Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 185 - The travel advisor & outreach: cold, warm & everything in-between
Transcript
- Rachel: Day 185 of the Travel Agent City in your podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. If you don't know who I am, just go to elevate with Rachel K.com. If this is the first time. For those of you who come back on the daily, I really appreciate it. I am I love seeing the little number of subscribers go up. So please subscribe if you want daily drops. Okay. Comment, I don't know. That's too many call to actions. Calm down, Rachel. Let's talk about the message that sits in your drafts for like six days because you're scared of how it's gonna land. ⁓ we're gonna fix your relationship with outreach. That's day 185. I wish I had intro music for this. I almost wanna ⁓ have the lawn or dun. Okay. So what is outreach? Great question. There's warm outreach and there's cold outreach. We're gonna go with warm outreach first. Warm outreach is reaching out to people who already know you, past clients, friends, people who liked your last five posts. Or DM'd you and never booked. This is the easiest and highest converting outreach you'll ever do. And most advisors don't even think to touch it. a simple like warm outreach cadence is like every past client gets a check-in message at like three, six, twelve months after the trip. ⁓ Not a sales pitch. Not the regular newsletter. ⁓ I've got space on this bad. No. More like, hey, how are things going? Got any trips on the horizon? How is and I've talked about this in so many episodes. If you know they have children or you know they're newlyweds, hey, how are things? How's the first few months of marriage? I know we talked that you were gonna buy a house. Have you bought a house? Da da da. Like check in like that. People book again when they feel like they're being remembered, not marketed to. ⁓ for the people who've like engaged heavily with you but haven't booked, the ones that are like commenting, liking, sharing, maybe they've like booked a call and then canceled, staying quiet otherwise, just send a DM. Hey, I noticed that you've been loving my content on Mediterranean cruising. Is this something that you're actually planning on doing? Or are you just dream scrolling with me? Just light, curious, no pressure. And that starts more like that question alone starts more conversations than any ad. I actually had that happen. I had this person like psychotically, not psychotically, but kind of. I was like, mmm, this person's stalking me. they were following me. They were liking a lot of my content. And they had a name on their account that lent towards they must be a travel agent. And so I was like, interesting. And so I went to their profile and I DMed them, like, hey, I notice you're liking a lot of my content. ⁓ are you a travel advisor? You know I have like some courses and things and mentoring, coaching. I can help you with this. They're like, no, I'm not a travel advisor, but I have a podcast all about destination weddings. ⁓ and they're like, I'd love to feature you. And it's like, okay, let's do that. So even that kind of like if if you're like, ⁓ that's a travel advisor, like maybe they have a referral, or maybe they are like, can I join your team? No, I'm not doing that. Like, or yes, you can. Like, I don't know your business model. or maybe They're like, I just really love your content on this and I actually have a cousin or a friend that wants your niche of travel and it's not my specialty. Would you like this client and give me like a kickback or something, like a referral fee? Who knows? All right. So that's kinda like warm outreach in a nutshell. Cold outreach isn't cold calling. My dad used to do, he was an insurance broker, and he was like one of the top banker's life salesmen for the first couple years in the industry. And then he went out on his own as as a broker. And this was back in the early nineties before the do not call list came about. And so he would buy these like little three by five cards, but they'd be stacked. On that old school printer paper, but they would just be like three by five, perforated, pre-perforated, but not torn cards. And they'd just be like accordion style, like all together, and it'd just be like leads for he would just buy all of them. I don't know if he bought them, but he he had those like crazy. And he would call, that was his cold calling. He'd spend four hours. Every single day when he didn't have appointments, the first four hours, just call everybody on this list. Try to get appointments set, right? You can't really do that anymore. And so How are travel advisors? What could be considered cold outreach for travel advisors? It's a little bit more targeted. This is gonna be like the local business owners that you don't really know for corporate travel partnerships. It's gonna be like wedding vendors and photographers for honeymoon referrals. and it's gonna be like certain size companies that employ enough people for incentive trips or retreats. It could be like any kinda anyone in the wellness sphere, even if they're just like in therapy, could like I've I mean y it could be church leaders. It could be there's like so many different cold outreach