Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 180 - Kicking off your third quarter as a travel advisor!
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. We are at day 180. I'm calling it, even though it's not totally accurate. Q3 started. Technically it's July 1st. I don't care. I am ready. I'm ready, Freddy. My name is Rachel K, your host. Thanks for joining me again, as always. And this podcast, if you don't know, it's all about building a business that builds you up specifically for travel advisors. It does kind of coincide with my Success Circle program. If you have questions about that, elevate with Rachel K.com and go check it out. Otherwise, full disclosure, I also am a travel agency owner and I'm riding the struggle bus with you guys. I've been in it I think like eight years now. Anyway We are turning the page on the next 90 days. You can wait till July 1st to listen to this. I don't care. And we are just gonna look at the calendar. You should have or be close to at this point if you're like, it's not July 1st yet. Finalizing your quarterly review. If you do not know how to do a quarterly review, ⁓ I back it takes a days. to set it all up and understand it. And I like to do mine every twelve weeks. So I did it Let's see. Week 24, and I think this is week 27. So about three weeks ago, so about 160 episode 160. I don't know, it's in there. I have several episodes going over the quarterly review. Okay. So hopefully now is the time. If you haven't already completed it, you are very close to understanding your numbers, where you are with progress for the entire year. In regards to finances, marketing, bookings, booking value, all that fun stuff. And you're working on amending your projections for the next ninety days, okay? Because you may be way over your goal that you set way back at the beginning of the year. You may be extremely under. Because it's not like we get hourly wages or like regular consistent bookings. And anything can like disrupt the flow. There's Generally over the years you get your pattern of when you're busy and when you're slower, so on and so forth. But let's talk about kicking off those new things you want to implement. And we're gonna talk about where we've been. I'm gonna share some stories, a little bit of short stories. Have you noticed any shifts in your clients' behavior? I know and I've mentioned this in previous episodes, more and more people seem to be doing like kind of last minute trips instead of planning so far out in advance. ⁓ with weddings and groups, like groups for me especially. Like I've been getting a lot of weird milestone groups. Not weird, they're lovely people. Just not my normal thing. And they're like two months out, three ⁓ four months out, and it's like thankfully not enough to be like a big contracted group, but they are coming in. They're like, hey, there's eight of us that want to go here for a milestone birthday or for a graduation or something, you know? So I've noticed that. I've also noticed a surge in like celebration of life trips. group trips. If you don't know like my agency, I primarily I'm a group scurly. my biggest takeaway for me last quarter, oof well, I officially decided ⁓ I would not want to take on destination weddings anymore. And it has nothing to do with the niche or the people in the niche. It is my own personal value system. And so I was like, all right, I'm gonna completely change my niche. And I am testing a huge gap I've noticed in a specific niche. I can't share too much information. But a very large gap. And if successful, it could be incredible. ⁓ don't worry, I will share it with the world if it actually works. But I don't want to share it now because it might not work. So I don't wanna be like, do this everybody. But I have also noticed a lot of business and for my travel agency, referrals, repeats, and Reddit. The three Rs. Weird. I don't even like post anything like book a trip with me. Like I don't even do that on Reddit. I'm just like, here's some info, whatever. And it it's just like random DMs. It's so crazy, but it's so awesome. ⁓ so You can comment what you've noticed in the last quarter. But now we're gonna kick off. You can comment any kickoffs that you're gonna be doing, any special new marketing tactics or something like that. Are you gonna do more warm out reach, cold outreach? What are you doing? ⁓ and let's look at some priorities that you could focus on. If you're like, I don't know what I'm doing, Rachel, and I don't do quarterly reviews, and this is all new to me. so Let's focus around three major pillars that might help you scale. Your supplier relationships. You might be kicking off more meetings with your BDMs, right? Streamlining how you qualify, qualify, qualify, qualify your leads. Is your marketing strategy working? Is it are you switching niches? We can talk about that. We can talk about all of that. So first let's talk about Like leveraging your consortia, your BDMs. To help get your clients the best possible experience. So first off, if you're newer, they are good people to introduce yourself to. And they will oftentimes provide, like BDMs in particular, they'll oftentimes provide ⁓ a lot of additional learning tools, maybe a webinar, but they'll if you're like brand new, full disclosure, there are a hundred thousand plus travel advisors in the US alone. like independent travel advisors. So they can't take everyone on on a one on one-on-one basis all the time, right? So they may say, hey, I don't have the capacity, but you can join this webinar. And depending on where you live, they may also, once you reach out to them, be like, hey, I'm excited. ⁓ they may also say, hey, I'm gonna be in town or like a 30-minute drive away. on this date, can you come by for lunch? And then you can meet them in person and establish those partnerships. And BDMs can be invaluable for your business, especially if you are like hyper focused on a handful of brands, because then you can really develop that relationship and they will step in and come through in the clutch as needed. Now not every BDM is gonna like be your superhero, especially if you aren't really booking anything. But they may want to partner and help you promote like certain group space. If you're doing like affinity groups, they're happy to come on. They'll come on to like they'll do like a webinar presentation for your clients. Specifically, I see it more often with groups than with FITs. ⁓ and they're happy to provide they're happy to provide you with maybe some elevated marketing materials you can't get anywhere else. So. when you are doing this, you don't have to do this if you're brand new. You wanna stick with like the bigger like suppliers in the beginning. But if you've been around for a while, like when's the last time you just emailed your BDM, be like, hey, how's it going? How you doing? House Life. Maybe you have Facebook. Are you friends with them on Facebook? Ma maybe try to build those relationships up because they will come through when there's like extra little perks you maybe want to give your clients and or major crisis if it's through that brand and they will step in and help you. Okay. All