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 background in sales will serve you well in your new career as a home-based travel agent. A lot of these slick “give me your money and I’ll make you a travel agent” come-ons talk about how all you have to do is “share your love of travel.” While there’s a fair bit of truth to that, sharing your love of travel is just the beginning. You also need some solid knowledge to back up that love and you have to understand the sales process to get from “love” to money in the bank.

Your question seems to imply that “cold calling” and “the Internet” are a sort of either/or proposition, or two sides of the same coin. In other words, if you’re not cold calling you’re selling travel on the Internet. If you’re not selling travel on the Internet, you must be cold calling.

That’s not really the case. So let’s untangle the two.

Travel Agents and Cold Calling

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, cold calling is the process of approaching people (or in some cases companies) with whom you have no prior contact or relationship, with the goal of identifying them as prospects. Prospects then enter your “sales funnel” to be qualified and moved toward a purchasing decision.

(If anything in that sentence was unfamiliar to you, don’t worry. The Home-Based Travel Agency Success Course contains an entire module on sales skills as they apply to selling travel. It will teach you everything from prospecting to qualifying to presenting travel products, to dealing with objections, to closing the sale. Other modules in the course will walk you through the process of making solid bookings.)

If you want to make cold calls — and believe it or not there are some salespeople who absolutely love making them — by all means do so. However, I would recommend starting with your so-called “warm market” — people you already know. The obvious people in this category are friends and family, but it can extend to acquaintances you have through work, your house of worship, clubs and associations. Another excellent source of clients is the professionals to whom you have been giving business over the years — doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, pastors, and so forth.

Yet another source of clients is referrals. Of course, your best referrals are a bit down the road, if you are just starting out. They will come after your first clients have completed their trips and have experienced your terrific customer service.

But there is another, often overlooked, source of referrals you can begin tapping immediately. That is friends and acquaintances of friends and acquaintances. Your dentist doesn’t have plans for a cruise in the near future? Maybe he knows someone who is dying to take a cruise and would be willing to refer you.

There’s an old saying, “Never say never,” but in general I would discourage making “onesy-twosy” cold calls; that is, to individuals who (assuming you are successful) will be booking a trip for one or two people. There are more efficient and remunerative ways to spend your time.

In my opinion, the best cold calls are those made to companies, associations, clubs, church groups, and so forth, calls that can lead to extremely lucrative group bookings. But that’s an advanced technique and you really should have a good bit of experience under your belt before you attempt it. Otherwise, your lack of expertise can trip you up and cost you a sale — not to mention damage your reputation as a knowledgeable travel agent.

]]> http://hometravelagency.com/tips-and-techniques/cold-calling/feed/ 0 http://hometravelagency.com/about-the-course/franchise/ http://hometravelagency.com/about-the-course/franchise/#comments Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:27:21 +0000 Kelly Monaghan http://hometravelagency.com/?p=2984 By Kelly Monaghan

Here’s yet another question. (Must be spring!)

I bought your home based travel agent book a few years ago in a book store and now I’m considering actually starting a home based travel business. Anyway I’m also considering a franchise. Do you cover that in your training class as well?

Wow! You must have bought the book quite awhile ago, since it’s now about seven years out of date! The new course never goes out of date because it is updated on an ongoing basis and those who invest in it have access to all future updates.

But good for you on making the decision to move forward!

The Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course covers every variety of home-travel configuration there is, including some that don’t involve being in a home office. A franchise is just one of many options and it may not be the best choice for you. Then again, it might be exactly the right choice for you.

You see, the course is designed to teach you how the travel distribution business really works. It doesn’t advocate for one approach over another. Instead, my goal is to describe all your options in a dispassionate way so you can make the decisions that are right for you. Not for me or the next guy. For you.

I will make this comment about franchises, though. They are expensive. (But you probably know that already.)

Some people feel that if they spend a lot of money on something it shows they are “serious” and that the considerable investment they have made will encourage them to work hard(er). However, building a successful travel business takes time and while you are doing that, every month a big chunk of your investment capital will be going to the franchisor with relatively little commission income coming to you, the franchisee.

