PODCAST SHOWNOTES

Welcome to a fresh episode of the podcast. You're tuning into an episode in our special end-of-the-year series where we're taking a deep dive into the health of your personal styling business. In these four episodes, we'll explore how to assess key areas of your business, including your business model, your pricing, your marketing, and your sales skills in order to identify what's working, what's not, and where to make shifts for major growth and success in 2025.

But a quick heads up before we dive into today's episode. This series was created for personal stylists running transformational personal styling business, where the focus isn't just on helping a client buy some new clothes or do a one-off styling service, but on guiding them through a deep identity-based style journey. Whether you're already thriving and have six figures or beyond, or you're feeling a little stuck, these episodes will provide clarity, perspective, and actionable steps to ensure your business supports the life you want and the client you love. Let's get into it.

Welcome to the Six Figure Personal Stylist Podcast, the ultimate no-BS business podcast for ambitious personal stylists ready to build a six-figure and beyond personal styling business.

You won't hear the typical snoozefest business advice that most personal stylists get told all of the time. Nope. Instead, I'll be sharing business-building strategies that will help you create a killer personal brand, a cult following of loyal personal styling clients, and make a ton of cash while creating lasting style transformations for your clients.

I'm Nicole Otchy, your host and a former personal stylist of 14 years who built a lucrative styling business in three major cities, but only after spending years trying to crack the six-figure styling business code without burning out. And now I'm here to tell you how to do exactly the same. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Otchy, and you are turning into the final episode of our special series Profit Power Moves, a six-figure business audit for transformational stylists. We have spent the last few episodes diving deep into core areas of your business, your business model, your pricing, your marketing, and today, we are closing it out by talking about the most critical skill any stylist aiming to work with high-ticket premium clients needs to have sales skills.

Now, I know sales skills can sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially when you are offering a premium transformational experience because we have coded sales to mean pushy. But in this episode, I'm going to walk you through how selling transformational services is very, very different than selling transactional ones as a stylist.

You'll learn how to lead genuine conversations that result in closing high-end, long-term clients. Plus, I'm going to give you a mini framework for conducting discovery calls that connect your client's deeper needs and aspirations so let's get started.

When you're offering transactional styling services, the sales process is typically quick and focused on immediate task-based results. Think of it as the client coming to you for a specific need, “I need you to pick out some clothes for an event,” or “I want a quick closet edit.” The conversation is short, straightforward because the client is dictating what they want and you're saying, “Yes, I will carry out that task,” and focused on delivering this very clear outcome that they have usually requested and you're providing the solution and then you're done.

But selling transformational services as a stylist is a whole other ballgame because you're not just selling an outcome like the new clothes, you're selling a long-term experience that helps your client connect with their personal goals, values, and their identity in terms of their style.

This requires a deeper, more in-depth conversation in your sales process, which interestingly is something that most stylists feel more comfortable with because it's a relational model of selling, which is what I teach my stylists. When clients invest in transformational styling, they're not just buying the clothes when they work with you or some of your time, they're buying the journey, they're buying the whole experience.

It's about helping them become more aligned with who they are and how they want to show up in the world and the fact that you're creating and curating an experience is part of what they're paying for and part of what makes them feel comfortable going all in emotionally with you. In order to sell that type of service, you need to be able to guide your client towards that vision and into it both from the sales call all the way to the off-boarding.

The conversation needs to be about more than just the transactions that will take place. It's about their evolution and their confidence and their self-expression and their commitment to those things as a partner in the process. Why do transformational sales require more in-depth conversations? Well, the answer is because you're not just solving a surface-level problem. You are trying to get at and tease out and look at and identify a deeper identity-based need in the client who's a stranger to you when you first met.

So when you're speaking with a potential client who's considering your transformational styling services, they may not be fully aware of how much they need this transformation. They just may be aware that they're called to you and maybe they know they're feeling disconnected from their style or unsure of how to dress in a way that reflects their personal or professional identity.

Maybe they're frustrated. Maybe they know they're spending a lot of money, but they're not getting what they want to go with their style. But it's your job as a stylist to help them see the bigger picture, because a lot of people, when they hire a stylist, are in a point of transition, and transitions in life can cause a lot of overwhelm, which means we don't really see the forest through the trees.

It's your job when you're trying to see, "Is this a good client for me,” that's what sales calls are, they're mutual vetting experiences where you can say, “Wait a sec, they may be overwhelmed at this moment, but do they have a larger vision for themselves that we can work with here?” Your sales conversation should focus on helping your potential clients connect the dots between their personal goals, their values, and how their style fits into all of that.

That's going to require you asking questions like, how do you want to feel when you walk into a room? How do you think your current style reflects your personal values and your goals? What does your dream wardrobe say about you and where you want to go in life?

These are questions that are going to allow your potential client to start thinking in a deeper way and to see that, “Wait a sec, they may be a little bit more than just a little frustrated with the clothes that are on the floor and the money they think they're wasting. There may be a reason why that frustration keeps popping up because the answers to these questions are revealing that to them.”

