If your diary is full and the money still isn't there, the quickest extra revenue in your business is sitting in your treatment room every week. Three things raise what each client spends: homecare retail, memberships and add-ons. All three are sold at the consultation, by giving advice.

Finding new clients is slow and expensive. The clients you already have know you, trust your work and come back. Kat Martyn spent 15 years in sales and marketing in the City before she retrained in skin, and her view of selling is simple: work out what the client needs, tell her honestly, and make it easy to say yes. Her own homepage calls it "sales without ick".

How to make more money in a beauty business without more clients

Revenue in a small beauty business comes from three numbers multiplied together:

Start by measuring your average spend. Take your total takings for last month and divide by the number of appointments. Some booking systems call it average ticket or average bill. Do it for the last three months, write the figures down, and check it every month from now on.

That number is your baseline. Ignore published industry averages. A lash bar and a skin clinic are not comparable, and the only benchmark that matters is whether your own figure is going up.

If your average spend is close to the price of your cheapest treatment, every client is leaving with the minimum. That is the gap the rest of this page closes.

How to sell beauty treatments without being pushy

Pushy selling starts from what you want to sell. Consultative selling starts from client needs. Clients can tell the difference within a sentence, which is why the second one works and feels better to do.

The consultation sequence is five steps:

1. Ask. What is bothering her about her skin, what has she tried, what does she use at home, and what would she like to see change.
2. Listen. Let her finish. Write down the words she uses, because you will use them back to her.
3. Prescribe. Recommend the treatment, the add-on and the homecare that answer what she told you. Say why each one is there.
4. Book the next visit before she leaves the room. This is where repeat bookings come from.
5. Follow up. A message a few days later asking how her skin feels, with her homecare reminder.

Three things keep it ethical and keep the client's trust:

• Only recommend what solves something she told you. If you cannot connect a product to her concern in one sentence, leave it out.
• Tell her what she does not need. "Your moisturiser is fine, keep using it" is the line that makes her believe the rest of your advice.
• Make no a comfortable answer. "No problem, I'll note it on your record and we can look again next time" ends the conversation without pressure. A client who felt free to say no this time is more likely to say yes next time.

If the word "selling" still makes you uncomfortable, call it advice. A client who books a skin treatment with you wants your professional recommendations. Holding them back leaves her guessing.

How to sell retail products in a salon

Homecare retail is the one part of your revenue that does not need your hands or your time. A client who leaves with the right skincare also gets better results from her treatments, which is why it belongs in the consultation.

• Write the routine down. Two or three products on a homecare card: what, when, in what order. Clients follow a routine they can take home and stick on the bathroom mirror.
• Use what you recommend. Name the products as you use them in the treatment, so she has felt them on her skin before you mention them at the end.
• Keep it short. A five-product routine to someone using soap and water gets none of it. Start with the one that makes the biggest difference and add to it next visit.
• Follow up on it. Ask at her next appointment how she is getting on. That conversation is where the second product sells.
• Know your margin on every product. Stock that sits on the shelf for a year is cash you have lent to a supplier.

Retail sales count toward your VAT taxable turnover. If you are getting close to the £90,000 threshold, check GOV.UK's guidance and speak to your accountant before a strong retail year takes you over it.

Do salon memberships work in the UK?

Memberships work well for some treatments and badly for others. The question to ask is how often a client should be coming anyway.

They suit:

• Maintenance treatments with a natural rhythm, such as a monthly facial. The membership turns a habit into a commitment and smooths your monthly income.
• Clients who already come regularly. A membership rewards loyalty they are already showing.
• A business that wants predictable revenue. Money arriving on the same date every month makes planning, stock and staffing easier.

They do not suit:

• Courses with an end point, such as a set of peels for pigmentation. Use a package with a fixed number of sessions instead.
• A diary that is already full. Members expect priority, and you need slots to give them.
• A membership built on a big discount. If the membership price sits below your cost floor, every member makes you poorer.

How to set one up: one included treatment a month, a benefit that costs you little (priority booking, a homecare discount, a skin review), a monthly payment taken automatically, and clear written terms covering how to cancel and what happens to an unused session. Have those terms checked, because recurring payments come with consumer-law obligations.

Add-ons and upgrades: sell them at the consultation

The worst moment to offer an add-on is at the till, when the client has her coat on and her card out. The best moment is in the consultation, when you are looking at her skin together.

"I can see some congestion along your jawline, so I'd add a peel today" is a recommendation. It has a reason, it is specific, and it is easy to say yes to. Upselling only feels pushy when there is no reason attached. How to price those add-ons, so they make you money, is in how to price facials in the UK.

Packages and loyalty

Packages lift the value of each client by committing her to a course of treatments, paid up front. Loyalty rewards keep regular clients coming back. Both work best when they add something, such as a homecare product or a skin review, and leave your treatment prices alone. Every discount you give is taken straight off your profit margin.

When your team does the selling

If you have staff, your average spend depends on how confidently they sell. Most therapists were trained in treatments and never in sales, so they skip the recommendation to avoid feeling awkward.

That is why Kat's Clinic Launch Lab installs "retail scripts, product recommendation flows, checkout conversations, add-on offers, upgrade prompts and membership positioning" (Clinic Launch Lab). The aim, in the same copy, is that "your average client value increases without increasing workload". Give your team the same consultation sequence above, and the words to use, and practise it with them.

Fully booked but broke? Check these before anything else

If you are busy and still not seeing the money, work through this in order:

The first three stop money leaking out. The fourth is where the extra comes from.

This is the work inside Scale Up Society, where converting consultations into paying clients "without feeling pushy or awkward" is one of the six things members learn.

"Sales without ick."

Kat Martyn, mentor.katmartyn.co.uk