Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 146 - Finish your quarter stronger with a final push: Tips for TAs
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. It is day 146. Thanks for joining me today. I'm your host, Rachel K. If you have any questions about who I am, I'm a travel agency owner and I also have Elevate with rachelk.com. There's some courses and like coaching stuff, fun stuffy stuff for travel advisors because I really like helping everyone I've been helping. So why not help you? Also, I have this pen from the Excellence Coral Playa Mojeda's that I've been writing with and I'm such a ding-dong. I was like, it's erasable ink. I forget that everyone uses tablets and it's just like the stylus thing. Anyway, that's fine. Day 146, another quarter is nearing an end. Rachel, no, we got like a whole month. I know. And I have a whole episode coming up in the future why I'm a psycho and I'm like a quarter's 12 weeks period the end. I will explain that to you all later. now is the time for your final push. If you are like, I'm not where I want to be for the quarter. I'm not where I want to be for the year. That's okay. Let's talk about some strategies you can start implementing today because it's day 146. have 33 days until the technical end of the quarter where you can make some possible big changes in your business. Okay. So We have eight strategies in today's episode that you can implement over the next 33 days for a final sales push. And you can do this each quarter. You can do this end of the year. Whatever. Okay. I wouldn't do it monthly. Maybe, maybe you could do a monthly. feel like monthly is too much, but we're going to use my son as an example and he does this monthly. My son, my dear old boy, dear old Derry, my son is a salesman at a car dealership. He opted out of college and went straight into sales at the age of 18. And he has his own sales goal each month. And he is a little obsessed with it. It's like to the point where I'm like, son, you need to, got eight weeks PTO that you've never used. Please use it. I don't know if he has his mud. I feel like he has an excessive amount of PTO, especially in the beginning. And a lot of what he does leads to his success in sales. And it doesn't matter what industry you're in. So what did he do when he first started? When everyone else was just trying to do like real basic salesy stuff, he was studying the products and matching them with different types of clients. So when people came on a lot, he could look them up and down and be like, ⁓ they're getting, I have freaking fungus now. They're getting. ⁓ this Nissan Rogue, they're gonna buy a Nissan Rogue. I got one, they're gonna like the color, I got two, but they're gonna like this one. Like he could just look at them because he knew the products so well and he knew how to match them to the ideal people for said products, okay? Remember, I'm the CEO of McDonald's, everything is a product. ⁓ But he did all of this and then he set a sales goal and he sets it far too high in my opinion because he's like I want to break records but then he realized he had to max out at 22 cars a month. So his sales goal every single month regardless of whether it's a slow season or a busy season, 22 cars. 22 cars gotta be out, 22 cars gotta be out. That's his goal and that is the maximum commission he would earn, okay? And he does this. He does all of these strategies every single month. He doesn't always hit those 22 cars, but he has been the number one. Let's see since COVID since 2021. He's been number one either both new and used or on the used side because he works at the used side of it since 2021. So five years running. He's 26 years old. So since he was 21 years old, he started at 18. ⁓ and he makes a very, very good living with zero student loan debt. I'm like, kudos to you, man. Now we just need to curb his spending and he's golden. But, and this isn't trying to brag, like, I want you to see like he did this at 18. You can do this at any age. You just have to do it. And like I said, he's a little obsessed about it to the point where it's like, take a day off. It's fine. And he is getting better at that. but he was like very, very driven for a long time. Okay, so step number one, you need to identify and prioritize any leads or like maybe they've signed the client agreement, maybe you've sent a proposals and they haven't quite closed things, prioritize them. because those are high, high engagement. Don't prioritize somebody that downloaded Lead Magnet and then email them, be like, hey, you want to do a consultation? No. People who have already said, want to work with you, or they've already been shown proposals, close that shit. Do not let stuff sit around for months and months at a time. When you do that, first of all, you're showing that client, this is not that important, this is not that urgent, right? You have plenty of time. and we're gonna wait until the last minute so I get super anxious. Like, why would you do that to yourself? Close it, okay? Tell them it's no longer available if they try to dick around with you for several months. Sorry, it's sold out. Well, I found it on my own. ⁓ okay, well, I can't get that inventory by. Stop wasting my time. But prioritize the ones that were very, very high engagement and follow up again. These are the ones that were like closest in your pipeline to depositing. This could get you a few more bookings towards the end of this quarter to get you closer to your goal. Okay, you can check for or create limited time offers. Everybody falls for the FOMO trap, unfortunately. This also shortens your sales cycle, and this is why suppliers have these flash sales, and all the resort brands have these sales. And