changed this because people just don’t have the time to sit through months of classes as they want to get going.
Additionally, people were coming to me and saying I just want the transit class and not the solar arc directions class, or I just want the lunar nodes class and not the Mayan long count calendar class. These classes being referred to were built into my main courses of 16 classes purchased in a bundle. It just made sense to offer spot learning for my clients which is now available in the coaching I offer where they can get to pick and choose what they want to focus on. Now it may be different for you.
Peer Review
Most people who come to me for coaching can already read a chart and they are frequently starting to read charts for others. These good folks want me to go over their interpretations and analysis and offer some advice on what they missed or what is important. To get peer review, they send me the already calculated charts, natal and forecast notes and we go from there. It’s like having someone looking over your shoulder to help you along. I give my ideas and insights on what to focus on and answer their specific questions regarding their client’s charts to help them provide the best astrology consultation they can.
Thrive
Gossip
Managing your client expectations can help your astrology business thrive as you provide a better service and your clients think you are great. We like to complain, it’s a human condition (thank you Mercury). Studies have shown that a happy customer will promote you and your services to five people, but a dissatisfied customer will bad mouth you nine people. We all make mistakes, I certainly have in the past, but with some forethought you can minimize unfavorable client reviews and impressions. These are just a few ideas I have about managing client expectations which I believe you will find helpful.
Author Bio
Alison Price: Professional Astrologer
Alison helps you uncover your individual creativity and lead a fulfilling life using your own astrology. She shares her wisdom from the heart with a touch of humor. She offers Consultations for everyone and Coaching for Aspiring Astrologers.
If you’d like to get in touch with Alison, you can reach out to her via email at starzology@gmail.com.
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