Tips for Travel Professionals that Wear Multiple Hats

June 17, 2015By: Nexion

Whether you are a new or experienced agent, you often juggle a lot, taking on the role of not only booking travel for your clients, but managing the back-end as an owner of the agency. It’s not always easy to understand the strength and responsibility of it all, including the pressure towards profitability. You need to know both the products and how to communicate this knowledge and use marketing/sales skills to do so.

The below tips can help those with dual roles not only make it through the day, but do so with an eye on growth and efficiency.

Work on the Business, not Just in the Business

The day-to-day things you do in terms of booking trips are what is considered working “in” the business. The productive agent is one that also has the discipline to allocate time “on” the business. This can include such things as marketing and making calls to existing customers. The phone is not going to ring on its own. You need to constantly be thinking about how you’re going to grow your customer base.

Practical tip: Treat marketing time like an appointment and schedule it for three to four hours a month. Take this time to really think about what you should be doing to grow your business. If urgent tasks get in the way, which often happens, then reschedule your strategy time as you would reschedule a meeting you were having with someone else.

Use Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Database

All agents should have a CRM and actually use it. You need to truly talk to your customers, ask questions, get their information, document it and use it later to solidify the relationship or build your business. Details that you need to get from clients can include birthdays, anniversaries, bucket list destinations or travel experiences and more.

Practical tip: You are working with a client and they drill down their current trip to two or three possible destinations. They book one of these destinations. After this trip, send articles or promotions about one of the other destinations the client did not book with a note saying “I remember when we were booking your last trip; you said you were interested in Hawaii and I just found this great resort in Hawaii.”

New Agent Advice:
Figure out Your Niche First

If you are a new agent, focus your development by learning more about less rather less about more. Figure out what works for who you are going to sell to and the best products for your core niche. If, for example, you decide to sell to the family market, then learn about one or two cruise lines, one or two family resorts and Disney. Take supplier training to learn about the products, as well as about marketing know-how.

Practical tip: Make a plan that includes:

• Here’s what I am going to sell
• Here what I need to know to sell
• Here’s how I’m going to do it
• Here’s when I’m going to do

New and Experienced Agent Advice:
Surround Yourself with a Strong Network

If you are new to the industry you have enough challenges going it alone and a host agency or consortia can help steer and train you so that you don’t have that isolation. It can do that through training, live in person or via a webinar.

Both new and experienced agents should attend conferences, either through a host agency or consortia, as well as industry conferences such as cruise3sixty. You not only get product information, but also can take marketing seminars and bond with other agents who can help you fill in blanks about products you might not know. These agents, whether you meet them through a host, consortia or at a conference, are people you can tap into. Similar to the agent at the next desk in a brick and mortar agency, these are your go-to colleagues for the at-home agent.

This article is brought to you by Nexion, and was produced in partnership with Travel Agent Central's sales team. Travel Agent Central's editorial team played no part in developing the article.