opportunities for travel advisors. But we can't buy I mean you c technically you can buy leads. But you can't really buy leads. I mean you can but most people don't. So the move that works is you always gotta lead with cold, lead with value, don't go straight into your pitch. A couple days ago, day 181, I think, I did I did a whole episode on the unpitch framework. Go download that episode, listen to it later. But And I tell advisors this all the time, like photographers are like my favorite referral partnerships to create. But reach out to a photographer that specializes in weddings and say, hey, like be honest, look at their website, research things. I love your work. You know, I specialize, you could throw in destination weddings or honeymoon planning, and I would love to be a resource for your couples. No strings attached. Happy to send you a referral fee if that's what you do. because you're just offering something before you ask for anything, okay? And you want to keep the cold outreach smaller and more personal rather than just really broad blanket generic emails. Like ten really thoughtful, specific messages a month to real potentially aligned partnerships will outperform a hundred copy-pasted ones every single time. In fact, I just did I'm working on a new project from my travel agency that could be possibly completely I don't know I'm I'm not gonna say a whole lot about it but it requires cold outreach and cold outreach email is what I did first and it's already converting to partnerships at like ten to twenty percent which normally with cold outreach for every hundred you might get two people interested But that's what I do is I I'm very I only reach out to a handful of people. I make sure I've studied the owner of those companies and like everything in depth. Find something in common, find like this one looks like somebody based on their like information that could be a really good partner for what I'm moving into with my travel agency. And then I do have like the main points is like here's what I'm looking for. But I'll be like, hey, I'm local to your area, or I'm like relocating to your area, or I've heard a lot about you in the beginning, you know? And then main point is not really changed. And then the bottom point is like I really like, like, give them a compliment and share the commonality, right? All right. And the secret to even like converting even higher. the follow-up for cold outreach. Most of the time, well, warmer cold outreach, most of the time, inquiries or reaching out outreach does not convert on the first time. They convert on message like three, maybe four? spaced out over a couple of weeks, each one adding a little bit of value, instead of just following up to see. So back to the wedding photographer example. You could potentially follow up and be like, hey, I was i if it's this if make sure it's true. Don't be fibbing. Hey, I was following up, you know. I mentioned to a friend of mine who recently got engaged that I was looking into a partnership with you, and I sent them your website. Here's their name, they want to work with you. And that way you're already like, I'm already sending you referrals. Do you want to partner with me? You know. So build yourself a three-touch sync sequence. The initial message, the follow-up with something possibly useful, maybe a referral. If it's not a referral, then it can just be like an idea or suggestion. And then a low pressure check-in. Most people who go like totally quiet to cold outreach or warm outreach aren't saying no, they're just busy. So if you're persistent and you do it very kindly, that's what separates advisors with a full pipeline from advisors wondering why nobody's responding to them. What I like to do specifically with cold outreach, I will send that email and then I wait about a week. And if I have their phone number, I will call them. And I am trying to get in touch with the owner of the business. Like this is for like kinda like corporate or you can use it with any any kind of cold outreach, but anyway, you call the number. Whether you leave voicemail or they answer the phone, say, Hey, this is Rachel. I'm just following I'm just don't say I'm just following up, sorry. This is Rachel, I'm Wanted to see your thoughts on that email I sent you. And even if they never even saw the email, they're gonna be like, What? Email? Rachel. Especially if you have their first name. If you're like, hey Alex, I sent you that email last week. ⁓ what are your thoughts on that? Do you wanna meet up for lunch next Thursday and discuss it? ⁓ yeah, we can do that. Okay, great. And then they're gonna look for the email. And then they're gonna be like, well, I can at least write off my lunch with them. Okay. So that closes out the marketing strategy stretch for the week. Newsletters, video, writ, outreach, all working together instead of as four separate chores. Okay. Tomorrow I am shifting Giaz. We're gonna go after what happens after someone responds to all that outreach you just did or replies to your newsletter. ⁓ Sorting out your pipeline and your booking strategy so all this marketing effort doesn't leak out of the bottom, guys. This is Travel Agency in a year, day 185. Have a great day. I will see you tomorrow.