Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 197: Connecting with your travel clients via storytelling
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. Whew. Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it. Feel free to subscribe. Get daily notifications of episodes dropping. ⁓ where are we at? Day 197. we're gonna be expanding. This is the end of my storytelling series on the old travel agency near podcast. So If you need to go back to day 191. We've covered why storytelling works, your founders, founders, founder story, and creating the founder's story, your brand story, how to create it, how to integrate all of it. And we're gonna look at how story shows up, not just in your marketing, but throughout your actual client relationship from start to finish. So I don't know why I said it like that. Oops. Before someone even books with you, your story is doing the work of building trust. Which I talked about like throughout like you are building trust, okay? Your founder story and your brand story living in your content, giving a stranger a reason to believe that you understand what they're going, like looking for before they've said a word to you. And that The ability to anticipate needs is a true elevated luxury experience that people crave. Like, ⁓ you're a genie who can read my mind. This is freaking awesome. Okay. And there's another story layer. The destination storytelling. Instead of listing facts about a place, tell the story of what a trip there actually feels like. Like the quiet. Okay, I'm gonna try and paint a picture. ⁓ sorry, I'm gonna tell a story. The beautiful sunrise over the Caribbean Sea, palm trees swaying in the breeze, you're on your balcony. I'm a ground floor lady, so we're on the ground floor in this story. You can see the curtains on your balcony just like wafting a little bit in the breeze. Room service comes straight to your balcony with a fresh pot of coffee, cream, sugar, because we're going all out, folks. And we're gonna do eggs benedict for breakfast with a little basket of pastries for you to just like choose from. And you get to sit there quiet, there's no music. Just peacefully watching the wind blow through the palm trees and the sunrise over the ocean. I mean, how great is that? Okay. That's like a kind of a story that you can tell for the destination. Can you guess what I was talking about? No, because I didn't go to enough death I didn't want to like go on a random tangent. ⁓ anyway. Or like the dinner. ⁓ here's one. So ⁓ we went into Porta Morales one time with some local friends of ours and we ended up Going to their place and they had an entire neighborhood. like gated community that they lived in and they had a little pool in this like park like setting for the community and a couple of grills and we were cooking all this food. It was like this big outdoor kitchen next to this little pool. And I met two expats. One was a chiropractor and his wife or partner was also a doctor of some kind and just like sitting there all afternoon enjoying local like authentic Mexican cuisine meeting these people I would never have met before that were like 40 years my senior having a wonderful deep conversation and then seeing my friend's kids running around and playing too. Like I don't know that's another kind of story. Anyway Those kinds of stories are better to tell. Like that one wasn't a great one. But those are the kinds of things that you can tell that is way better than just saying, here are five things to do in Lisbon. So I could if I wanted to really sell Porta Morales, I could be like, here's a day in l in Puerto Morales the untourist way. And just like go through course I'm gonna mention a bunch of touristy things, because I like to do the touristy things okay. ⁓ but If it's something that someone can picture themselves inside of, it's very different kind of persuasive. So back to that pool story. If I was like, you can rent an Airbnb in this community and I can hook you up with my friends there, like you'd probably be inclined to be like, Man, that sounds like a great day. And I'd be like, and it's only fifty bucks, and you'd be like, sold, I'm doing this. You know what mean? Storytelling doesn't stop once someone becomes a client, though. It shifts into something far more personal. When you present a proposal, you're not just listing the hotel and flight time. You're telling the story of the trip before they've even had a chance to live it. And you want to this like tell this story so that they can really picture themselves in it. Like Here's your first morning waking up to this oceanfront or beachfront view, walking two seconds and you're on the beach. And this like pretend they're avid golfers. This resort includes an additional free golf excursion. All you gotta do is rent the cart or whatever, you know. So that kind of storytelling with the proposal separates the proposal that feels like a spreadsheet from one that feels like the beginning of the trip itself. And then there's also after the trip. This is the one a lot of advisors underuse. Once a client returns, their story becomes some of your most valuable marketing material with their permission, of course. Not just their pictures and Like a genuine testimonial isn't like great service, highly recommend. It's a specific moment. The thing that almost went wrong, how you handled it, the recommendation that they were nervous about that ended up being the highlight of the entire experience. Ask clients in the follow-up, I like to do follow-up calls, follow-up calls specifically about the moment, not generally about the experience itself. And you'll get story-worthy answers instead of generic praise. And take note of that and ask, like, can I, I'm not gonna name names, but can I use this story in my marketing? And they'll be like, absolutely. Sometimes they'll send you even more pictures from their trip. Anyhoodle, this is where the whole storytelling stuff closes. A well told past client story. If you're watching this on YouTube, my terrible loop. ⁓ here I got my dry erase board. Gonna do a loop, pass client story. Well told past client story becomes let's see where is this loop at? Okay. Your destination story becomes trust building content. That brings in your next inquiry. That brings in your next story of helping them. And it's a loop. I don't know why I wrote that down because it looks terrible. I'm not gonna show it to you. Because I like dry erase markers, that's why. But past story, destination, or some kind of story, like information from there. Then you get a new inquiry. You get a new story there, they have a new experience, you get a new story there, and you just come it's a constant content loop. All right. Whew! That's the full storytelling series. Why it works, your founder story, your brand story, and how all of it threads through actual client experience, not just your marketing like it's it's a thing that you can add to your marketing strategy. Okay? Alright, if you haven't picked up by now, this is all kind of tied with a success circle. So next week we're gonna do deep dive into these next week, we're gonna do a deep dive into ⁓ service packages. And it was originally brought up in the Sweet Spot to success course a year or two ago. And we're gonna focus on refining it. If you wanna join the success circle, it's $35 a month. Okay. Alright, have a great day. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.