Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 144 - What do you do when travel clients aren't coming back?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Hi, it's day 144 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. 365 days, we're not even halfway. I know I've said this like four times. Like once I hit 100 days, I'm like, my God, I have 265 more episodes. This is a lot of content. Today is all about what should travel advisors do when client retention is going down. Say you have had a lot of repeat and referrals and you're like, woo woo, I'm the best. And then all of a sudden it's going down. That's what this episode is about. Thanks again for joining me. As always, you can save your episode, your episode, this episode, or any episode you listen to if you're like, I need to refer back to this later. ⁓ Let's talk about it. I don't even remember if I introduced myself. I think I need to take a break. I'm like batch filming right now and I'm six episodes in. I haven't moved six episodes in. That's whatever that times 20, 120 minutes. I've been sitting for two hours, people. People. ⁓ And so I think if you need an introduction, my name's Rachel K. That's all I'm gonna do today. Figure it out. Alright, most of the time when retention is down, sales are down, we all get frustrated. We all start off with a reaction. ⁓ We might blame the clients. We might blame the economy. Anything but our own business model because we're perfect. Why do we even, or maybe we're too scared to look at ourselves. It's totally understandable to have like this happen and this frustration to develop because at that point it feels like you're throwing spaghetti at the wall, nothing's sticking or like what comes to my mind is like a hamster just running as fast as they can on the wheel. And then the song, we're on the road to nowhere, just playing like nothing's happening, what's going on? And it can become very, very frustrating. So if you or when you, because I don't think it's a matter of if, it is a when at some point in everyone's entrepreneurial journey, get to this point. It's time to stop, stop the blaming, stop the reacting, and let's play detective. Let's get a little curious. It's not failure. It's just data. something's going on, do you have the specific reasons why these clients have decided to not work with you anymore, or why you may not be closing leads? The closing leads and the ghosting stuff is harder to determine, and you really need to have somebody almost do like a mock consultation with you to see if there's some gap in your process. There could be gaps in your services compared to your competition and you just didn't pay attention because you're just like, do, do, do, do, do, then someone comes along and they're like, I have something that offers more for the same price or less. That could be it too, which kind of sucks. And you have one of two ways of going about it, like accepting that and being like, if people don't want to work with me, they just have to deal with it. Or, possibly adapting to it. I personally am more of an adapter because you are serving other people, they are not serving you. If you have the mindset of you better do it my way and it's just not worth it, no, there's a fine balance, then I'm worth so much more than you. Bless and release, which there are bless and release cases, don't get me wrong. But if you just have that straight up mindset of I can do no wrong, I'm perfect, screw you I'm not changing my ways, that's gonna bite you in the ass eventually in a big way. Now again, there are the blessed and released and these are people who are never really aligned with you to begin with. We're talking about like your super duper loyal clients are just like pulling back and communicating with you, maybe they've gotten a little cold, maybe you find out they're working with someone else, like they post on social that they booked this trip either on their own or with another travel agency. And it's like you get a little butthurt about it. Like everybody does. It's like, but you were my client. I thought we had a relationship. It's kind of like if you were dating, but you weren't like towards ⁓ engagement or marriage. You were just like dating and really liked this person. And like they never posted about you two on social and you're like, well, we're just not that stage yet. But then all of sudden you see them. holding hands with somebody in another post and they're just like, I'm so in love and you're like, what? I invested so much time with you. Like it can have the same kind of feeling. Have you? Possibly disengaged from them because you're facing burnout. That's another reason like it could be competition it could be You're disengaging because of burnout and similar similar voice cracking Similar to dating because this is relationships that you're dealing with failing possibly or going stagnant ⁓ You can go one of two ways which is blame the other person and it's always their faults or you have to look inward Because there's three sides to every story there's your version your clients version and then what actually happened, okay? And I know sometimes it totally isn't your fault and they are just like the worst people ever and that's okay, too But you chose to have that relationship or that partnership with this client. Why? That's something you need to work on so you don't engage with other people like that who end up being like the world's shittiest clients. Okay. Let's talk about the three ways exercise and you'll want to save this episode for later if you're like, what the heck is this three ways exercise? When you start like losing clients, the client retention is going down, the referrals are going down. And let's say it's just like, or let's say the next time you have like a repeat client that gives you a lot of business. just suddenly kind of pulls back or you reinforce a boundary or you communicate I have this new boundary and they try to overstep it and you reinforce it. Okay, let's think about that kind of scenario. The three ways exercise. This is the question you need to ask yourself. What are at least three ways that this problem client could turn into a gift and an opportunity in the future? Now if you don't know about my sub stack, I have a sub stack. I write stuff sometimes. I haven't in a while because I'm doing this podcast. ⁓ a post on there that's about my grandma Rosie from a lesson to a blessing. I think I've done an email in it to my newsletter because I think it's so important. Everything that happens to you, every interaction can either be a lesson or blessing. And if you can learn from the lesson and apply it, then it's always