Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 124 - TAs: Pattern Recognition Made Simple
Transcript
- Rachel K: My hair is super wavy today and just being crazy. I feel like the chick from Brave. My hair's not that cool though. It's day 124 of the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. I'm not cutting that out. Deal with it. I know you're just coming back. It's fine. If you're new, welcome. Welcome to the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. We have 365 episodes. If you would like to hit the subscribe button, you will get push notifications when new episodes air. The goal is daily at 6 a.m. Central Standard Time. However, I have had some issues with YouTube. So sometimes it's like 9 42 a.m. Central Standard Time with some episodes. Pattern recognition made simple. I don't know if I introduced myself. My name is Rachel K. I'm your host for this podcast. Head over to elevatewithrachelk.com to learn more about how I can help you, travel advisors. ⁓ man, I'm gonna have take a break after this episode. Like I'm on a roll and my voice just cracked like I was going through puberty again. My voice never cracked when I was going through puberty in the first place. Anyway, I'm female. Okay, pattern recognition made simple. Look at the past three to six weeks only for consistent trends. I mean, you can look back further, but if you're like brand newbie or you have a new habit, just the monthly review. That's when you really look at that and then you're like, interesting data. Let's see how it plays out at the end of the quarter kind of thing. You don't have to be a data analyst. to do this, hence the monthly reviews. There's my notes. Okay, so pattern recognition, there's four different areas I have noted down here. Revenue, marketing, your time and energy, and client patterns. So you're gonna write down the overall patterns over the past three to six weeks or during your monthly review. The day you take off, like block a half day or whatever, be like monthly review time. Your revenue, what's that doing? Is it going up, going down? Are you seeing more bookings coming in? Are you seeing delayed commissions coming in? Like what is that? What's going on there? Like differentiates the types of revenue that you're getting. So you can see, because I had a good month this month in my travel agency doesn't mean I got business in the pipeline. You know what I mean? Like if I'm like, oh, I made a $72,000 commission check this month, that doesn't mean jack squat if it's like you don't also consider your bookings. Like what bookings do you have for the future? Nothing? Okay, well that's the rest of the money you have forever till you change things. till you get another booking. Okay, marketing. I talk about marketing analytics all the time, but do you have an idea based on your consultations where what platform or method of marketing is working, bringing in the most leads? Are you gaining followers? Are you losing followers? ⁓ excuse me on different platforms. Is that a you problem or is that a that platforms problem? We all know It's fascinating to me because ⁓ Meta is so big and monopolizing they just keep buying up other apps. So they're like you have no choice, but that it's not that great of a, like Facebook itself to me was like the worst of all social medias and you were like forced against your will into it. Like I loved MySpace. And I was like, what do you mean I have to go to Facebook now? I loved MySpace. But it seemed to be that platforms would change every few years, but it's scary now how they're not getting, they're not really changing. They're just getting bought up by the same handful of companies. Again, I'm not a fan of corporatism. But any hoodle, you might see people moving to a different platform. Like your ICA. I don't know. Okay, your time and your energy. Are you spending too much time doing crap that drains your energy? Or are you feeling lit up? What activates you? Client patterns. Client patterns over time could be maybe they take six to 12 months out. They're booking consistently month after month after month after month and all of a sudden they're booking one to three months out. That could be a one off issue, right? Could just be a random thing. They got their tax refunds or government stimulus check, everyone gets a million dollars. And they're like, heck yeah, I'm booking all these trips with this money. You know what I mean? ⁓ So you need to see if that pattern is maintaining, your clients still booking in shorter timeframes than they used to. Okay, now when you're looking at all this stuff, what was happening over the last month, personally, in these different departments, good or bad, what was happening in your life personally, locally, like your city, or county, regionally, Was there something going on that was a boon or a bane, nationally or globally? What's going on? Every month you need to be looking at that. Then you can assess the pattern for each of those categories. So example, if you had dental surgery, family emergency, weather disasters, elections, any kind of war or like liberation movement. maybe in an area that you offer to lot of your clients that could have effects. Marketing patterns are a little bit different. You also want to look at engagement and the most popular content. ⁓ time and energy, this could be cyclical. Women especially have like ups and downs in terms of productivity that they can really manage based on their menstrual cycle, even if they've had like a full hysterectomy, even if they, even if you're in like menopause, like you can still have that cycle. ⁓ or are there other events in your life that's affecting your energy? Are there people in your life affecting your energy? Ba ba ba! You're sitting there doing the monthly review and you're just like, Kevin from Home Alone, Kevin McAllister. And you're like, ⁓ my God, my neighbor's sucking up all my time and energy. You don't know. You don't know what it could be unless you really sit and look for the patterns. So if you're practicing this, especially during your monthly review, it's going to help you to shift from like reactive crisis mode to proactive prevention because you are starting to see these are the patterns. In my personal life, I have these amazing things going on or maybe some terrible things going on and it is affecting my revenue in this way, my marketing in this way, my client. my client service in this way and my time and energy in this way. And you need to look at it, like look, on a city level, are there like new laws or new taxes or is there a new division, something going on in your city? Regionally, is there something going on in your region of the country? Like major protests or a huge shift in like all the states in your region are like no taxes ever and you're like, woo, so everyone has all this extra money. And then they're just like booking trips like crazy. That's not reality. That's a terrible example. Whenever would they be like, nah, you don't have to taxes on anything. That's a dream. So when things are going towards a downturn, you can also spot those downturns coming and instead of having a come apart and reacting and then sharing all over social media, guys, this happened. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Let's scare every other travel advisor into being afraid of what's going on because I don't know how to Do any preventative measures and be calm and respond. I just react and then work everyone else up. Or proactive prevention. I can see this coming down the pipeline with my client patterns. They're booking shorter and shorter out like one to three months before their trip instead of six to 12 months before their trip. This is becoming a pattern. and I have all these workflows set up to prepare them over the course of six to 12 months, I need to start tweaking my workflows for these shorter. I don't want to get rid of the workflows I have set up, so maybe I need to rename it when booked six plus months out, and then copy it over, change the dates in my workflow, my CRM, when booked one to three months out. Because this is now becoming a consistent pattern, it's just not a one-off month, and I don't want to be overwhelmed constantly tweaking this workflow. to cater towards these last minute bookings versus my longer term bookings that I'm used to. That's what it is. Instead of being like, I can't handle this. You're fine. You're being proactive. You'll be able to see what's working and what's about to become a problem. Why did I give that example? Great question, Rachel. You're gonna feel a lot more overwhelmed if you're constantly like revising, tweaking these workflows that you had set up perfectly because you're like, this keeps happening, this keeps happening, why does this keep happening? And that's the reactive crises mode and that's sucking your time and energy away and you're not getting the same ROI. Yes, you're getting the income in much faster, especially if it's like not a cruise. But the commission's gonna come in faster for like resorts and tours, you know? At the same time, you're putting stuff on the back burner because you're like, I gotta serve these people so much faster now. And then you're missing out on the opportunity for possibly more consultations. So, I need to update all of these dates. That was day 124. Travel agency near podcast, pattern recognition made easy. Please practice pattern recognition. You'll start, hopefully it'll spill over to other areas in your life and you'll be like, I see that. I see that coming. And you'll be fully prepared to handle anything and not be in reactive crisis mode all the time. Well, this is a nice short episode compared to the last five. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you for stopping by. 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