Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 138 - Why are Travel Advisors afraid to sell?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to day 138 of the Travel Agency of Year podcast. I'm your host Rachel K, travel agency owner, and I also have elevatewithrachelk.com, which has like a lot of resources and things to help all of you be happy and successful in your business, because that's what I want to see. I don't want to see like a full communist state where everyone's totally equal, but I want you to know it's possible. I did the math like two years ago on a Saturday night, because that's how cool I am. It wasn't a Saturday night, but it kind of was. It was a weekend. And in the US alone, I believe, it was so much math I had to do. Every independent travel advisor, if it was like a straight up communist state, like all business spread equally, should be able to make $120,000. but statistically, that is not the median. The median, like the median in the highway, not the average, but the middle. Interesting. Anyway, today's day 138, why are travel advisors afraid to sell? ⁓ I did so many episodes about this and I'll talk about that in a second. Maybe you're a travel advisor that's wanting to go into a new niche or a new destination. Maybe you're a brain newbie to the industry with zero sales background. ⁓ So you're not selling stuff. If you want to go into a new niche, yes, you need to have some idea of what you're selling. A vague idea. You don't have to know everything in and out. So, with that being said... The fear of selling. There's some limiting beliefs tied to it. And there's also some self-confidence issues going on. Limiting beliefs tied to it. I hate salesmen. So if you go into sales mode, you are now a salesman, therefore you hate yourself. That don't make no sense. So just don't sell. Just approach it all holistically. I don't know what the word would be to say. I don't know. That could be a reason why you're like Afraid to sell but Rachel. I'm not afraid to sell. Are you constantly posting content? Are you constantly putting stuff out there? Are you putting yourself out there all the time? Are you fine with following up? Are you Reluctant to call people like your clients. what else is in that reason you're afraid to sell? Do you spend hours upon hours upon hours upon hours researching for the perfect itinerary? Remember, perfection is the enemy of done. These are all secret, sequent ingredients behind the fear of like wanting, of like selling. you're, no, you're afraid to sell. You're afraid to put yourself out there and be rejected. This episode's gonna be much shorter, by the way, because yesterday's episode was my first 13 minute episode. So I'm gonna keep this one shorter. Probably. Maybe not. But it's almost always tied to self-confidence, but then again, that whole I don't like being sold to, you don't have to sell. Does that make sense? Like if you missed yesterday's episode, it was like really in depth into the consultation framework. Which by the way, all of this is tied to a program I have called the Success Circle. That's 52 week program for 35 doll hairs a month. and it's subscription based. So if you're like, need to pause for a minute. Life is hectic. Guess what? You can. And you can pick right back up where you left off. It is fed on like a drip schedule. So once a week you get the new lessons for the week. There are six lessons and an intro video on average. ⁓ Accompanying workbook. And like many other courses I have, live Q &As every Monday, I'm gonna have to add another at some point. Live Q &As every Monday with yours truly, Hot Seat Coaching every other Wednesday for two hours. Whoever shows up, whatever you need. And maybe you need some dang old self-confidence. All right. Anyway. You do not have to have everything all perfect. You do not have to know everything to sell it all. You can start just knowing that you are capable of serving them to the abilities that they require to be served for said trip. You don't have to know everything. You can still do it. Now, would I go into like a full on whole new marketing thing? If I didn't know what the heck I was talking about, no. Because that's gonna, for a number of reasons, what if you just like blew up and you had all these trips and then you started screwing up because you didn't have enough training? That is ⁓ a real concern to have. Not a fear, a concern. The other thing is, and this is kind of a fear probably for me that I need to look at myself. Well, no, because I've done it before, but I don't like the idea of putting something out there that's like accidentally wrong information. And then I get comments from some dork who sits at a keyboard all day that's like, that's not 100 % correct. It's actually the capital of Greenland is actually Reykjavik. You mispronounced it. Like, clearly I made all this up, but. That kind of crap. just don't even want to deal with it. And then, cause then you gotta defend yourself and it's like, this is just a freaking troll. But that's another reason why I don't, like I don't mind putting controversial opinions out there. Because some must be like, that's not what I learned. I don't care what you learned. This is what I've experienced and what I have learned. And I'm happy to have. like share discourse and learn from you. But if it's just like stupid like you're wrong and I have no reason to tell you why, stop being a bully, man. All right, anywho, that's another reason though why I can get, why if you're going into a new destination, why you don't wanna like totally launch it, you should still offer it though. You should definitely be offering it. to at least your repeater clients and be like, hey, I'm going into this new niche. Let me know when you're ready for this trip. I'm doing training on it right now. Woo. No, I'm not tired, it's fine. All right, so here is pulled from an article from Greg Martinelli. If you know me, you know