Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 187: From Maybe to Booked: A travel advisor's booking strategy
Transcript
- Rachel: Okay, we are recording. I'm just like sitting here like, is this working? Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. It is day 187. Yesterday I talked about how, or how, where leads live. Today, the moment of truth, the gap between this sounds amazing, and an actual deposit being made on said booking. Okay. So a lot of TAs, treats, sending the proposal. Kind of as the end of the job. Like it should just sell itself. It won't. No matter how beautiful it is, the proposal is the start of the final conversation, not the end of it. So Build in a standing rule. Never send a proposal without also scheduling up scheduling the follow-up conversation. Another strategy that I do is I also screen record the proposal and explain it to limit keep that follow-up conversation as short and sweet as possible, right? Now, this is a little sidebar, but I do a screen record of like Room block contracts and proposals. And I'll be like, this is what this means. This is what this means. This is what this means. I recommend, because I niche in weddings, I recommend that this first date of attrition is gonna be approximately July tenth. Your RSVP date should be July first. So we have an extra ten days buffer or June first, whatever. I put all of that in the screen record of the proposal and the contract, so we don't have to have that conversation. Then when we're on the follow-up call, I'll say, Do you agree with the RSVP date? And I send in the email, like, here's what I recommend, you know, for holding the room block space. This is for people into groups and doing weddings specifically. Like, here's the recommended flow of the room block. Do you agree with it? And that way they have all this information beforehand and schedule the call. And then I just collect the information on the call and then have them approve the final whatever room block flow. Send it on. Okay? All right. Anyway, back to that. Never send a proposal without scheduling the follow-up conversation. I'm gonna send this proposal over to you today. Let's hop on a quick call. Thursday to walk through and I can answer any questions that come up between now and then. So you just guaranteed a second touch point. Even if you haven't gotten to the proposal point yet and you charge a fee up front, I always do this too. I'm gonna send you my terms and conditions. You get a sign off on them or like group travel management contract. Sign off on that. The next step, I will send you an invoice for my fee. And before that happens, like as I'm ending the call, like I'm gonna email this to you in the next 20 minutes, I pop up my calendar like I'm doing right now on my laptop, and I'll be like, Okay, well this call was on a Thursday. If I don't hear back from you by next Wednesday, blah blah blah date, I will follow up with you to make sure you haven't changed your mind, and it's okay if you do. I don't care. But and they know they have to sign that contract by that Wednesday. And I've already told them I'm gonna send you this contract. Once you sign the contract, you will receive an invoice. You have five business days to pay said invoice, or it is assumed you have changed your mind and this is all null and void. So they know all of that on the phone call. That's all in the email that I send to them. And I put in the email as well, don't forget I will follow up blah blah blah date to make sure you don't have any other questions because sometimes life gets in the way and they forget. And today is a perfect example. I was like, ⁓ I gotta follow up with this group host. I'm getting ready to sign on. And I told them I'd follow up Wednesday. And they emailed me first thing this morning and said, ⁓ my gosh, this week was busier than I thought. I am signing it tonight. I said, Great. I are I've already started working on it for you. I have. All right. The number one reason that book trips stall isn't the price, it's the overwhelm. It's too much information on the proposal or too many options, too many open questions, and decision fatigue. Your job in the booking stage is to remove all of that friction as an advisor, not add more choices. So lean in with your top recommendation. I do like to give multiple options and you want to send your top recommendation ASAP, right? Don't give them a whole menu. Instead of five different hotels, three. Top one, two backups, right? Because you can't guarantee availability. And let's say it's a specific, like definitely pick out a specific room category, duh. ⁓ but let's say it's like a popular room category and you send the re proposal over and then that room category is no longer available, you can keep working with that resort or whatever cruise line, or you can present other options that have that room category or similar available there, right? And I always I do my proposals via Trapify. So I'll be like, hey, here is like the first option that I would recommend. This is the one that I was picturing in my mind and we were kind of discussing on our initial consultation. I think this is your best bet. However, I found some two I found two other really good options. I'm gonna give you day to look over this one, and then I can send the other two, you know, in two days. If you if you don't wanna move forward, you know. And then they're like, Okay, I really like it, but I wanna see they always do this. I'd like to see the other option. ⁓ it's done, send it off. Cause I do ⁓ all at the same time. ⁓ and then I send both of them and then I'm like, All right, I'm gonna follow up two days from now, let me know. Or you can just approve the proposal you like. And then it gets done. Anyway. Make sure The deposit. Like, I don't like the non-refundable. I've had people