right. Streamlining the old qualification. I feel like I need to make a koala bear joke. It's not gonna happen. Do you need to implement in the next few days, quick quarterly review, any changes to vetting your leads to see if they're good fits for you? you can, I know some people advise don't mention, don't ask about their budget. You're in control of the sale. I'm a big fan of saying you're in control of the sale, but maybe look at your consultation process and how you vet leads. Are you truly in control of that entire process? To be more in control of the sale. Sorry. You need to have a very thorough process, okay? You can't just be like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? You do want to have plenty of questions. and that's a good way to control the flow of the conversation is ask them questions. Okay, and how would you imagine this? And so something that I like to do when I was doing a lot of destination weddings, and I'll sometimes do this on like random FITs, but it works so good for destination weddings, is you know, you build rapport and stuff, get to know them a little bit, you ask them for their date, and then I always say this, okay, now we're gonna spend the next 30 minutes or so. I want you, if you want to, you can close your eyes. And I'm gonna ask you a series of questions and you two as a couple, I want you to answer answer the first thought that comes in your mind. And so I will walk them through the entire wedding day. And I will say, All right, you are heading down the aisle, if you know what's the first thing you see when you step out there? Is it a beach? Is it a garden venue? Is it like a rooftop? Is it an infinity pool? What do you see as you start to walk down that aisle? And they will answer those questions because that's their like top vision, you know? And then I'm like, and do you see an arch with a lot of flowers? Do you see a grounded arch? Do you see anything? Is it just a backdrop? And like, do you see aisle marker markers or an aisle runner? And I like have them paint the picture for me. throughout the entire process and that low key gets them super pumped about their wedding. and then they aren't asking you questions necessarily at that point. You're just like ha seeing how they want the picture painted so that you can in turn paint it. ⁓ and definitely take a bunch of notes. Active listening, we've covered that in past episodes and then when I walk them through the whole wedding process and like how many guests are you expecting, what's the budget, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like everything. Then I will say, all right, based on all this information, and I will ask them what's your budget for your ceremony and events. And they always lowball at first. And I'm like, okay, we need to be very careful with this budget then. And then they'll like, ⁓ we can go up a little bit higher. So I will go through everything from their vision from their wedding day and I'll be like for your events alone based on your guests budget because it's a weird inverse like the less guests spends the more you spend on the events. It's so weird in my experience. I will say this is about how much it's gonna cost roughly to get everything you want from this vision. Is this still doable? And then I go from there. And then I'll say what questions do you have for me? And then I will say, here's my recommended service package based on everything we've discussed. What are your thoughts? And here's the next steps. Okay. ⁓ and then I send them my contract and I tell them I give you so much time to review the contract, you can sign the contract, I send you an invoice after so many days for my fee up front, if it's not paid, it is all null null and void. Like the contract and everything, you've changed your mind, and I don't care. And then from there, I'm still controlling the sale until they get that wedding day and that room block contract set up. You have to do that. So I'll just be like, okay, here's these different options, right? And I'll say it's gonna be about this long to secure your date, like two to four weeks or whatever. And from there, we need to have the proposal. It takes about a week to get the proposal for the room block. If you like it and want to move forward, we have about a week to decide on that. Once that contract is ready to be signed, you have two days to deposit. So in about six weeks, are you ready to pay the deposit on the ceremony if needed? And also your room block, which is usually like fifty bucks a person or something, you know? Okay, if they have any questions or try to take control, and these are signs that your clients taking control, which is super freaking annoying to me, is when they're like, Can I just like kind of like pick your brain? Well, what do you recommend? Well, I don't know if I want to do this, and they and they start to interrupt, and that's like red flag no no. Sorry I went on that tangent for a second. and then when it comes to your marketing. Maybe you have a new so that's like one thing you can do. This episode's like Interesting. Another thing you can do, ⁓ you might be kicking off for the new quarter is content strategy, maybe a switch in that. Okay, maybe you're gonna cross-post to other platforms, which is a good idea. Maybe you want to run some paid ads. Maybe you want to do a completely different type of marketing. So Excuse me. When you are kicking all these things off, make sure that it's something feasible that for you to be able to do that you have the capacity for. So, like BDM relationship building, not difficult. Streamlining your qualification process might be a little difficult. You might need to implement the help of a colleague to like help you review and give you good, honest feedback. And then your content is gonna be ⁓ I I found it's very difficult for many travel advisors to stick to their content strategies. So that's gonna be the hardest part. when you are marketing, just please do not be afraid of how you look on camera. Please do not be afraid of typos. Please do in fact, there is so much stuff that is so heavily revised in terms of copy that. When I see copy, if I see it typo, I'm like I know it's a marketing strategy now, but I'm like, Okay, that's a real human being because there are mistakes in this writing. That's great, you know? So don't worry about like not having the right filters, not having the right background, like The trips, anyone can book these trips, right? It is how you connect with your ideal clients that you are marketing to. So you don't have to be perfect. Okay? Be consistent. That's what's gonna get you somewhere. If your consistency is three times a week, maintain that consistency. If you have a goal for a new strategy and you wanna up it to five times a week, Please maintain that for the next 90 days. Okay. What kind of kickoff stuff do you have for the next quarter? Any new ideas? Please share in the comments. And if you haven't yet, hit that old subscriber unie bunny button. Bunny button. Gosh. Cause we're gonna keep going into like kicking off the new quarter over this week. Okay? Thank you so much for joining me today, and I will see you tomorrow.