all my birthdays. Not all my birthdays. The few birthday parties I actually got were at Martinelli's Pizza. number one practice practice selling Because it's not just here's this be give me money. Here's this give me money Even consultations can just be considered practice you know how I Feel like a lot of women listen to this podcast more than men based on my analytics so If you are like me, you have seen like the TikToks or whatever where the chick's like trying to achieve the perfect bun. So she like turns the shower on and she's in her bathrobe and she's just saying to herself in the bathroom alone, like, yep, have nowhere to be, just gonna get in the shower. And then she gets the perfect bun and then she shuts off the shower and she takes off the robe. She's like, gotcha, universe. because she's much more confident because she's not feeling the pressure from the external validation. That's what that's kind of like showing. So if you practice and you consider all of your consultations as practice, if you're not like feeling very confident with them, then it's like you're the girl pretending to take a shower. Like I'm just practicing and then you're much more at ease, you're much more confident and you don't care if they say yes or no, you detach from the outcome, you're more likely to close that sale. But practice just talking to people. I probably get it from my dad's side of the family. Talk to... So many people in public all the time. I have no problems talking to anybody and or asking them for help. I was dating somebody once who was like, you're so weird. You just talked to strangers in the store. And I'm like, yeah, I have a question and I think they might have the answer or I have something really funny in my head to say. And I think that they would think it was funny. It's not funny. It's never funny. ⁓ But I don't have pro, and I was always like, my best friend was always afraid to talk to guys when we were like middle school and high school and she'd be like, you're so cute. ⁓ my God, he's not gonna wanna talk to me. I'm like, who cares, that guy's ugly. And I just walk up there and be like, hey man, that chick over there thinks you're cute. Let's do this. Are you, well, I'd be the wingman type. I'd be like, are you even cool first? And they're like, all right, let's bring them over here. But I just don't have a problem talking to people. That is a good way to practice kind of like sales skills because consultative selling, you are listening, you are communicating, you are reading body language if it's in person or on camera, ⁓ you're listening to tone. regardless of how the consultation is taking place. ⁓ But if you're new or you're going into new niches, like I said earlier, you want to start small with a safe customer or client. This is, remember, from Greg Martinelli. just wrote down the three main points. Rest of it's pure Rachel Gay. So like I said, call up your mom, your sister, someone in your family. Hey, I'm starting this new niche. Can I practice? Can I like send you a quote? Can we do like a practice consultation? Can you do good cop, bad cop consultation role play? Can you be the worst person ever? Can you be the best person ever? Yeah, start small with someone safe. Could be a client, could be a relative, a good friend. Okie dokie. Number three, review your fears. I don't think that's in his article. No. It has to be because it says three ways from him. Review your fears. Review your imposter syndrome. All those fears. So day 74 of this podcast, if you want to go back and you haven't, like you're brand newbie, or you haven't been listening to everything, don't worry. I looked it up. I looked it up because it's all in this notebook because I'm... psychotically writing everything in a notebook. So day 74 is the top 10 fears travel advisors face. And then from day 75 to 85 are the different fears broken down. So if you want to skip episode 74, 75 is fear of financial insecurity, 76 is fear of failure, 77 is a fear of inadequate marketing, 78, fear of the unknown. 79, fear of being isolated and networking. What? You both love and hate people at the same time and they scare you? 80 is fear of rejection. 81 is fear of success. 82 is fear of burnout. 83 is fear of client welfare. 84, oh goes through 84, my bad. I don't know how to count to 10. Fear of scaling to higher. So you can go back and review those or you can just listen to Day 74. But if any of those stuck out to you, pause, rewind, write down the episode day and just listen to that one episode. The final takeaway that is not, I don't think, maybe it's from that article, don't remember, practice courage over confidence. Do you really think, honestly, sorry, I'm like laying down my chair, do you honestly believe All of the great things in history that people, amazing people have done came from being fully confident? No, they came from being courageous. They didn't know fully what they were doing. All right. Let's take Joan of Arc. Not literate, no fighting skills, like a 12 year old girl. and she courageously led an entire army to go fight with zero battle skills because she knew it was what she wanted to do. She knew it was what had to be done. What is wrong with my voice? It was what had to be done, period, the end. Do you think she was like, well I better take a course on bow and arrow ship? No. Calm down. It's good to get the training and education. And also great things can be done if you just do it with courage. Over being fully confident because we are never gonna be confident all the time. Okay? Alright, I'm tired. Finished with my batching for the day. Thank you for. Hanging out for these last few episodes and the quirky mood I might, ugh, I have the darkest circles. I look like a witch on the camera because I'm not even wearing makeup and I'm tired and the lighting's bad, it's fine. I might be totally different tomorrow. Who knows, who knows? All right, have a good day. Thanks, bye.