Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 136 - What's your process for travel consultations?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in Your Podcast. We are on day 136. of the Travel Agency of the Year podcast. 365 episodes, not even halfway through. Don't worry, I will make it through. I hope you do too. Thank you for those who are coming back and actually listening to me regularly. What? And thank you to newbie people who aren't bots listening for two seconds and moving on. If you don't know who I am, my name is Rachel Kay. I am the owner over at Elevate with Rachel K. .com. have some courses and some things that help travel advisors. big, nothing special, but also life changing. Because I want to gloat. I'm in a mood. I'm like batch recording these episodes and today I think I started at 134, days 134 to 138. I know I'm recording all in one session for sure. because that's my goal for the day. And ⁓ I'm in a weird mood, so buckle up. Process and communications for consultations. Do you have a process? Do you have a process for your consultations? You should have a process for your consultations. As always, I'm a huge advocate for the rinse and repeat. as much as you can in your business so that you can start scaling. having a solid consultation script, essentially, or template is vital to increase your confidence, to convert more sales, like closing more sales. ⁓ And it allows you to take control of the sale and guide the call. If you don't have a consultation template, there's a very good chance that you experience this. Hello. I'm not doing that. But I hope you didn't know that. But there's a good chance that you answer the phone and you start the consultation and you just want to take notes and then they're talking about 17 different places and then they're like waffling around and then because they don't feel confident and they're the ones like just yakking it up, which you should be listening 80 % of the time, only speaking 20%, 20 % should be questions, don't get me wrong on that. but you aren't asking the right questions, they're gonna decide that you're not someone to be working with. Alright. Trust me, I was in your shoes. I was like, I don't need a sales process. I've worked in telemarketing before. I don't need a sales script. I don't need to handle objections. It's gonna be fine. And I have so many, this was eight, nine years ago. I don't remember when I first started. in travel and I had no clear knowledge on the product. didn't know what I wanted. I knew what I wanted in nation but I was like I can do everything else too. No you can't Rachel. No you cannot. ⁓ I got some really interesting trips out of it and also some stress, unneeded stress. if I actually got to close them. But my close rate was much, much lower because I didn't have this standardized template of like, here's the process of this call. Okay, what do you need in your template? If you're like, ⁓ my gosh, I don't have one. Maybe you have one. Maybe you should just take a looky-loo at it. Clear, concise, and persuasive communication. Okay? I'm highlighting stuff in my notebook for myself that I've already read. It's fine. But I've said this multiple times. I will always say it. Communicate to everyone as though they are eight years old. So know like industry jargon, like that helps you eliminate industry jargon, that helps eliminate, not speaking in a condescending tone or in a, you don't need to dominate because you're talking to an eight year old, okay? Like it gives you little more confidence. Please don't mistake that for having a condescending tone. Be like, what do you know, you're eight. And they're like, I'm 48, what are you talking about? Click, that's not gonna work. You also, in my experience, if I just think they've never traveled and I have to speak to them as though they have the literacy level of an eight-year-old and communications of an eight-year-old, right? It takes away the passive aggressive tones. It takes away any condescending and it like makes you more excited because you have the opportunity to help them and educate them. So I think of it as like, I love kids, so. An eight-year-old kid is like... Pretty, pretty cool to me. I'm much more relaxed because I think, ⁓ they're only eight, they don't know any better. And it's not like a bless your heart situation. It's more of like they really don't know, so I need to calm down because they don't know what they don't know, right? Clear, concise, and persuasive. ⁓ I don't care if you don't like sales. I don't care if you didn't realize that this was a salesy job. This is sales, I'm sorry. And you can be persuasive without being pushy. And if you've studied any hint of psychology in college, for those who did get the privilege to attend college, ⁓ or even in high school, like marketing is psychology. Marketing is a lot of psychological tactics. which can be used for good or evil. Hopefully you are on the light side. and ⁓ you have to persuade someone to want to work with you. It's just like you have to persuade someone to want to go on a date with you or be your friend. Like you're not gonna be like, I talk in my sleep and I drool everywhere. unless you really don't want to date them. I know I went on a first date one time and I was like, this is not ... I've had so many bad first dates, it's awesome. I tried to sabotage so many and the sad thing is they're like, I still want to go on a date with you. I'm like, what's wrong with you? But anyway, if you actually want to get sales, you have to sell. So you have to have persuasive communication. in your consultation template. Let's talk about the consultative selling process and why, A, it's trending in all businesses and it has been for several years, but it's like trending more and more upward. Not just talking at you and being like, bye, bye, bye, our stuff's the best. People are realizing they actually, not people, companies are realizing that people actually want a relationship. And I remember when I first started, well it was TA Toolbox, now it's Elevate with Rachel K. When I first started it, I was like, I'm gonna do free consultation. And I had so several colleagues be like, why would you do a free consultation? You're worth so much more money. You are worth every minute you spend with someone, they need to be paying you. And I was like, no, I don't know if I can't even help them and I don't want to just take their money. So yes, I do have paid calls and yes, I still have free calls. But I remember getting that flack back and it's ⁓ interesting how many companies are moving to the complimentary consultation model now because people want to talk to human instead of just working over all their money for potential AI slop. Right? Right. That was me drinking my water. Anyway. I don't know how I feel about AI. good, bad, and ugly, and I