My bias is to encourage those who invest in the course to spend as little as possible at the outset. Indeed, it’s a good business practice to watch your expenditures at every step of your development! There’s nothing wrong with starting small, learning the ropes, and then switching to a more expensive structure (franchises are only one of your options) when you know you’ll be able to hit the ground running and realize a return on your investment in a shorter period of time, perhaps in months rather than years.

Please understand. I have nothing against franchises and for all I know a franchise might be the best choice for you right now, especially if you have a solid background in business and know how to create a business plan and read a balance sheet.

Whatever type of structure you eventually adopt, the course contains a very important module called the Host Agency Directory. It contains information on over 300 host agencies, including many franchise operations. The competitive intelligence it contains is worth the price of the course alone and it will be an invaluable resource in guiding you to a wise choice.

It won’t make the choice for you! But, along with the street-smart information in the rest of the course, it will shorten and simplify the search process considerably.

If you’re truly serious about staring off on the right foot, CLICK HERE and scroll to the bottom.

Some other questions I’ve answered . . .

Computers and the Home-Based Agent

Software for the Home-Based Agent

Need Help Setting Up Your Agency?

Credit Checks and Home-Based Agents

Someone wrote in to ask …

Does it take more than average knowledge of computers to succeed in the travel business? I am basically familiar with the Internet and can set up new files, that is about it. Also, I am 65 years old and not really into the high-tech world.

Not to worry. The simple answer to the question is “No, it doesn’t require any more advanced computer skills than the ones you already have.”

The slightly more complicated answer is “It depends somewhat on what you want to do.”

Some people believe that being a travel agent means learning how to use a GDS (or CRS as it used to be called). These were/are specialized computer programs that use a very unfriendly user interface and required learning a lot of arcane codes to make requests and interpret the response.

The GDS can be a powerful tool, but the good news is that you can have a long and lucrative career as a home-based travel agent without going anywhere near a GDS. There may come a time in your career when a GDS makes sense, but that point is almost certainly not when you are starting out.

You see, the GDS is most useful for writing airline tickets and for a variety of reasons, which I explain in the course, selling airline tickets is not a great idea for most home-based travel agents — except under very specific circumstances.

However, there is more good news. GDS vendors have been making their products more user-friendly. It is now possible to get GDS capability with a point-and-click interface that is pretty easy to learn.

As far as the Internet goes, it will be your friend throughout your career. Many host agencies and suppliers offer simple point-and-click interfaces to make many bookings easy. Not all of them, but most of them.

Where things get slightly more complicated is when you want to use specialized software for CRM (customer relations management) or email marketing, or launch your own website or start a YouTube channel. This sort of thing requires a certain amount of technical expertise. You can choose to acquire it yourself or hire people who already have it.

Once again, there is help at hand. Many suppliers (the cruise lines have been pioneers in this regard) offer web-based tools that let you store your client data and craft personalized emails and promotions to them. There are also easy-to-use web-based CRM services that are free to agents; they make their money with supplier advertising.

Some hosts offer to provide you with a website and there are third-party vendors who offer a similar service. These things are pretty straightforward, although they may present some challenges for the truly tech-challenged. On the other hand, the value of these sorts of sites is debatable and you are probably not putting yourself at any great disadvantage if you don’t have them.

A simple website, using a WordPress platform, will be unique to you and doesn’t necessarily require you to become a programming whiz. You can find someone to set it up for you through a service like eLance (which I use regularly) or oDesk (with which I have had some <ahem> “issues”).

So the bottom line is: Relax. You’ll do just fine.

And as far as being 65 goes, join the club!

Being a home-based travel agent is an excellent retirement avocation, whether you choose to do it on a full- or part-time basis.

My completely unscientific observation is that a significant percentage of home-basers are seniors who have a wonderful built in market in their fellow retirees who have the time and money to indulge their taste for travel.