When you ask these questions, it also positions you as someone who's not just offering your service but providing a truly life-changing transformation for somebody that is willing to make the connections and be a partner with you.

Let's get into how of it. How do you lead a discovery call or a consultation that feels genuine and results in closing high-end long-term clients? Because a lot of stylists, they don't have a framework. They're just winging it because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But when they're faced with a high-ticket client or somebody that's very influential or somebody that they feel is a little out of their league maybe as a client, they tend to bend and offer a lot of things that they should not be offering.

The price thing gets a little weird. Everything gets a little out of focus. I want to keep you nice and focused and on your game. So, you're going to start your sales calls by building rapport. You're going to make it clear that you're interested in them as a person, but you're not going to start relating to them. You're not going to be like, “Tell me about your day. Oh, you live in Texas, me too.” We're not doing that. Just a quick, “How are you doing?” then, “Okay, let's get into why we're here.”

You want to immediately get into those deeper dive identity-based questions that I mentioned earlier. I have different places where I tell stylists when to ask specific questions and where to put them and there's pre-sales call questionnaire and all that that I can't get into on this because it would just take too long, but you want to make sure that you are comfortable getting beyond that surface level questioning very quickly because it's going to position you as an expert and command their attention in a different way.

Explore not just what they want from their wardrobe, but why they want it. That is the critical part. What is going on in their life right now that's making it important for them to have it right now? It often is deeper than just, "Oh, I got a promotion." Well, you got a promotion. What about that makes you want to get a new style? What is it about the environment? That's what I mean when I say go deeper.

Once you understand the client's deeper needs, the third part of this is you really want to help them visualize what working with you would look like and they can't do that if you just tell them every single service that you offer. That's not going to work. You want to get an idea of what service would be a good fit for them and then offer that to them on the call.

It doesn't matter what the price is. You want to tell them what the solution would be that you have. It could be the lowest, could be the highest, could be your main price, could be anything. I don't care, but I want you to honestly and authentically tell them what is going to meet their needs even if you're nervous about the price. Because your job is to be an expert that helps them meet their needs, their job is to decide if they're going to take the offer. That's how it works.

You really want to be able to help them see how the experience that they want to have by getting a new job or whatever the life transition is, is going to be radically changed and better as a result of you giving them the service that they want to potentially buy. That's why you don't want to overwhelm them with all of the services because you cannot paint that picture when you give them all of them.

That's why you want to, in full integrity, give them and serve them in the conversation, the one that will be best. If they come back to you later and say, "That's not the one that I want. The price is too high," you could offer them something else. They have eyes. They can read your website. Your job, though, on that call is to give them the service to paint the picture for them of how that service is going to get them to where they want to go.

Fourth, you want to address any kind of sales objections really confidently. I do not want you to be afraid to talk about pricing, time commitment, all of that from a place of just like, “Yeah, it is what it is. Very confident, that's the price.” No, like immediately followed it up with a million caveats or you'll save money on clothes or just the price, shut your mouth, that's it. Say the least on these calls.

You need to spend as much time as possible creating an evidence bank that outlines all the value that you give that goes way beyond the clothes. You need to be able to do that so that you can have even more confidence when you say the price of your services.

Then you always want to make sure you close the call with the next steps. Be clear about the next steps in the process. Are you going to follow up with them? Are they getting it back to you by a certain date? I still recommend you always get back to them and just check in, whether it's sending a proposal, scheduling a follow-up, or booking a session, making sure that the potential client knows exactly what to expect from you when you're moving forward, by what date and by what time.

Always leave the door open for future conversation if they are not ready to commit right away. If they say, “No, this is not right for me,” it doesn't mean you cannot follow up. If they say, “No, this isn't right for me,” say, "You know what? I will check back in with you in six months."

If they say nothing about that, like it's not a problem, there's no reason for you to not check in in six months. Not right now does not mean not forever. Do not let yourself believe that that's what that means. This overview of the framework that I teach is going to really help you guide the conversation in a way that feels natural.

Also helps the client be able to visualize the deeper value of your service so that even if they don't sign right away, they may very well come back to you, especially if you follow up and that is critical. Let's talk about why a lot of stylists tell me that they shy away from sales skills.

I've worked with a lot of really, really talented stylists who feel uncomfortable with the idea of selling. They think, “If my work is good enough, shouldn't clients just come to me?” Or, “It used to work, to be able to create content, and then people would just book me. I wouldn't even have to talk about my services.”

I have news. Everything has changed in the online space and consumer savviness. I have recorded many other podcasts and talked about this, and I'm not the only one talking about it. Lots and lots of folks in the online world and business leaders are speaking about it. It's literally how society works right now.

It doesn't really matter what used to happen. It really matters that we help you make money right now. In the same way that society has changed in the way people look at buying online and buying education and buying one-on-one services, in a lot of ways it's helped stylists because people are more comfortable with high-end luxury one-on-one consulting services that never were before.

That's one of the critical things about styling, reaching more of a larger group of people and becoming more clear in societal consciousness. But one of the things is that stylists think, "Well, if I didn't need the sales skills before, why should I need them now?"

