Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 176 - Detaching from the "No" & getting ghosted by clients
Transcript
- Rachel: Talk about one of the heaviest and most emotionally draining experiences we're gonna all go through at some point as travel advisors. And it's a situation that can instantly take you from being that high-energy, ultra confident business owner, travel advisor to someone who's completely spiraling and questioning their career choices in general. Like, why am I even doing this? And I'm talking about getting completely, utterly ghosted. By prospective clients. Let's map out this exact scenario. Cause I'm pretty sure you live through this. I know I have. A lead comes into your system, they look amazing on paper, however, you have your system. You get them on the phone for the consultation. The vibes are immaculate. It's like you were meant for this trip, and these clients just like mesh with you so well. You laugh, you connect. They share their dreams for this vacation, and you're like, I can make all of your wildest dreams come true. And they tell you they're so excited to get started on this with you. You get your notes, tippy tappy, tappy, or via notebook. and then you start the process of like, here's what it's like to work with me. And you're so excited that you dive into this trip. You spend whether you start With a fee up front or however your process works, which we'll get into that here in a second. But you spend hours like pouring your heart and soul and all of your expertise into designing a spectacular custom itinerary for your dream client that you just had the best time on the phone call or Zoom meeting. You cross-check everything, you add like little special touches and be like we're such a good fit for each other and it's beautifully formatted. It's like the best proposal you've ever done in your life. But after that call it's just radio silence. Couple days go by. You tell yourself that maybe they're just busy and then a week goes by and you send a polite little friendly follow up check in. Still nothing. And then another week passes and you try one more time and your email or text, however you do it, just vanishes into nothingness. They have completely disappeared. You're questioning if this was just like an absolute hallucination at this point. Because it it feels like such a personal punch to the gut, and you find yourself walking around your house, your home office, pacing around, overanalyzing every single line from that call, you're like, if you charge a fee, was my fee too high? Was my fee too low? Did I misinterpret what they wanted? Am I just really bad at sales? Did I say something wrong during our consultation? And you just start. Spinning your little wheels in your brain. Welcome to day 176 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. And today we are going to be tackling this ghosting phenomenon head on. We're gonna break down the psychology of the silence of a client, explain why it's almost never a critique of who you are, and we're gonna go over some practical step-by-step tr strategeries to detach your personal worth from your business and someone saying no to you. Alright. So let's talk about the mindset that is so dangerous and creates this trap that handles ghosting so poorly. And if you're listening to this episode and you are like out in the dating world or you or have recently been in the dating world You will see how closely related client ghosting and dating ghosting can be. So when a travel advisor gets ghosted, typically what I see is the default setting is to internalize that silence as a direct scorecard on their personal value, their talent, and their worth. And I've said to many advisors, like, don't take it personally, it's okay. And it still happens. We we are going to talk about when it's like consistent ghosting, then there might be something to do with how you're doing things, but that's okay. And because you are all by yourself and you're not working for any company, your travel agency is so deeply personal to you. You are the brand. You are the curator, you are the business owner. This is how you want things to go. This is how you want things to run. And when you get ghosted and rejected, it's like, ⁓ this must be a personal attack, right? And you feel like you're personally being rejected. So then you start spiraling and you're like, how come my competitors are booking trips, but I'm not? Even if they're just like colleagues in the industry, if they're doing well, you're like, everyone's ghosting me. What am I doing wrong? You wonder if you just look like an amateur. You might spend hours checking to see, like over and over again, did they read that email? Did they read that text? And you search their names on social, maybe, maybe, to see if they went ahead and booked the trip without you. And that sometimes does happen. And that's another thing that we all go through is being like, ⁓ they really didn't want to work with me. But let's look at what's really happening, most likely, on their end, as well as what's happening to your business while you're in the spiral. You're letting it possibly, most likely complete stranger, someone who hasn't even given you a single doll hair for the execution of this trip to dictate your mood, your confidence, and your energy levels. You sit down to work on like a repeat client's trips, whatever, someone that's like actively working with you and is like, you're the best, and your brain is still stuck on the person who ghosted you. You are afraid to even go on social media and start marketing yourself because your confidence taken such a big hit, and you're essentially letting like a complete stranger, not even doing business with you yet, to hold you and your agency hostage. So when we tie our emotional stability to like whether a lead replies to an email, we hand over control of our peace of mind to people who are just living their own lives. If you've been listening to this podcast, there's a whole episode about the four agreements that I go over. And one is do not take things personally. That's one of the four agreements. So we have to realize that. Our business cannot survive if our emotional state is roller coaster controlled by the general public. So pay attention to that agreement. Do not take anything personally. A silence from a client or lead is just a business metric. It's not an indictment on who you are, your talent, or your fees, or your character, right? It's fine. So Let's do a complete reframe of why ghosting usually actually happens. Because 99% of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with you. So when a client or lead like completely goes ghost, I've I've heard advisors like getting the fee from them and they ghost. Like that's a thing. So it's not just, ⁓ I think I've closed the sale, but even Client ⁓ advisors will have a fee charged and paid in full, and then the client just ghosts, okay? ⁓ but after a client goes silent on you, regardless of what phase they're in, your brain immediately most likely writes a narrative that you are the problem. Let's lift that curtain on consumer psychology and look at what's actually happening on the other side of that computer screen. ⁓ think about how fast your life is moving. And understand that that's a similar