Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 175: Curing "Analysis Paralysis" (Trusting Your Travel Taste)
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to day 175 of the Travel Agent City Year podcast. Let's picture this. Picture this scene. Because I know you've lived it. I've lived it. It's 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Your house is completely quiet. Your entire family is asleep. Your dog is asleep. And you're sitting alone at your desk or the dining room table or the coffee table on the couch. Illuminated only by the glow of your laptop, that dangle blue light. You look up at the top of your browser window thing, and you realize, well, this is my like as I'm reading, like, yep, this is my life. You have 27 different tabs open simultaneously. And not only that, because I do that, because I'm like, ⁓ I need to keep that idea for next month when I then I don't want to forget about it. But it's not just like You want to remember things, you have all these tabs open working on one trip proposal. And it's just a straightforward AI resort. This is especially true if you're a newbie agent. ⁓ or like a straightforward cruise. On paper, it's very, very standard. Right now, though, at 11 30 p.m. on a Tuesday, you're staring at five different resorts that you finally narrowed it down to. And they all look identical. They all have the beautiful pools, great ocean views, amazing marketing photos on their website. Hopefully not the ones with the weird models. That always bothers me because I'm like, I can't use this in a proposal. My client does not look like that. And instead of picking like the best two or three and just one from there and building the proposal, you are stuck. You're trapped in the exhausting spiral. Of reading page after page of public trip advisor reviews, of going into rando Facebook groups for travel advisors and being like, What do you think of this resort? And like searching in there, and you just see comments of other advisors fighting over what they believe to be a good resort or a bad one. So then you're like, Am I making the right decision? Then you go into general travel groups where you try to join them, but they're owned by a travel agent. They're like, You're not allowed in here 'cause you're gonna poach my clients and you're just like, ⁓ Can you tell I've been in this position before? You're frantically looking for the definitive answer on which of those five properties has the slightly better beach, the five second faster room service, or like the better pours and the drinks at the pool bar. Your eyes are bloodshot, your shoulders are tight 'cause you're doing this move. If you aren't watching this on video, my shoulders are practically touching my ears. Your brain is fried. You have so many other things to do. And you haven't even started the proposal yet. You've spent three freaking hours tonight wandering around this like digital labyrinth, and you're no closer to hitting send than you were when you started right after dinner and you were like, this'll just take a few minutes. Welcome to Analysis Paralysis. And you might do this with your software, like if you need to update your CRM or you want to get like a specific CRM ⁓ or itinerary builder. Like it's not just about your trips, but we're gonna focus on the clients today. Analysis paralysis, you've heard the term, and I'm gonna talk about it anyway. It's a very specific type of intellectual and like emotional fatigue that targets all of us travel advisors so much, so often, especially as we head out of like one quarter gear up for another one. Cause we are nearing the end of Q three, right? No, Q2 into Q3. I'm losing my mind. ⁓ It's June. Get over yourself, Rachel. if you let this run wild, especially when you're like doing your quarterly reviews, which I highly recommend you do, you're gonna be like, I need to upgrade my software. And you're just gonna do the same thing, right? And if you're already doing this with your clients, you're gonna be doing this in your business. It's gonna quietly destroy your productivity. I have witnessed it. I have had to go no contact with travel advisors that I was like a good colleague with because I'd be on the phone with them and they'd just be in constant analysis paralysis and then I'd be like Sir andor Madam. You were not booking anything. You were just constantly in this state of mind. How are you alive right now? Because you can't be making any money. You eat up any profitability on an hourly and you burn out your brain cells. And it's not even wave season yet. Word slow down time. Okay? On day 7 day 75? Nope, that's not it. Day 175 of this glorious journey together. We're going to be tackling the crisis of over researching. I'm using client perspective in the beginning. And it happens in every aspect of your business. What CPA should I use? What attorney should I use? We're gonna break down the deep psychological fears that cause you to get stuck in the endless researching, scrolling why data dumping hurts your client conversions. By the way, I've also seen this, and exactly how to start trusting the instinct and your taste that your clients are already paying you for. If you didn't listen to yesterday's episode. We talk about the imposter supplier syndrome. Yes, that's what it is. And your clients aren't paying for you to vomit to them on a proposal how many square feet the room is or whatever. They're paying for