blessings and life is great. So let's, I'm not trying to do toxic positivity. Let's be a little more positive and less reactive. What are at least three ways this problem client who is super demanding didn't barely maintain the boundaries you set in your business and then tries to overstep them, you reinforce them, they pull away? Well, you're gonna have so much relief from not dealing with shitty people, A, that's one. And you can take that time and focus on other projects. Okay, and we're gonna get into that. So you should be able to come up with three ways that this problem client or this problem in general of losing these clients, like something's happening, how is this a gift and an opportunity for you? When you first start doing this and asking this question, you're gonna be like, what do you mean? If I lose this client, I lose everything. If my client retention is zero and no one's booking that, I'm gonna go out of business and my life is over, that's fierce. Ask yourself the question again. What are at least three ways this problem could turn into a gift and an opportunity in the future? you have to ask it a few times because your mind is gonna go to the fears that are protecting you first, okay? And then it's gonna be like, sarcastitron and be like, well, I could at least retire early because my business failed. Keep going, keep going. It could end up being. And you have more time to create better marketing aligned with your ICA. That could be one. All right, we'll talk. Going on, moving on from this. ⁓ I didn't number this right. Okay. The next point, I'm not gonna do the numbers, because the numbers are all out of order, and I'm like, why do I have two of these numbers? When this happens, stop trying harder and start serving differently. This is like, imagine, if you will, that you own a restaurant, and you're like, I'm gonna sell goulash. I don't even know what's in goulash, rice, meat, tomatoes, I don't freaking know. ⁓ It looks like cat vomit or human vomit in many cases. It's not very appealing. And what if you were like, I don't believe in salt. It's gonna taste terrible, people. And you try harder and harder. You do the sandwich board and have one of your servers or a hostess stand outside of the sandwich board, like free goulash samples, like trying to hand out samples and people are like, ugh. No, did you poop in a cup? What's going on here? Like, no. And you keep trying harder and harder. The problem is you're serving tasteless, weird looking food. Nobody wants that. You're not serving anyone but yourself because it's like in your brain, your world famous recipe, nobody cares. Serve it differently. Focus on serving the people you want to serve. instead of trying harder to get them to like you. Now, don't go full people pleasy. Just focus on serving people, okay? ⁓ Be more proactive in serving. Show gratitude to people. Stop being generic. Okay, next tip. Understand your client's reality. This is your client's reality, not your business mentality. Okay? If you haven't noticed these last two tips, like, you gotta humble yourself a little bit. Your business is not the center of your client's world. Calm down. What is your client's reality? Maybe there really is an economic downturn and they can't afford it. Maybe they lost their job. Maybe they're going through a nasty divorce. And you're so obsessed with your business, you haven't bothered to reach out to them to see how they're doing. So they're not going to come to you and be like, I'm having these issues. ⁓ and they're not gonna wanna book another trip. But if you were like checking on them more often and like trying to understand their reality, you may have learned they're going through something very, very tough. You could have strengthened that relationship by being supportive to them. and then they'd be more likely to book another trip. Even if it's not feasible, like anytime soon, they might refer you instead. ⁓ The time spent on your past customer, think about that, especially if it was a more difficult customer and you're like, why aren't they booking with me again? Meh. Who cares? If you don't want to work with them, who cares? If they were a pain in the butt before, but it's money, now I'm not gonna make money. Nope, that's scarcity mindset. Stop that right now. There are plenty of people in the world who are not that type of person, right? So if it's a difficult client, that took up a lot of your time, or maybe it was like very detail-oriented client that brought in a lot of revenue, and they necessarily weren't a difficult client, and they just don't wanna do anything anymore. All that time spent working with that one customer is time that you can reallocate to any other projects that you have going on in your business or maybe for your mental health or your physical well-being. What else? And always be sure when you have to let go of a client or they decide they don't want to work with you again, be grateful that they gave you business in the first place. Okay? Always show gratitude. Anytime I've ever, like very rarely, I think I've gotten fired like twice in my life. But even when I've gotten fired, I've followed up and been like, thank you so much. This opened all new doors for me. Not in a passive aggressive, like thank you so much, I'm so much better without you. But like really thank you. I had to see how badly I was doing and then improve from there. Okay. Most likely, the whole client retention thing, there is something that you are doing. And I know this sounds very like shame, shame, shame, guilt, guilt, guilt, you're a terrible person, you're never gonna be better. Don't see it this way. Understand we are never gonna be perfect. And if there's anything that you can see where, this is how I'm the problem in this scenario, do your best to see how you can fix it. Sometimes you can't fix it at all and you're just like it is what it is deal with it suck it up, baby But other times in many cases There are small steps that you can take to I want you identify This is how I'm the problem to resolve that if not with current clients or whatever But in the future as well. Okay, that was day one party far. Well, I was I forgot about the far teas and my terrible Irish accent, farty. That's day 144. Just some things to do for a client retention assessment. If it's not going so great, take a look at that. Yeah, share this if you know someone that's always like, everything's everyone else's fault and no one wants to work with me again. And if you don't know anyone and never you're like, everyone in my life is perfect. Well, great. I hope you found this entertaining at least and have a good day. See you tomorrow.