Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 182 - Mid-Year Reset for travel Advisors
Transcript
- Rachel: It is a brand new quarter and a brand new day. Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. It is day 182, and I've been saying this for a few days now, like new quarter, new quarter. Why? Because I really want the new quarter to start. I don't know why, but I just like feel that energy right now. Okay. We just came out of a grueling, somewhat intense Q2. In the travel agency in a year podcast. There was a lot of mindset stuff, strategy. Even yesterday I mapped out the full unpitched framework so you don't come off salesy when you're trying to grab those corporate clients. And today your scoreboard is a reset to zero. I don't care if you made a hundred thousand so far this year or zero doll hairs in the first half of the year. If you crushed it, do not get complacent. And if you are riding the struggle bus, just forgive yourself. Today is Q three's New Year's Day. It's a fresh start. Everything's reset to zero in your business. Today, we're gonna go over some real basic stuff and a quick overview of what you can do if you're like, what do you mean today's the start of a new quarter? I haven't done a quarterly review. I just found this episode today. I'm pissed off at you, Rachel, for not telling me all of this sooner. So we're gonna do a quick overview. And some of you daily listeners that who I appreciate so much might be thinking, I we I've heard this stuff before. Yes, you have. Anyone who is an elite travel advisor, elite business owner, they don't need a hundred new strategies. You just need to master a handful of them, repeat them flawlessly. Repetition and consistency is where the money is. So let's talk about the summer slump. Everyone gets into it. We're gonna talk about the summer slump and then we're gonna talk about quick how to do goal setting. If you're like, ⁓ I haven't set any goals, calm down, we can do it in like two seconds. Look at your bank account, we can do it in two seconds, okay? And we are also going to talk about the ghosting pipeline purging. Keep it short and sweet today. Just touching on a few new things. Or yeah, a few things. So the summer slump. most travel advisors statistically are women. ⁓ w and most travel advisors just statistically fall into an age range where they're most likely going to be mothers or grandmothers, right? And so there's a lot of childcare in the summertime involved. I know some like I don't have any children at home. Right? Not everyone has children. But there are a lot that I hear about that are like, ⁓ my kids are out for of school and I have ⁓ in these programs, but I still go to run around 'cause it's ten to two instead of eight to three. A that kind of thing. Maybe the majority of your clients are on vacation right now, so you're like, ⁓ I can take it kind of easy because everyone's traveling. I can take a little breake poo. ⁓ I'll do this stuff in September, you know? maybe you're just tired. Maybe you're like me and you're like, what do you mean I gotta mow my yard every week? That's where I'm at this year. I'm like, I don't wanna mow my yard anymore. I was very excited to do it. Like I I I enjoy the exercise. I like weed eating. And also this summer I'm just like I do not want to mow my yard. I like normally I'm like, if you've ever watched King of the Hill, I'm like Hank Hill about my yard, but I'm on a push mower, so I'm like different direction every single time I mow. So that the blade grows more evenly. This year I'm not I don't care at all. Anyway, maybe you're like me in that regard where you're just like it's too hot, I don't want to do anything. A lot of agents take their foot off the gas this time of year. you have the opportunity to capture the market because people are always looking to book travel. And I know you're probably thinking, well, everyone's traveling right now. Not everyone. Not everyone. Some of my best clients I get ⁓ specifically for like destination weddings. Some of my best clients I've ever gotten are like July, August, September, third quarter of the year. like best refer me everywhere. They're all of their guests refer me. They all come back. They're for some reason always contacting me in this quarter of the year. Okay? Alright, let's do a quick I just don't want you to like rest on your laurels because it's summer. So moving on, if you're having a come apart because you're like, I don't know what goals to set for the next quarter, and I don't know how much I've done, and I didn't do a full quarterly review. Let's do the lazy dog days of summer Q3 milestones. How to set them. Okay, open up your notes app or find an envelope. Of open mail and a pen, I don't care. Notebook, whatever you got. Write down your original goal for January first. If you are a new travel advisor and you're like, I wasn't even an agent then, okay, write down whatever your original goal was when you were like, I want to be a travel advisor. Subtract that from your actual earnings as of yesterday. Especially if you okay. You should be listening hopefully to this. Around n you know it's 182 days. If you've been listening every single day, you are around nine months or six months in to daily listening, right? You don't