if you look at the timing of these sales, if you've been in the industry long enough, they always have an end of summer sale in September. That's because the new quarter starts in October, ding-dongs. They're trying to push their sales. You're not ding-dongs. But ⁓ the Black Friday sale, that's the end of your push. spring break getaway, they need to push that, okay? Do the same thing. Do the same thing everyone is doing. If you cannot find a limited time offer to promote with your preferred products, just get used to it, you might be able to create one. And this could be maybe if it's cruising, depending on the cruise line, because I know they're all different with their policies on this. Maybe throwing some additional onboard credit, check with your BDM or their terms, right? Maybe with a resort, you could just offer to pay for the transfers and reduce it by a few hundred dollars or something like that. Create your own limited time offer. They have to book only these properties, limited availability. They have to deposit by ex-date in order to get this. That's a really good way to get some FOMO-E last minute sales. And your repeat clients or your general audience that like even if they just book one trip and kind of sit on the sidelines, they're gonna learn about your sales cycle like this too, like this phase. And they'll be like, I remember this sale happening last year. It must be coming up again. There's gonna be another good sale. I'm gonna wait and book my trip then. So if you strategically structure these things, towards the end of each quarter, like all suppliers already do, it really helps with your sales push. ⁓ Personalization. You want to make sure when you are doing this marketing stuff that you are actually tailoring it to your ICA and if you have multiple ICAs, different ICAs. Please don't use generic copy that you got from like a template or like a supplier. Like you can use this template for your social posts to promote our flash sale. Please don't just use their copy. You can use their copy and you also Don't want to have the same copy in every single post when you're trying to promote something because that just gives off A, you're lazy, B, you don't care. You don't care who buys it. You're just like, well, whoever, I don't care. It's not tailored to anybody, specific pain points. It doesn't achieve any specific goal. So make sure any copy is curated. Offer to host webinars where you can interact one-on-one. ⁓ Maybe... Send some thoughtful follow-up calls, texts or emails, however you communicate. Okay, fourth, strategery. Ask for testimonials and use them to show that your leads are not taking a risk with you. That is the importance of social proof. Any social proof you get shows potential customers, well, this person was happy with him. That is also why... It is now fully being banned that you can't pay for bots to leave five star reviews anymore. If you were in that camp, good luck. You can't offer incentives for people leaving five star reviews. And I think now on Google My Business, you can't even get bad reviews removed or something. I read it maybe like a month ago. I was like, this is not going be good for all those people who teach travel advisors to spy five-star reviews. Who teaches that? Anyway. Number five, diligent follow-ups with compelling reasons to deposit now. If you have anyone in the pipeline, when you are doing your follow-ups, like those high engaged people who kind of fell off the face of the earth. You need to have a compelling reason why they need to deposit within the next week. Hey, I just checked inventory and they're down to these two, like this stateroom that I quoted you. There's only two left on the ship. And if you want this on the higher decks, we have got to deposit. I went ahead and put a 48 hour hold for you because I have all your information. And also, I need this deposit within the next day or so. Otherwise, this trip is falling apart. and that's gonna get them to respond to. You can also do like the old social media collabs if you do have any networking relationships ⁓ established, you could do that to kind of like push yourself out there a little bit more. That's number six. just wrote down collabs. Max out your social media engagement. Make sure your content strategy, if you haven't done this quarter, this first quarter, that's fine, or this quarter, that's fine. And if you are struggling to meet your goals, definitely put this towards the end of the month or the end of the quarter. engaging content, again, the curated copy, and also engage yourself everywhere you can. Show up as much as you can. Tip number eight, anything that you already have booked, this would be a good time to review their itineraries if you have the time. And just be like, hmm, instead of just your regular automated workflows for upselling or cross-selling, you could reach out to them individually and just be like, hey, you know what? I was checking in your room category. I can actually get you upgraded ⁓ to this master suite for like an extra $200. Hey, I noticed these tours have opened up that we discussed and I found this really good DMC that can help, or you can't say DMC, that's jargon, but I found this really good company has space open now for private blah, blah tours. Something like that. Those are eight strategies that you can employ over the next 33 days for your final push in bookings. Save this video to reference later. Create your to-do list during your CEO time maybe. Implement these strategies and see what happens. See if it does get you closer to your goals. Okay, that was day 146 of Travel Agency of Year. Thank you so much for listening. Save this for later and I will see you tomorrow. Have a good day.