you to make the decisions and save them time. You are not responsible for the like the options, obviously. They don't want to do the research, okay? Save that for the weirdos that have no wives like us and spend all their free time researching every single one of their trips. And they also suffer from analysis paralysis. Okay, let's look at what's happening beneath the surface when you get trapped in analysis paralysis. ⁓ we often like to tell ourselves a comforting little lie about this behavior. First off, when we are deep in In the research ⁓ rabbit hole at midnight, we'll tell ourselves, I'm just doing my due diligence. I'm being a thorough professional. I'm protecting my clients' hard-earned doll hairs by making sure I find the absolute best option on the market. Pobity's nerfic, by the way. If you step away and strip away the justification and look at this objectively. That's not what's happening at all. Analysis paralysis is not high-level service. It's like you've manifested this pro it's a I wouldn't say manifested. It's like you've created a monster. It's a monster of the profound fear of failure. You don't want to send them like basically you send them this proposal and they're like, What are you stupid? This is the worst thing ever. Like That's where this fear comes from. It's protecting you. And it's driven by perfectionism. We stay stuck in this research mode and think about that. Also, think about that with regards to what CRM should I use? Should I make an investment in this coach mentor course, webinar training, whatever the heck on the business side of things? When you get stuck in that analysis paralysis mode, it is protective mechanisms driven by perfectionism. And it's the profound fear of failure. And unfortunately, a lot of advisors have the belief if they don't have the latest technology, they're gonna be deemed as a failure. And some of the tools are very, very good and awesome. Don't get me wrong. Some of them are not really necessary for every travel advisor, so please. Do not get if you start this with the business side, getting into this, I gotta research, I gotta research, I gotta research. Take a break from whatever that is and address it the next month. Okay. Just don't waste your time on it right now because it's just not worth it. ⁓ you stay stuck in the research mode, and here's why. Because as long as you're researching, you don't have time to make a decision. You can't make a definitive choice. That's why I said stop if you're doing this in your business. Just take a break for a minute. The moment you pick your three resorts or three cruises, whatever itineraries, and create those proposals, you become vulnerable to being wrong. Like I said earlier. What is a stupid resort? Why would you even send me this? You're picturing somebody thinking that, like your client thinking that. What if they hate it? What if they go to that resort and it's a terrible experience? What if a res a review that you saw on TripAdvisor for the property that was a one star was actually right and they weren't crazy? So to protect yourself from that level of vulnerability of being rejected for not being good enough, we all convince ourselves if we just read one more forum thread, one more blog post, watch one more YouTube vlog about that property or whatever the heck it is you're booking. Then we're gonna uncover the mathematically perfect bulletproof resort or cruise whatever that guarantees a flawless vacation. ⁓ there is no such thing. Pobity's nerfic, I've already said that. There is no such thing as a flawless cruise ship resort, tour, hotel, nothing. And if your client acts that way, like you should fire them. Like there's no such thing as perfect. You can find flaws in anything if you really want to. Like as an example, I've stayed at a lot of decent resorts, like very nice resorts, very mid-level resorts. Excuse me, around Mexico and the Caribbean. I can find flaws in every single one of them. Because I did a lot of like estate management and ⁓ event planning and like even like ⁓ managing the housekeeping, I can be extremely picky and I have to take everything with a grain of salt because sometimes you see like a little bit of mildew in the grout and it's like, okay, well that's just a little spot of it. Sometimes it's worse than that. ⁓ so you have to be able to discern what is actually a bad idea and what is nothing nothing is ever gonna be perfect. Like even the concierge, like the concierge at the resort could somebody could be sick. You could have a brand new trainee there. You could have someone who's just having a very bad day. You cannot control any of that. Every single, every single thing, like there's always a bad weather day everywhere on the face of the planet. We have all had the morning, including the front desk concierge or agents, whatever, where we were having a bad day. A night where one of the kitchen restaurants is short staffed. And room service, like may have taken a little bit longer. or sarcasm. We can't control any of this. No amount of you scrolling around through midnight is going to protect you and insulate you from the reality that travel involves human beings, moving parts, and things you cannot predict or control. When you spend Four, five, six hours overanalyzing every single hotel recommendation, you aren't actually protecting your client from an imperfect trick. You're hiding from making a professional decision on their