Some other questions I’ve answered . . .

Software for the Home-Based Agent

Need Help Setting Up Your Agency?

Credit Checks and Home-Based Agents

A Canadian design firm has delved into Google Street View and come up with something pretty nifty. By stitching together images lifted from Google and doing what I can only assume was a massive amount of massaging they have created impressive time lapse films of scenic drives. They call it Hyperlapse. Take a look.

An article about the technology on Skift noted …

As the film was made using images from Street View, the team behind it believes others will want to use Google’s unlimited database of source material to edit similar films which could become inspirational tools for travellers.

Indeed! I can see some nifty uses for this technique. How about a tour of Paris’ 5th arrondissement? Or a drive along New York’s Broadway from the bottom to the top of Manhattan? Of course, how many travel agents have the technical expertise to pull it off? I sure don’t.

I also find it rather delicious that someone has found a potential way to make money using Google’s content. Turnabout is, after all, fair play.

A surprising number of people believe the statement, “You can find the best travel deals on the Internet.” Of course, travel agents have known for ages that this is pure bunk.

For starters, “lowest price” and “best deal” are not the same thing — far from it. Second, the sheer number of travel sites and Internet offers for most travel products makes it virtually impossible to be sure you have searched every possible source. And finally, who’s to say that the prices being touted are “real”? Check the fine print of sites like Orbitz and you will discover that they don’t promise that “its Content will be accurate, complete or timely.” Wow!

For many years, I was willing to concede (if you twisted my arm) that it was possible to find either the “lowest price” or the “best deal” on the Internet, but that it was highly unlikely. Now you’d have to water board me before I’d agree to a statement like that.

The sad fact is that many travel suppliers have turned the amazing technology of the web against their customers. Anyone who logs on to the ‘Net these days to avoid travel agents to get that illusive “best deal” is on a fool’s errand.

Suppliers, airlines chief among them, are using advanced technology to examine a web surfer’s browsing and buying history before offering up a fare.

Bill McGee has been tracking this trend for some time.

Back in 2007, on behalf of Consumers Union, I spent many hours examining this issue, and conducted extensive testing using multiple computers with multiple browsers. In one case, we searched a major travel site for a fare from New York City to Sydney, Australia under identical, real-time, apples-to-apples circumstances with two different browsers; one was cleared of all cookies and one had a robust history of purchasing flights. We found the cleared browser offered fares ranging from $1,770 to $1,950, while the second browser could only find a fare of $2,116. Although a company spokesperson said there is no “user differentiation” based on buying histories, industry analysts, journalists and consumers have been noticing this trend for years now.

And it’s getting worse. Welcome to the age of “online micro marketing.”

Using devices like “cookies” which sit undetected on your computer and vast consumer databases that aggregate buying behaviors that can be linked to specific individuals, suppliers now have the ability to track your past interactions on their site, know which sites you visited before arriving at their site, where you surf after you leave, and what your overall purchasing habits are.

Armed with this information, and with a little more algorithmic magic, they are able to hand craft a price designed to wring every possible penny out of the hapless consumer, who may be happily thinking, “Boy, ain’t I smart! No travel agent for me. I’m getting the best deal by booking on the Internet!”

What About Using A Travel Agent?

McGee’s article is worth reading in full, following the links provided. But there’s an aspect of the article that’s worth noting and that might escape the casual observer.

At the end of the article, McGee offers some “tips for travel shopping.” Essentially, they boil down to this: spend even more time on the Internet, visit even more travel sites, read the terms and conditions on each, do more comparisons, and on and on. He never suggests the obvious solution: use a travel agent. Why?

Well, Mr. McGee is the former editor of Consumer Reports Travel Letter (CRTL), which back in 2001, ran a major “expose” claiming that travel agents couldn’t be trusted. The evidence? Many of them were unwilling to waste their time catering to anonymous telephone “shoppers” asking for the lowest fare.