Technically, it's really because your buyer wasn't as smart if we're being truly honest, all of us. That's true of all of us, myself included. We now need to sell, but not in the way that people think in more of a relationship-based way, where you're just keeping the door open. You're explaining to people why things would be good for them. You're doing a lot more on your selling one-to-many in your marketing because your marketing always has a clear point.

You're not just showing random things from your life and behind the scenes. If you are showing things on Instagram Stories, you're doing it for a reason. It's to relate to your audience. It's not just for the sake of it. That's really important because the more you do specific things in your marketing, the more relational these sales calls feel.

Lots of stylists struggle with sales calls because they are not doing the kind of warmup that they need in their content in order to make that sales call feel really easy for all the people involved. Just knowing how to run a sales call has drastically changed the lives of the stylists I have worked with in my programs.

All of them were talking the other day in Income Accelerator and also in my marketing and sales mastermind for my established clients about how using the framework that I teach in detail has helped them overcome objections they've never overcome before for understanding how to deal with the weight issue that so many stylists get in terms of their sales objections, how to handle that, I have to talk to my husband.

Just things that they felt like they just had to concede the sale to. It's not like you're fighting for the sale. That's not what we're doing. Relational selling is about getting on the other side of the table metaphorically speaking and understanding where that person's coming from.

Not so that you can convince them, but so that you can understand them. People can sense that. People can really sense the difference between someone trying to convince and somebody really trying to understand them. Then when you do follow up with people, so many stylists I work with see that sales really is not a one-time event. It's a process.

If you don't understand the process it will feel like selling. That's the irony of it. If you don't understand how to follow up in a way that puts the client at the center of the interaction in a really ethical way because you have done the work, as we talked about in the marketing episode, to understand the people you work with and your target audience so well that you get all the experiences that the majority of your clients are coming to you with, you understand them, so you're able to have the conversation from this really light and easy place of, “I get it. I'm an expert in people like you. I understand how you think.”

Maybe they're just a little bit misled. Maybe they misunderstand how this could really help them. Your job is just to be a stand for them, getting what they say they want, which is why you have to have them say what they want on the sales call, which is why you have to learn how to ask better questions.

That is what relational selling is. It's not cold DMing people. I have never told anyone to do that. It's not running ads, hoping that it works. It's not spamming people. It's not sending a million emails even when they don't listen or reply back to you. That's not what we're doing.

It's about fully being in a relationship with a niche and getting where they are so that these are just very smooth back and forth and vetting exercises for the stylists. We want you to also learn that sales skills are about you making sure that you're getting the best fits so that you can have the best experience in your business.

It's just important that you are sold on the client as the client is sold on you. If you are working with a premium client or you really want to work with a premium client, you're not just selling the service, you really have to learn how to sell a luxury experience. You need to learn how to talk about it.

That requires really a certain level of skill and confidence in yourself when it comes to sales because you don't stop selling the minute you sign the client. You sell them until you off-board them and then you try to sell them again. When you get that relational selling is really what you're doing anyway as a stylist, we just tend to think, "Oh, after the sales call, it's over."

But every time you try to convince somebody to try something on they wouldn't have tried before, it's a sales skill because you're explaining to them why that's happening. You're relating to them, you're not forcing the blouse on them. Like, “I've never worn red.” You are not saying, “You have to wear it.” You're saying, “You would look so good in it because LMNOP.” That's relational selling.”

You're just thinking that selling only happens with money. That's why you really got to get good at this because even if you get the sale, you could still lose the client and that is what I don't want for any of you. If you feel like your sales skills could use some improvement, hop on the waitlist for the next Income Accelerator Program.

We're going to be kicking it off in February and the entire program is based on relational selling, relational marketing, and really crafting services that have what's best for you in mind and what's best for your clients. I am very passionate about this topic. I spent well over $100,000 learning sales skills, and it is the best money I have ever spent in my business.

I love, love, love passing it on to stylists and just watching them win because teaching stylists how to sell in a way that feels like them and feels authentic is just incredible. It's incredible for everybody, including clients. I've been sold to before and thanked people.

I think we tend to forget the experiences that we have been sold that were amazing, we didn't even realize somebody was using sales skills on us. That's what's so wild about it. It's when we have a bad experience that we associate all sales with that. That's just not how it works because I believe in what stylists do. Without selling your services, nobody gets to experience it. We ain't here for a hobby, we're here to transform lives and that's serious professional stuff. I hope that this series was helpful and that you got some clarity on what it could take for you to start closing more high-ticket premium clients, improving some of those sales skills, and asking better questions.

Don't forget to check out the show notes for the waitlist for an upcoming Income Accelerator Program in February and any other links mentioned in this episode. I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me. It turns out that social proof is actually pretty important. So if you could help me out, I'd so appreciate it. If you just had a quick free moment and could leave me a rating or review on the podcast app, that would be killer. And even better, if you wanted to share this episode on Instagram and tag me, that would totally make my day and it would bring so much more awareness to the podcast and would help other stylists just like you who are looking to build lucrative styling business because the better each of us does, the better all of us do. Thanks for hanging out with me and I'll chat with you next time.