have to be right on exactly July 1st listening to this episode. I'm just letting you know that. Okay. And so you can just do it the last six months. If you want to do that, look at your bank account. And look at your deposits in your business bank account of commissions coming in just for the last six months. Now, if you are listening to this on the actual start of the third quarter of the year, awesome. That's great. January to now, okay? Anyway, subtract your actual earnings from your goal for the year, and then what's left? You divide that by the remaining months. So if you're listening to this on day one of Q3, you gotta re divide that by two to get the next quarter. Okay? So let's say you had a goal of $100,000 this year. Let's say you've made $40,000 of today and it in the last six months you've made forty thousand dollars. Okay. You have another sixty thousand for the next six months. Divide that by two and you have thirty thousand dollars for the next three months. And that's probably sounds terrifying. So you're like, I only did forty thousand the first six months, Rachel, how am I gonna make the same amount basically the next three months? ⁓ good question. ⁓ are you charging fees? Do you have service packages? I can go in depth in more episodes about that. I've done episodes about tiered service packages. I have a course that I launched two years ago talking about that. If you charge fees, you should have service packages and levels of service you provide that build upon each other, and then you have your higher fees. Lowest speed, highest fee. Small, medium, large. Okay. Start implementing those fees and you can collect those fees up front. We did an episode about the wait list. If you miss that episode and you are feeling overwhelmed at any point in time, and you charge fees up front, you can set up your scheduler to collect an upfront modest fee to be applied to the full fee later on to schedule an appointment in the future for that client. Okay. Real That was a real quick breakdown. But let's say right now you are in the thick of it and you're like, I have all these trip requests, I have all these people traveling, I'm trying to do my marketing, and I can't manage all of it at once. And you do charge fees. Okay? Set up a wait list. Let's say your starting fee is $200. You could set up a wait list when someone comes in. Have an autoresponder be like, unfortunately, I'm serving my clients now. In order to serve you best, it's best to book a call with me. And then whatever, you can funnel them through that and be like, this guarantees that you are showing ex like you really want to work with me, but I can't take you on until next month, right? On your schedule, like we are two weeks out. If you pay this $50 fee now, it holds your spot. And it will be applied to your future planning fee. If you don't come to this call, you're losing that $50, right? This is a very common practice in so many other industries. Why aren't you doing that in your own travel agency? Okay. Anyway, basically, there are ways to make up for it. If you are ahead, great. Do you want to scale up or do you just want to coast along? Let's focus on scaling up. I know you're like, ⁓ no, I want to rest on my laurels. Nope. Let's keep going. Maybe take a week, reset, and let's keep scaling up. Sorry, I'm the worst person ever, and I will keep pushing you. I'm a pusher. That's a terrible mean girls reference. If you are behind, don't panic. You still have a full six months. To catch up and do the best you can to get as close to that goal as possible. So even if you're like, I made 40 this first half of the year, I wanted a hundred thousand, I got sixty, I don't don't don't be a little delusional. You can make thirty thousand in three months, no big deal. And also don't beat yourself up, forgive yourself if you don't hit that goal by the end of the year. Just make sure you're striving towards it. Okay? What Rachel, what if I'm a brand new travel agent? Just look look back the six months. Even if you're like, I just started two months ago. Okay, look back in the last two months. How many trips have you booked? Double that number. Like if you've only booked two trips in the last two, three, four months and it's like friends and family, see if you can get to four trips between now and the next six months. End of the year if you are watching this or listening to this at the beginning of the third quarter. If you are a travel advisor and you've been doing this for years and you're like, I just can't make any money whatsoever, do you even have a goal? Do you have a goal or do you just like say, Well, I want this to happen? but I'm not gonna do anything about it. So goal is taking a dream and putting a plan to it. So that's why I really, really stress the importance of setting goals. You don't have to hit all of your goals. We're not gonna hit them all all the time. Nobody's perfect. But it's so important to set goals because it makes you create a plan on how to get there. to your dream. It's a plan to your dream. What are we why are you not having goals? It frustrates me when I hear people like, I don't have a goal. I've never set a goal. And I'm like, but is this a game to you? That like make a living, man. Or woman. Anyway. So that's a