quote non-refundable because it saves them money. Stop thinking about the money. Ooh, it saves them four hundred dollars on a five thousand dollar trip. Great, but they can't cancel and you can't modify anything. All right. So make the deposit small and like crystal clear on your proposal. exactly how much that is, how ⁓ how many days you have to. deposit and always duh this is the standard but I'm gonna say it anyway. Pricing is subject to availability and is not guaranteed on as much information as you can. if you know for a fact on the consultation like I know I can hold this room with or and I like it's a repeat client or whatever, then you can let them know like hey I can hold this and once I hold it we have 24 hours to deposit or forty eight hours to deposit. ⁓ but this will be guaranteed pricing, right? But sometimes you can hold it and the pricing isn't guaranteed. That's why I'm like pricing is subject to availability and is not guaranteed. And let ⁓ know like you have two days or one day to pay the deposit on this trip. When you send that proposal, like two days from now. And I gotta reprice it, just to be sure. And you can almost always get within one day the deposit paid. But if you're just like, ⁓ the deposit's two hundred dollars to secure this reservation and then final payments like ninety days before travel or sixty, thirty days before travel, whatever, and that's a year from now, they're just gonna sit there and think that that price doesn't change and that that room is just magically there for them. Okay? ⁓ now we're gonna talk about the next step. So like you're crystal clear in sending the proposal. The let me think about it, this isn't a no. It's usually one of three things. Budget, they're not certain they can swing it. One partner isn't aligned, or it's simply not enough confidence for them to make the decision. So you gotta figure out gently which one it is. So you can ask a question like like if it's a phone call or an email and be like, ⁓ I totally get it. It's it yeah, I understand. Is it more the price point or is there detail on this proposal that you're still weighing? And because I've had people be like, ⁓ we gotta think about it. I'm like, okay. And when it's like it it's not exactly not the confidence w part or partners not agreeing on it, that's when the detail in the I proposal will come up. So I had a honeymoon back in Costa Rica back in Costa Rica, January I don't remember. I think it was January twenty twenty five. I feel like it was January twenty twenty-five. And the honeymoon couple was like, ⁓ I'm not really sure if I want the travel insurance and we're not quite ready to book all excursions. And I was like, I totally understand. Let's move forward with securing your room now. Like, we don't none of this stuff is re like immediate. You can get travel insurance within three weeks and still get CFAR. And as far as excursions, we have like seven months to book those. I just wanted you to see what they were, see if you like ⁓ and have an idea of the price point so you know it's gonna fit in your overall budget. And they were like, whew, thank God. Yeah, let's book the room. Okay. And then they completely changed all of their excursions and then they ditched the travel insurance per their mom's genius recommendation. And I was like, Are you sure you are flying across the country to Costa Rica in the middle of ice storm season where you you live and they're like, yeah, we don't need it. Guess what happened, guys? All of their flights were like severely canceled. Like moved to the next day. So they lost like two days of their honeymoon. Okay, anyway. That single question, is this more about the price point, or is there a part of this that you're just not really liking? Usually surfaces what that real, let me think about it objection is. And once you know that objection, you can address it instead of just waiting in silence or replying with, just let me know what your thoughts are. Please stop saying lately no. Please, please. I hear it so much, I'm like. You're making them think. You were hired to not make them think. Let me know is no. A hard no. Okay. So you're booking strategic this quarter. Do you have a simple standard operating procedure from the time that they're like, yes, I want to work with you, to when they deposit? Are you gonna have a response time in under 48 hours when there's a lead coming in? ⁓ do you have in your SOPs, here's your proposal, we can do a call, bada da. Do you have one very clear and concise for your proposal recommendation instead of a menu like I have seen travel advisor proposals where they price out like every single freaking room category. And it's like, no, you are an advisor. Pick a room category and go on. If you are one of those advisors doing that, by the way, calm down and pick a higher room category than the lowest one. Because it's much easier for them to be like, I don't want the ocean front or the beachfront. Let's go down to the garden view than it is to like show them a garden view and then they're like, what am I? The ocean front, and you're well, that's a million dollars more, and then they're like, What? So start high, okay? And do you have a specific question script for the let me think about it moment? I'm gonna go, I have so many different random scripts that I deal with for like day-to-day things. Because I worked at a call center once and they're like, everything's a script all the way through, no matter what department you're in. And I was like, hmm, apply this to my travel agency. ⁓ a strategy that you haven't written down yet. Fun fact is just hope. So we've covered today how leads come in, how they get booked. And now we're gonna talk about the money and the marketing tracking, Tamara. Day one hundred eighty seven, thank you for joining and have a wonderful day.