behalf because you're terrified of being wrong. And that's what they hired you for. You're letting your fear hold your clock hostage. And while you're hiding in those 27 browser tabs that are only for the trip. I'm you should see my laptop. It's twenty I have multiple windows and all of them have twenty-seven tabs. I got a lot of stuff going on. It's not all just one trip though. You're burning up so much of your time, which is your most valuable asset, which especially if you have higher-end clients, they understand time is the most valuable asset. And you are demonstrating that you don't even value yours. So if you charge like a $200 planning fee and then spend fifteen twenty hours researching five identical resorts. ⁓ you're earning ten bucks an hour. Ten to twelve dollars an hour. You are not a ⁓ you're not acting in CEO mindset. You're acting in I might as well be working I I I don't know why I say go work at Wendy's instead a lot. It's not nice. But I want you to understand that you could do You could make the same amount of money just working like at fast food in many cases. your time must be also treated like it is precious, finite, and money making asset. Because you're worth it. Okay? So to cure the pattern. Let's talk about how you can shift your role in this nightmare of a transaction. ⁓ a lot of tAs that I've like mentored, coached, whatever, over the years, often Initially default to thinking that their value lies in information retrieval. Ugh. They think the more options I find, the more data I gather, the more choices I present, the more value I'm providing. This is the complete inverse of what reality is. ⁓ if your value is simply finding information and pulling options, you're competing directly with Google and Expedia and like Claude and Chat GPT. So if that's where you find your value, yes, you absolutely should feel threatened that chat AI is gonna be taking your job. because the internet and AI is very good at retrieving data. May not be accurate, may not be perfect. But it can do it and it can do it a lot faster than you. People don't suffer from a lack of information regarding planning a trip. They're completely drowning in it. And they're overwhelmed by blog posts, social media posts, from influencers. I yes, you gotta market too. So posts from you and similar travel advisors, no big deal. But it's out there. The brands themselves, like the hotels, the cruise lines, so on and s so so ⁓ my gosh, I can't talk. So on and so forth is what I'm trying to say. ⁓ and then like booking, priceline, hotels.com, Expedia, Cheap Caribbean, all also advertising and hiring influencers and doing influencer partnerships, they're inundated with it. The second they say in their car while their phone is present, Man, I'd like a vacation to Mexico, every app that they are on is like, You should have a ⁓ trip to Mexico in this resort, you know? ⁓ they are s they are experiencing extreme decision fatigue before they even like figure out what dates they can do for the trip. And that's why you are so valuable in this industry. And that's why the World Economic Forum is like travel's a huge contributor to the what is it? Like global GDP or something? Read that a couple of years or beginning of this year. Couple of years ago. I'm not tired, it's fine. ⁓ they hired you to filter through and edit all that information and make the decisions quickly. You are their human editor. So what is an editor? Let's talk about it. Great question, Rachel. A magazine editor doesn't hand a reader a stack of 10,000 unedited photos and raw interview transcripts and says, Here, wait through all this shit and figure out what the story is. No, they cut away 99% of everything. And they curate like a tight little polished one or two page layout, whatever, featuring the top one percent of the content. That is what you are paid by your client to do. They are paying you to use your professional filter to aggressively look at a destination, cut away all the noise, eliminate the mediocre for them, because everyone's a little different, and present them with a highly curated solution. And oftentimes if you know your destination already and you study inside and out, like three, maybe five I'm I'm referring to AI resorts by the way, three maybe five resort brands. an like a scale of different types of properties, like some higher end, some mid. You can only pull you only have to pull from those because you've already done your research and you've narrowed it down. Those are my top five preferred brands. Don't do it for your own personal benefit. Be unbiased about it, but you should determine based on the people I serve, these are the top five brands. I believe strongly that these are the top five brands in this destination, and these are who I prefer to work with. Okay. That's how you can easily create a highly highly curated solution. When you send that proposal with like six, seven, eight hotel options because you couldn't make up your mind. Or you inundate them with like, well, here each one of these, here's 11 restaurants for for even just like two or three proposals. And you just overwhelm them. Like, here's the daily activities, here's the nightly activities, here's every single restaurant they have on site, here's the dress code for everything, here's all the bars that are open on site. Like that's too much information. They can figure that out when they get there. Okay? You're passing your own decision