The uproar from the travel agent community was as vociferous as it was predictable. Many travel agents, myself included, cancelled their subscriptions. It turned out an large percentage of CRTL’s readership was travel agents. Whether there was a cause and effect relationship I don’t know, but CRTL ceased publication shortly thereafter.

So if Mr. McGee had a low opinion of travel agents before his job disappeared, the experience probably didn’t do much to change his opinion. Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether Mr. McGee failed to mention travel agents in his recent article out of animus. Maybe he was short on space. But it seems to me a glaring omission.

Travel Agents Are Increasingly Vital For Consumer Protection

As hideous as online micro marketing sounds, there is a silver lining. In spite of being ignored by Mr. McGee, there is an opportunity here for travel agents.

In this brave new world, travel agents are increasingly the consumer’s best line of protection against this increasingly common (and in my opinion reprehensible) marketing tactic. In fact, marketing is too nice a word for it.

While airlines are at the forefront of this trend, other suppliers will inevitably follow suit, just as they have mimicked other airline “innovations” like unbundling and ancillary fees.

The travel agent, with her intimate understanding of the industry’s little ins and out (as well as its darker secrets) is there to protect the client. A good travel agent will have followed my advice (and that of many others, I might add) and developed strong relationships with supplier BDMs, putting her in a good position to go to bat for her clients and assure a happy outcome.

Still, if nothing else, Mr. McGee’s article helps demolish the myth that the Internet is an unbiased and certain route to the “lowest price” and the “best deal.” And for this we owe him a vote of thanks.

Some recent articles about the Travel Industry that might interest you:

Some good advice on dealing with airline tickets

World tourism sets a new record

Some hotel secrets from Marriott

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 a major portion of their business in corporate travel, where air is a must.

But there are many wrinkles and permutations in how home-based agents choose to deal with the whole issue of air.

So I was struck by these comments by Barbara Stevens in a recent OSSN discussion.

I stopped using GDSs years ago, so for domestic bookings I use the airlines’ web sites and charge a fee. However, I waive all fees for emergency or bereavement travel or if someone is unemployed and traveling for a job interview. The latter group also gets a small ‘Good Luck on Your Interview’ amenity when they arrive at their hotel room. Just my way of giving back.

Now that’s what’s called great customer service. Good on you, Barbara! And something for the rest of us to consider.

I invite you to follow me on Google+, which is poised to give Facebook quote a run for its money! I hope to use this new social media platform as a more informal venue in which to share information and discuss trends. So join the conversation. Simply click here.

If you are not currently using Google+ yourself, it’s something you might want to consider.

One of the most important aspects of Google+, in my opinion, revolves around the whole issue of “authorship” on the Internet. I have suffered from rampant plagiarism of my material for years. Some questionable host agencies went so far as to copy my travel industry dictionary and used it as part of their training materials for their their outside reps! Would you want to entrust your share of commissions to a thief?

Google says it hates duplicate content on the web. Yet, despite the best algorithms in the world (or so they like to tell us), Google doesn’t seem to be able to identify which website originated content when cases of duplicate content arise, which happens with amazing frequency. Just for fun, I recently copied a fairly lengthy bit from one of my pages and pasted it into a Google search bar. I got three pages of results! Even worse, my page — the original source of all this pirated content — didn’t show up until the middle of page two!

Authorship promises to solve these kinds of problems.

The idea is that if Google can determine with a high degree of certainty that the content on page A was written by author B, then all sorts of good things will follow. That page and the site it’s on will be more “trusted” by Google.

Here’s how it works.

If you have your own site, create a Google Plus profile and then link it to your site. Have your byline link to your Google+ page. In the About Us page of your site (something every site should have) do the same. If you use WordPress, you will be able to select the author of every page on your site.

If you’ve noticed little thumbnails of smiling faces popping up next to your search results, you’ve seen authorship at work.

Of course, time alone will tell how successful authorship will be in helping Google detect and weed out the plagiarists on the ‘Net, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

If you are using Google+, let us know how it’s helping your business in the comments below. And if you don’t seem to be seeing any results, let us know that, too!