pace as what the average consumer or your clients that's the pace of their lives. Just because this itinerary or your list of services or whatever hits their inbox, their reality does not pause. So maybe the next morning, consider this. ⁓ they find out their company's going through massive layoffs and they're suddenly like. Experiencing super financial anxiety about spending any money on a vacation right now because they're like, I might not have a job and I only have three months of expenses saved, or I don't know their financial situation, and neither do you. But maybe their child is sick, maybe they have parents who are older that are in the hospital, or a relative ends up in the hospital. ⁓ so their brain's completely shifting to I'm not planning a vacation right now. I have to deal with this situation. Or maybe, and this can happen more often than you think, especially if you don't have both like a husband and wife type situation on the call with you. But maybe that couple is having a massive argument about said trip. Maybe you sent the proposal after you paid the fee, and they're just fighting because the one you spoke to is like, I want this all-inclusive beach getaway. And the other one's like, absolutely not. This is my nightmare for a trip. And so they're just fighting in the background about this. Has nothing to do with you. Because they don't know how to explain. ⁓ I caused a huge fight about this trip. One moment, please. Can we revisit this? Like, that's super embarrassing. ⁓ they're gonna choose the past path of least resistance, which is gonna be avoidance. These people ghost you because they feel awkward or guilty or even embarrassed to admit that their plans have fallen apart. So when you understand this. You realize that ghosting isn't really a calculated rejection of your professional skills. It's simply a reflection of their internal life chaos. Okay. So imagine, if you will, your travel agency was just any other business you were employed at. A silence or no is completely neutral data. So think about like, let's say you worked at like Dillard's or something, big retail shop at the mall, you know? If someone walks into Dillard's and you're sales rep and they look at three dresses and they spend 20 minutes talking to you and then they walk out with buying anything, are you gonna sit in the back room and cry? ⁓ no. Is the manager of your department gonna be like, maybe we should shut down this entire store? No. You all recognize it. Like that person was just window shopping. The timing wasn't right, the budget didn't fit. Maybe they just had some time to kill and they were curious about things and they might come back later. But they reset, like you as a sales rep, you would just like reset yourself and approach the next person. And have a smile on your face, right? So you need to be running your Travel agency with the exact same posture. A ghosted client is not an emotional tragedy. They're just a lead that dropped out of your sales funnel. ⁓ it's a data point that tells you where they currently sit in your pipeline. And you need to release the need to know why they went silent and stop writing fictional stories in your brain about your shortcomings and start protecting your focused attention because that is what makes you money. on marketing and networking and serving the people who want to do business with you. Now, I mentioned if this is becoming a common occurrence, like say you have 10 consultations over the course of two weeks and all of them are amazing and none of them move forward with working with you, there's probably a gap somewhere in your closing process. or your onboarding process. ⁓ unless like the only other time that would happen that consistently is if there was like a major international event that just shuts down travel. And so obviously that's out your hands. But if there's nothing like that going on, ⁓ these people if every single person that you're interacting with over the course of several weeks is just ghosting you, that is some time you should probably take some time with a colleague and walk through your entire consultation process and see if there's any gaps or like any wording you're using that's like causing them to not want to work with you. Okay. And also not even want to say, no thanks, I've changed my mind if you send everything on. That is not super common and that can happen. Okay, so for your daily action today. We're gonna take back your emotional power if you're feeling like everyone's ghosting me, or like a third of people are ghosting me, whatever, or I just got ghosted and I thought it was my favorite client. We're gonna give you back your emotional power, clear the mental clutter, and purge your active pipeline, pipeline of any dead weight, so you can op open up, gosh, I can't talk ever, space for the people who actually want to work with you. So. If you got four minutes, if you're driving, do this as soon as you are parked. Cause I all know, like I know y'all have your email app on your phone. Open up your email. Find like the most lingering, drainy magoo, ghosty type client in your inbox right now, and just send them an email. Very definitive, very professional. You're not gonna be passive aggressive. You're not gonna sound like you're hurt, because you shouldn't be. And you're gonna you're not gonna ask ⁓ why they haven't replied. You're just gonna be super professional. So you can type out something like, excuse me, hi there. It looks like the timing might not be quite right for this itinerary at the moment. So I'm gonna go ahead and archive your file for now to keep our, always our, even if it's just you, active systems organized. If your schedule or travel plan shift down the road, please feel free to reach out when you're ready to pick things back up. Wishing you all the best, hit send. Okay. Once you can, and you've sent that email, go into your CRM. We all have one. And if you can archive them, not necessarily delete them, archive them, do that. Put them as closed, put them as inactive, whatever it is in your CRM. And then Think about how it felt to send that email. Cause it's gonna shift you from that passive position of waiting to be chosen and kind of going into chasey mode. It puts you right back in the driver's seat of your business. You are the captain of your ship. You're establishing a clear boundary that says, ⁓ I need active engagement in my pipeline in order to work with people. I'm not screwing around with this stuff. You're preserving your dignity professionally. And you remove any constant reminders of their silence from your desktop. So like I use I'm a I use Vacation CRM myself and I have if I have like invoice approvals or anything like that, those the first thing I see on my dashboard is reminders and then invoice approvals. And so I would just Make sure that those were like marked off so when I log in I'm not constantly reminded of that. Okay. So let's talk about clearing the dead weight out today and resetting your energy and get ready for the real clients who actually enjoy working with you. Alright, that was day one seventy six. If you know someone that's like, I keep getting ghosted and I don't know why, share this episode with them. We can have a little conversation. Otherwise have a great and I'll see you tomorrow.