fatigue. Right down the line to them. And you're essentially saying, Hey, I couldn't figure it out. So I'm gonna make you do this final research anyway. Let me know what you think. That does not build trust, it quickly dilutes your authority. A true expert doesn't dump data, they make a definitive recommendation. ⁓ when I first started doing destination weddings, I would be like, ⁓ I can narrow it down to three like resort venues for ⁓ each client on the consultation within like maybe five or ten minutes of the call in my head. Now, even though I'm pivoting away from the niche, but now if someone were to call me today and say, Hey, I need a destination wedding, I'm picturing not only one resort, but the venue that they should be getting married at, the venue they should be having their having their reception at, because I have become a true, true expert, 'cause I'd done you know, when I first started out, I'd done like maybe three or four. I've done hundreds of destination weddings now. So true expert doesn't dub the data. Your client wants you to stand firm in your professional tastes and recommendations. They want you to look at your at their profile, at their budget, look at their style, have their sense of like what their energy is, and say, you need this based on my expertise. It's just like back to the car dealership, a good car salesman has studied their products enough. That when someone comes on the lot, they can look at them and be like, that's the car that they should be purchasing. And then they approach that person, say, What are you in the mood for? And almost always, if the it my son and I talk about this all the time. So my son will be like, I look at this person, I'm like, ⁓ they want to cross over SUV as an example. And he'll look around the lot and he'll be like, Okay, we gotta use Subaru over here. That's what they're gonna want. Just by looking at what they're driving coming in and how they look, this is how well How much of an expert he's been he's become at matching people with vehicles. And then they'll be like, Well, I'm looking for a new crossover SUV, like when he approaches them. And then he'll be like, you know what? We actually got this on the lot last week. It's done a full inspection, it's certified pre-owned. Let's go take a look at the Subaru. And they just call with him, right? That's what you're doing as a travel advisor. Okay? Based on your expertise and your understanding. These are the top choices for you. Period. I don't recommend limiting it to just one. Yes, you will have one primary in mind, but I don't like that idea of ⁓ I think my thing died. Nope, it's still on. It was just making a weird noise. Sorry. My mic. ⁓ I don't like the idea of like this is your only option. Okay, you can do that, but that's not my thing. I like to have some backups. So your taste, your intuition, and your experience are the core assets of your business. Let's trust them. Immediate steps to take. Let me see if we've gone over. ⁓ these episodes are just gonna be long now. It's fine. It's fine. set a hard timer on your phone. The next time you get a new client inquiry and onboard them, whatever the Get the fee monies, whatever. ⁓ just thirty minutes and you only have thirty minutes to get this proposal together, that's your only time you can get what you need. Now, if you have to email a DMC and you know it takes a week or so, send that email right then. ⁓ Yeah, but you only have thirty minutes. If you set a time limit on things, regardless of what that deadline is, you should be able to accomplish it in that time frame. It's a weird phenomenon. Especially if you're a procrastinator. If you're like, ⁓ no, this has to be done in thirty minutes. You will find a way to get it done. ⁓ but the second that timer goes off, you are stopping. Make sure you got three options, no more, no less, and then the best fit and option to send to them. Close every other tab out. Do not check any more review sites. Do not go to a Facebook group for travel advisors to see what someone else posted about it 18 months ago. Those are your options. Okay. Then I like to tell people I send proposals within seventy two hours or three business days, whatever. and then I often deliver it the next day, at least the first one. So then you can send the first one off the next day. And you can just be like, based on the information from our consultation, I went through all the options in this destination and hand selected these specific properties. Here's your first proposal. I think this is your best option. Send. The first few times you do this, you're gonna be like, wait, did I miss something? And you may have, and it's okay. Lean into the discomfort. because that discomfort is reclaiming your time, protecting your profitability, and most likely you only miss maybe travel insurance or transfers cost or something very, very minute, right? you're stepping into the role of a true consultative authority. That was my first like when I got my first business cards. For the first agency I worked for, I like, I'm a travel consultant. ⁓ your taste, your expertise, and your ability to filter through all the noise for them is exactly what clients pay you for. Trust your gut, hit send, and keep moving your business forward. Thanks for listening for yet another longer episode. I think they're just gonna end up being like 30 minutes, honestly. I don't know. All right, have a great day. See you tomorrow.