Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 238: 4 Personal Outreach Rules for Travel Advisors That Get Replies
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency New Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. I'm a travel agency owner helping travel advisors become the CEO of their business. Today is day 238. Is that ASMR enough for ya? I feel like I have the world's worst voice. The four golden rules of personal outreach. This is actually a whole lesson. inside of the success circle program. Actually this whole podcast is kinda tied to the success circle because I was thinking about it a few weeks into After I realized I wanted to do this podcast and how I wanted it to look, the Success Circle is a fifty-two week program. And so I was like, okay, well, I could draw inspiration from there. But then I also realized, when I do the lives and the hot seat coachings for members in the Success Circle, there's some things that I couldn't get too deep into or didn't get too deep into, and I didn't realize I needed to teach. And so I was like, okay, I'll just go deeper on the podcast. So now once I get this podcast finished, one of the students gave me the brilliant idea of linking back the episodes that tie to each week so that they can come listen to this as supplemental stuff. But you can also listen to this for free and not do anything just for the the laughs. It's hilarious. Anyway We have touched on in this podcast a lot about outreach, warm, cold, inbound, outbound, personal touches. We're gonna boil it down to four simple rules. That you can apply to literally any outreach message So I'm a huge fan of networking and sometimes I have to network with people that I don't see in person. so I've had to do a lot of cold outreach DMs and emails, and I'm a big fan of it. I feel like if you can get someone to connect to you connect with you via cold outreach, you're probably really good at sales, by the way. And more and marketing. Anyway. The single biggest mistake is making it about yourself. So, rule number one for four golden rules. Make it about them when you reach out to them. You want to flip it completely. Lead with them. Something that you noticed, something relevant to their life, a question about what they're working on. How you can help them. A message that centers around them, not you, gets the reader to respond differently within the first sentence. And I think I've talked about this in other episodes, but let's treat this like dating with rule number one. If you are a woman and you had to, God forbid, do online app dating. Would you be comfortable and I have a friend who did this to their profile a man and I was like, This is why you're not getting any replies. no one's messaging you. But anyway, if someone DM'd you I don't know how online dating works, but if someone sent you a message and was like, You know, I'm the smartest person ever and I know how to do all these things and I can drive a stick, you'd be like Beef F D. I don't you're weird. Like, so so don't do that, is what I'm saying. Like, you are trying to establish a relationship. That's not how you make friends. That's not how you get boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives. When you introduce yourself, you don't just walk up and be like, hi. And I I have unfortunately seen a lot of copy. On travel advisors' websites where it leads with that, like I'm this and I'm that and I'm this and it's like nobody cares. Make it about them. And outreach, cold outreach is also your website, by the way. So look at your main page. And if it's like, Hi, I'm Rachel, and I've won a billion awards and I make all this money and I can help you with your next trip. That is like, what is wrong with you? Anyway, rule number two I don't know what kind of accent that is, but let's roll with it. Reference something specific to them We're gonna try it's from pretending it's German, I don't know. Generic outreach is instantly recognizable. So you need to be specific to them and instantly ignorable. Hope you're doing well. Could be sent to anyone. How was the anniversary trap you were telling me about? Could only be sent to them. Specificity is what separates outreach that gets a real response from outreach that gets left on read. If you are doing multiple cold emails, I do recommend having a general script to test. Okay. And you want to add a personal touch that shows that you know something about them and you've done your research. So let's say you are trying to network and you want to partner with a photographer, because I'm all about partnering th with photographers, and you are like, okay, there are 45 photographers in the metro area that all do like engagement photos. This is great. Like, if you want referrals for honeymoons and destination weddings, don't go to a senior photo. photographer or family photographer or whatever, like focus on the engagement photographers. Cause guess what? Every industry niches everywhere and you should too. Anyway, and you can have a general like template like Hi there. My name is Rachel and I own this travel agency and I'm looking to partner with photographies in the area for referral system, whatever. And then you can say, I really enjoyed your portfolio. Go to their portfolio, look through their gallery. They almost always name the couples and be like, I really liked Sasha and Tim's shoot. I really like the lighting. Do you edit your own photos or do you work with an editor to do all this? This is amazing. I love this style. It's different from everyone else in the area. Like reference it specifically back to them. And especially with photography, they're gonna really appreciate because it's art, right? So they're gonna appreciate if you can be like, D you edit all of this? And I'm not saying be fake AF, like be sincere about it. Rule number three don't be afraid of silence. Why? Because people have s wives. But this is what advisors struggle with the most. Emotionally. After you send that message, the instinct is to fill the silence, to follow up too quickly, and then overexplain in the reply to soften the ask with three extra sentences in a reply out of discomfort. Resist that. Give people room to respond in their own time, especially if you are trying to build networking partnerships with other small business owners. A message that lands cleanly without anxious padding. actually reads as more confident and more comfortable than one crowded with nervous over explanation. Okay. Ooh. I was just reading the cleanly part and the anxious padding notes and I was like, God, I I'm totally guilty of that at times. it's fine. That's why those people didn't partner with me. Rule number four. Keep it short. I like to do all of my communication. I don't buy anyone's templates. I just wrote my own workflows. I like to keep all of my stuff when I'm communicating with my travel clients or doing any kind of cold outreach. I don't do the three to five sentences per paragraph. I like to do it one to two sentences per paragraph. I bold and italicize things that I want them to be aware of because we all get enough emails as it is. Keep it short and sweet, break up the topics, even though it's all related to one thing. One to two sentences space. One to two sentences space. It used to make my first assistant so mad. the bonus rule. Track it. None of these rules matter if the outre outreach itself gets lock lost. Log every one of your outreach messages into your CRM. Who? When Sorry, what was said and what the next step is. And this connects directly to the pipeline and the nurturing ecosystem you should have been building this year. And an outreach message with no record is a relationship you're trusting entirely to memory, and memory does not scale. If you are like, I don't want to add them to my CRM because it's cold outreach. I have the perfect solution for you. This is what I do for cold outreach. I have a whole separate notebook. And if anyone's listening is like, I'm sick of your notebooks. But I know some people I work with are like, I love notebooks. I have a whole separate notebook where I have the name of the company. If I can figure it out and find it, the owner of the company, the phone number for the company. The email preferably of the owner of the company. And I build this whole well, this is mirrored. I build this whole list out and I just check them off as I've emailed them. But I keep the phone numbers empty and I follow up with a phone call. And then I follow up with a text and then I cross them off my list forever. And that's what I do. It doesn't have to be like You have to follow up in exactly two days. no, especially if you're doing like engagement and wedding photographers, like if you're doing this in the middle of the summer, guess what, chicken butt? They're in the middle of wedding season. They don't have time to reply to your emails. Okay. All right, four simple rules plus a bonus. Track it. About them that you're trying to reach out to. Specific stuff. Comfortable with silence. Short, those are the four very terribly Whatever the phrase is, I'm that's fine. I don't remember what that word is. Anyway, if you apply those four rules consistently, it's gonna change how your outreach will land. Right, that's pretty much the end of that part of the series. This is Travel Agency in the Year, day two hundred and thirty-eight. Have a wonderful day and I will see you tomorrow.