don't know. It's new. Okay, what does a consultative selling process focus on? Consultative selling. It focuses on not what you sell, but on what your client needs. Again, active listening. I've done so many episodes about a lot of these different aspects. Just talk to me. No, I'm kidding. Just listen to every episode. Show up to all the live Q &As of your student. You learn so much. Okay, but what do they want? What are their requirements? Not what you sell. If you go into it with a, you can be highly niched out. Don't get me wrong. And you can be very specialized in specific products. But if you start it off like, This is all I'm gonna sell and you better be prepared to spend $15,000 or don't even talk to me. Like that's not gonna work. It might work a handful of times, but it's not gonna really work. But if you go into it you're like, hi, what are you looking to do? And even if it's not lined up with what you do, unfortunately, I really have enjoyed this conversation. I don't have anything to offer you. I would recommend that you go work with XYZ colleague because you're being a fiduciary advisor. You aren't being some creepy auto insurance agent that's like, I can do estate planning now because I sell life insurance. that's not fiduciary advising. I'm sorry. I've known so many people that just like do that stuff and they're like, you buy what I want you to buy. There's an aspect to that in the marketing part. The consultation part is let's actually be a consultant. Okay. What is best for the client? Have a fiduciary mindset. Like I have a fiduciary duty for the best interest of this lead and my clients, not what's in it for me. Just like with the networking episodes I've talked about, all that fun stuff. Like make it about serving them and not about how much money you can make from them. When you have a consultate, I can't talk anymore, consultative selling focus, you build support and your clients actually feel valued instead of bullied. ⁓ And that whole take it or leave it mentality, like calm down people. We are not running the world. We are not in emergency situations where we have to save lives. You can listen to them. and you can support them and you don't have to be in line with them and you don't have to say it in a Rudy McGoo way. I'm sure you all know that. I'm basing this off of my own random consultations I have had with various business owners throughout history, the history of Rachel. And if you actually come from like a fiduciary mindset about it, like I'm gonna give you the best advice for you, not the most money for me. They're gonna be more loyal to you. Even if they don't work with you, they're gonna be far more loyal to you. you'll have higher close rates and better reputation and increased referrals. The number of weddings I have had to turn down because I go through the entire consultation process, which for me, with weddings, I go through everything that they want from start to finish on their wedding day, how much they think their guests would be willing to spend per night on travel, kind of thing. But I'm like, hey, do you want getting ready photos? Do you want first look photos? Do you need videography? Do you need drone services? Because these are all going to impact your budget in a big way. What do the flowers look like? This is all going to change. Your budget's going to change because your mind is going to change, right? Do you have to have a DJ? Do you have to have a live band? Do you have to have any kind of live musician? Do you have a very specific aesthetic you're going for? Or are you like, I don't care, right? How many people are you expecting? And I can go through this whole process and and I asked them for their budget for the wedding. and I tell them this does not include travel, this does not include attire, this is just the wedding events. What's your budget? And that's the first question in my destination wedding consultation and I'll say, okay, so what we're gonna do now, I want you to really, if you have to, get in a meditative mindset and close your eyes, envision your dream wedding day. Hopefully you two have already discussed it. We're not gonna fight. But let's walk you through the entire wedding day and tell me what you see. And so then my consultation, I kind of flipped it from just questions to being like, let's paint the picture together, right? So you could do the same thing with your consultations in a consultative process and really, really listen. And if you have a thorough understanding, get through that process. back to my weddings that weren't qualified, and I would say, look, your budget's 10,000, you have 100 to 150 people you're expecting, and you want all these extras, none of this is reality. I'm sorry to tell you, if you want to hit both the guests and all of the things you want for your wedding day, your budget's gonna need to be closer to 40,000. If you want to hit your budget and all the things for your wedding day, you're gonna need to only have 20 to 30 guests. These are your options. The number of people who have emailed me back and referred me because they ended up not doing a wedding at all, they're like, you were the only travel agent who would actually tell us. They would all say, ⁓ yeah, you can do it for 10,000. You were the only one who was honest with us. That we interviewed. Mind blowing. and then they would refer me. They're like, we're not doing a wedding, but I just referred you to so and so. So it's good to actually properly advise people. Okay? What skills do you need to have to do this 20 minutes later? ⁓ Active listening. I've mentioned that a few times and it's not just two ears, one mouth. That's the start of active listening. And did a whole episode on active listening and I don't even remember how long ago that was. I don't know, like day 10. I don't know. ⁓ Are you asking the right questions? We're gonna talk about this tomorrow. Are you capable of empathy? Do you have problem-solving skills most people I know that went into this industry are excellent problem solvers So I would say yes Patience and persistence that's a hard one patience is a hard one for me. I am Jay G went worth commercials all the time So those are some of the skills Do you possess all of these skills? Or are you kind of like short on some of them? That's okay, we can always work on them a little bit or at least acknowledge it. Be like, is my shortcoming here. So, like I'm not very patient, but I'm very persistent. So I had to focus on other areas in here. Alright, thanks for joining again today. That is day 136, day 137. We're gonna go over the consultation framework. So if you're like, holy shnikes I don't have enough in my consultation or maybe I should take a look see at it and redo it a little bit ⁓ That's tomorrow we're gonna go over the six different phases. All right, you have a great day