By Kelly Monaghan Here’s a question is was asked recently: “I do have a strong sales background, how much cold calling is involved in this type of business or is it done mostly over the Internet?” Here’s my answer, addressed to the questioner, but of interest to all (I hope). First of all, let me say that your [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan As those of you who have my course know I advise that home-based agents sell airline tickets (or “air,” as most travel agents call it) only under very specific circumstances. Some home-based agents simply never sell air unless it’s part of a package. At the other end of the spectrum are home-basers who do [...]…
by Kelly Monaghan How do you measure how well your business is doing? If you’re like most travel agents, it’s probably by how much money you bank each month. Monthly deposits going up — good. Monthly deposits going down – not so good. There’s nothing wrong with keeping your eye on the bottom line, but the amount [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan Love is in the air, I guess, so I found the latest news from the U.S.Travel Association fascinating. Turns out Valentine’s Day could be one of the best days of the year to make some high-end bookings. Nearly two-thirds of couples (63%) surveyed say a weekend getaway is more likely to spark romance in their [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan If you have a website for your home-based travel agency and you monitor your traffic with Google Analytics, you have probably noticed how difficult it is for you to attract so-called “organic” traffic from the search engines. In other words, free traffic as opposed to traffic you pay for. Getting the Google gods to [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan Finding ways to stay in touch with your clients between sales is an ongoing challenge for any sales-oriented business and a travel agency, home-based or storefront, is no different. Most of us probably send out “holiday” greetings in December that get lost in the flood of other greeting cards and let it go at [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan A successful travel marketing business needs a steady stream of leads. Let me rephrase that: A successful travel marketing business needs a steady stream of qualified leads. I won’t go into all the ins and outs of qualifying here; that’s covered in great detail in the Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course. Let me just say [...]…
By Kelly Monaghan Who knows what the future holds for Lance Armstrong. But one thing’s for sure. He’s at a turning point in his life and things will change … must change. Two years from now he won’t be doing what he was doing two years ago. I have learned over the years that many people who take [...]…
by Kelly Monaghan Well, it’s 2013 (Happy New Year!). So be on the lookout for special promotions from suppliers built around the “unlucky” number 13. My guess is that a lot of marketers on the supplier side will find the idea irresistible. One that’s already jumped on the unlucky 13 bandwagon is the Magdalena Grand Beach Resort [...]…
by Kelly Monaghan Will they really find you on Facebook? Turns out the answer is “not so much.” Facebook is arguably the 900-pound gorilla of social media, and a small army of SM gurus (not to be confused with characters in Fifty Shades of Grey) have been telling us forever (well, for a few years) that we [...]…
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