The New Era of Sales and Consultation

By Rebecca Miller

Consultation is the heartbeat of your salon or clinic, but old strategies won’t connect with new generations of clients. Thriving in the changing beauty industry means embracing a new era of sales and consultation. Today, I’ll explain how this shift can turn your consultations into your business’s most powerful tool, strengthen client bonds, and fuel growth.

Reflecting on my early days, I remember the discomfort I felt around sales conversations. I would say things like, “I’m not a salesperson; I’m a beauty therapist.” Money was also something I felt uneasy discussing. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t taught how to sell. We are great at our craft, continually learning about skin function, cells, systems, skin conditions, cosmetic chemistry, and ingredients. Still, there has never been any education to understand our clients’ psychology and human behaviour in our consultation or sales process – until now.

The principles I’m sharing today come from a 30-year-long obsession with understanding how the brain works, neuroscience, psychology, and human behaviour. By understanding people better and mastering effective communication, you can enhance every area of your life, and today, you’ll discover how to leverage it to transform your consultations.

Before we think about our clients and our sales and consultation process, let’s shine a light on you and what sales really mean. It’s something I’ve been reflecting on at a deeper level. How do we truly see sales and selling?

When we stop relating to sales in the old way (pushy, manipulative tactics), we realise that sales are the doorway to all our desires: more transformations and happy clients, building incredible teams, time freedom, money freedom, leadership, confidence, and most importantly, a sustainable business.

To serve is to sell

You cannot serve someone if you are not selling. Think about how often you recommend a book, a movie, a massage, or an event to friends because you found it so good. You are selling that experience to them, but it doesn’t feel like a sale. Why? Because it’s a passionate, authentic recommendation. Similarly, our businesses’ desire to serve must be greater than the desire to make a sale.

Sales is leadership; sales is the transfer of certainty; sales is change. When we sell, we give people information in a way that helps them make better, faster decisions. Whether clients want to try something new or move away from pain, it’s all about change. A highly effective sales or consultation process provides clients comfort and certainty, ensuring they feel safe and understood.

For many years, the traditional approach to sales has been about pushing products and services. But in today’s world, especially when connecting with new generations, this method simply doesn’t work. We need to shift our focus from selling to solving. It’s not about us; it’s about truly understanding our clients’ needs and helping them find the solutions they seek.

A highly effective sales or consultation process gives you the foresight to know where you are leading your clients and, in turn, gives them the comfort and certainty that they are in safe hands. You must create a methodology that systematically and elegantly moves someone from “I’m interested” to “I’m buying,” from pain to pleasure, from current to future state. Sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and we must master both. Clinics that grow faster are:

• Focused on doing less but doing it well. They know the problems they solve, have clear messaging to talk to their ideal client, and create a business of results, value, high retention, and raving fans.

• Offering solutions that connect with the hearts and minds of their consumers and have turned that connection into a sales process that can be optimised, scaled, and trained. It’s

• crazy how most businesses systemise everything except the one function that drives their revenue and transformation – their consultations!

So, how do our clients make decisions?

To develop your own unique sales process that helps people buy more from you, more often, we first need to understand what drives decision-making - not from your perspective, but from your customers’ perspective.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of left brain versus right-brain thinking. The left brain is known for logic and analytical thinking (L for left, L for logic), while the right brain is known for emotion and creativity.

In my Mentorship Program, The 1% Code for Self, Wealth and Salon Business Expansion, we label the left side of the brain the red brain, and the right side the green brain.

Red Brain

The biggest and most common problem in sales is having red-brain conversations.

To understand the red brain, think about when you’re driving a car. What do you do when you get to a red light? You stop. What colour is a stop sign? It’s red. What are you looking for when you get to a stop sign? Danger, warning signs, reasons not to go.

When anchored into their red brains, clients will stop, wait, and look for danger. It is the “what if” brain:

• What if I make the wrong decision?

• What if it’s too expensive?

• What if there is a risk I don’t know about?

• What if there is something better out there?

For a therapist stuck in the red brain, conversations are focused on your product, its features, the process length, and the price. We generally love speaking to these things because they are familiar, comfortable, and within our knowledge, aka our comfort zone.

Green Brain

Green brain is the psychological key to helping clients make quicker, more confident decisions. When humans operate from the green, or right side, of their brain, they make decisions faster and don’t worry about negative consequences.

Think of it like this: what do you do if you get a green light? You go! You feel safe to proceed, often without consciously registering the colour of the light. I’m sure there have been moments when you have approached a green light, and a pedestrian or bike startled you. Why were you surprised? Because you weren’t looking for danger.

When you shift your marketing messages and sales conversations from the product focused red brain to the emotionally charged green brain, you help your clients feel into and articulate their lived experiences, challenges, pain, fears, wants and dreams. It’s about going beyond the rational and connecting with your clients emotionally. In doing so, you accelerate decision making.

In every sales conversation, you must remember: the ‘why’ makes them buy. Whenever you talk about a client’s “why”, unleashing emotion into the decision making process, you’re having a green brain conversation.

Every green brain needs a red one

For someone to make a decision, you need to engage both hemispheres of the brain, but it’s crucial to know how to activate the red brain, when to engage the green brain, and how to use them together effectively.

When clients have their green brain activated, they will happily handle the red brain details. However, if you put them into their red brain from the start and keep them there, you will be met with objections, delays, and the dreaded, “I want to think about it.”

The key is to lead with green brain conversations, understanding your client’s underlying needs, wants, and desires their ‘why.’ Use these insights to guide the conversation and your recommendations. Then, when it’s time to commit, invite the red brain into the sale. Clients commit with their green brain, and the red brain manages the specifics. When you re-engage the red brain, it becomes a much smaller component of the entire journey.

Is your team operating in red or green brain? Every touchpoint, from the language you use in your marketing to how you present your product or service in the consultation process, sets the tone for whether your client is in their red or green brain.

If, like most people, your marketing and sales are entirely red-brain, here are a few examples to help you shift to green-brain language:

• During payment conversations, instead of asking, “How would you like to pay?” say, “How would you like to take care of that today?” This small change reduces discomfort and encourages a positive response.

• When rebooking a client, rather than saying, “Let’s make your next appointment,” try, “Let’s plan our next time to get together.” People are less likely to cancel on a person than on an appointment.

• Avoid saying, “We do a weekly direct debit when discussing payment plans.” Instead, say, “We offer a weekly payment plan designed to help with your cash flow.” This approach feels supportive rather than obligatory.

I have so much to share on this topic, but I would take up the whole magazine! So much so that I designed an entire course around it that’s transforming the approach to sales and consultations in our industry. If you want to learn more about the new era of sales and consultation, we dive deeper into these principles in our Heartfelt Sales Course. We teach you how to put these lessons into practice with real-life scenarios, scripts, and lessons designed to empower you and your team.

Visit rebeccamiller.com.au/heartfelt-sales course to transform your approach and watch your business thrive.