Some other posts on Social Media you might find interesting:

Facebook’s Dirty Little Secret

What Should A Travel Agent Tweet About?

Was Your LinkedIn Account Hacked?

How Many Twitter Accounts Do You Have?

Travel Agents, Freedom of Speech, and Social Media

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 you take in each month is  known to business pros as a lagging indicator.

What that means is that the amount you put in to your bank account each month tells you what happened in  the past. But it tells you zero about what’s coming down the road.

This is true of any business, but it especially important for travel agents. Why?

Well, consider this. A shop owner makes a sale and she puts the money for that sale in her pocket immediately. A travel agent makes a sale (books a travel product) today but only gets to see the money later — perhaps months later, after the client has traveled.

That’s why savvy businesspeople pay attention to their leading indicators, the ones that tell them what the  future holds in store.

So what are your leading indicators? Unfortunately, the answer is “It depends.”

It can differ from agent to agent, agency to agency. It depends on what you sell, how you sell it, and your personal strengths.

But basically the answer revolves around your “pipeline,” a concept with which you should be come familiar.

As I noted a bit earlier, travel agents earn their commission today (by making a booking) and get paid later (after the client has traveled. In the case of some products. like cruises, that could be many months later!

Hence the concept of the pipeline: what goes in one end today comes out the other at some future date.

Your leading performance indicators let you know how healthy your pipeline is and, ideally, should provide a fairly accurate measure of what you can expect to put in the bank next month, the month after, and for many months to come.

Determining your leading indicators involves some patient effort on your part and some conscientious record keeping, but thankfully it’s not rocket science.

Here are some things you might want to track:

• How many new prospect names do you add to your database each month?
• How many people do you add to your agency newsletter email list each month?
• How many sales presentations did you make this month?
• How many cold calls did you make this month to group travel decision makers?

None of these things may have an immediate payoff, but they will have results if you follow through.

The trick is discovering which of these metrics (and there are others that might work better for you) most closely correlates with dollars and cents results down the road. And like I said, it’s different strokes for different folks.

I know an agent who specializes in selling last-minute, discounted deals. For him it’s the number of people on his email list. The more he adds this month, the better he does five, six, seven months down the road.

Another agent might specialize in cruising for small groups of friends. For her the thing to track may be how many presentations she makes each month.

The important takeaway is that if you are following a lagging indicator like sales, when those numbers go south it can take you many months to recover.

Why? Because the seeds of this month’s income were sown many months ago.

The latest update to the Home-Based Travel Agent Success Course has been added to the members area of this site.

You can access the latest version here:

http://hometravelagency.com/login

Access to the course is limited to students only. As a student of the course, you have access to all updates to the electronic version of the course on an ongoing basis.

If you have not yet invested in your success as a home-based travel agent, you can remedy that oversight by clicking here.

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 relationship than large or small gifts. 
• Just one-third (36%) viewed receiving small gifts the same way. 
• And only 15% rated getting big gifts like jewelry as important to improving romance.

But wait, it gets better.

The same survey found that:

• More than eight in ten (83%) of those who travel as a couple say the romance is still alive in their relationship. 
• Fully seven in ten (72%) of the couples surveyed believe traveling inspires romance. 
• Nearly two in three couples (65%) say being romantic is an important reason to travel with their partner.

Here’s an idea for travel agents: Host a Valentine’s Day party with a theme like “Where Do Lovers Go?” or “Getaway To Love”. Make it clear to your invitees that you want to encourage them to “give each other the gift of romantic travel this Valentine’s Day.” No one likes to feel they’ve been lured into some sort of sales pitch under false pretenses.

Have some prepicked suggestions ranging from weekend getaways within driving distance, to a week at a couples’ resort in the Caribbean, to a Tahitian Islands cruise.

Of course, if a couple decides they’d like to revisit Rome, where they honeymooned, don’t talk them out of it.

It’s time to stop thinking of that calendar on the wall as a list of dates and start thinking about it as your marketing program!