quick setting goals for the next six months. Don't panic. ⁓ I do recommend maybe taking a quick look see. Because what if, what if you look at the last six months and you're like, ⁓ I made $40,000? That's pretty impressive, honestly. But then you're you look at your business account and you're like, why do I only have $300? I know it only costs me $500 a month in operating expenses. Where's the other? ⁓ Where's the other $46,000 or $36,000? where else are you spending your money? Okay. I mean, yeah, you might have paid yourself, but also if you're like I d I only paid myself ten thousand dollars so far this year, that means twenty six thousand dollars went into space. Like, where is this money? So that might be a nice little wake up call, like maybe you should do some P and L statements, maybe you should look at your finances a little more closely and set aside CFO time each week. And just look at your money, figure out get Build that relationship with your money. Get familiar with it. Instead of being like, Where what? Why don't I have any? Okay, so that's like a quick fresh start to Q3. If you're like, I don't have any goals, I have no idea how to set goals. And also I have no idea what's going on with my money. Okay. So once you have that milestone of this is how much money I need to bring in, this is how many bookings I need to have. Work backwards and then you can be like, this is the content strategy, this is my marketing strategy, so that I can get those leads and close those deals, right? Now we're gonna talk about speaking of closing those deals, the ghosting Dead lead versus a sleeping lead. A dead lead has flat out said, no, thank you. That's a dead lead. Not at this time. I can't do it. I don't have the money. Okay? A sleeping lead is someone who kind of fades out and is like, well, let me talk about it with my spouse. ⁓ hold on, we're moving right now. ⁓ wait a second. Just got pregnant or something crazy. Like, they still want to do it. They just really can't. And there's someone that may have Heard from them anywhere between like the last month to six months, you may have heard from them. Be like, I want to do this trip, but they just like kinda like they're kinda like those friends of yours that like text you and then disappear for like three weeks and you're like, Are you alive? They still love you and care about you. They're just like other things happened. So Those sleeping leads you do need to kind of set a boundary with them. And you can do this on a monthly basis even. Like if they don't if you have a lot of leads coming in, which I know some of my students had have a lot of leads, but they kinda like take their sweet time, you don't have time for that. That's like the person at Wendy's in the dining room that just like stares at the menu for like thirty five minutes, it seems like. And it's like, do I want the spicy chicken or do I want the classic single with cheese? And then they just get the number one. Like stop wasting everyone else's time. Anyway, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go into like poor leadership skills and the inability to make a decision. That was an that's another episode. We're gonna talk about that later. ⁓ But you can do this on a monthly basis, quarterly basis Make this a standard part of your practice. Have an email go out to those sleeping leads and say, Hey, I'm closing out, I'm closing out my files. Wrapping everything up for the end of the quarter today. Are we pausing on this trip for now? ⁓ today and have like the subject line be like Don't don't be like urgent reply today 'cause it's not that urgent, but just like put in the email like wrapping everything up for the quarter or for the month. Are we pausing on this? Do I need to read look at this again? Kind of thing. Okay. Hopefully you listen to this in the morning. I hope. So if you have, great. ⁓ so your goal today is to find three to five sleeper leads, sleeping leads, sleeping beauties, and just shoot that email to them. Okay? Really easy, really easy day. Reset your board to zero. Do the maths quick. The maths. Plural math. Clean up that inbox of the dead leads. Like just archive ⁓ take ⁓ out of your newsletter, just have them in your birthday email, whatever. Send three to five sleeping leads. Hey, I'm wrapping up last quarter. Are we depositing on this trip? Do we need to pause on this trip? Okay. Pausing on the trip is better than saying, Do we need to deposit on the deposit on this trip? Because sometimes people just wanna say no. So if you say, Are we pausing on this? they're gonna be like, No 'cause they wanna say no and then they're like, ⁓ I am moving forward with this. But if you say, Do you want to deposit on this trip and they say they're gonna wanna just more likely wanna say no. It's a weird thing. It's something I learned in a sales job, gosh, way too long ago. But It was like a weird tactic where you get people to say no, no, no, and disagree with you over and over and over again, and then they'll buy from you. It's really weird. Because they've had their like fill of saying no. Okay. That's it for today. Super easy day. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for listening. And I hope your next quarter goes amazing. Have a good day. See you tomorrow.