A simple method for presenting travel products to your clients

By Kelly Monaghan

As with so much of what we discuss on this site, presenting the wonderful benefits of the travel products you sell will be a lot easier if you approach the task in a professional and orderly fashion.

Over the years, sales professionals have developed a highly effective way of providing information to their clients in such a way that the client sees — even experiences — the wisdom of making an immediate buying decision. This method is built around a simple, four-step process:

Probe –> Present –> Prove –> Close

This method works best if you fully qualify the situation first, research available travel products, and then present your solutions to the client. It works in both informal settings and formal group presentations. Let’s take a look at each step in turn.

Probe

Ask a question — preferably one to which you know the answer — that addresses an expressed, known, or strongly suspected need of the customer. Obviously, expressed needs will be the strongest motivators. But you may know about your customers’ needs based on past experience with them. Also, some needs can be inferred; for example, it is reasonable to assume that a need to escape the chill of winter to a Caribbean island is shared by an audience in upstate New York that is attending a Cruise Night you sponsored. When the customer answers the question, he will be reinforcing the need in his own mind, conjuring up a mental picture of whatever it is in his life that is lacking.

Present

Your question sets the stage for you to present a specific benefit or group of benefits of the travel product you are offering.

Prove

While not always necessary, your presentation of benefits will be stronger if you have some way of backing up what you say with proof. That proof can take the form of your own personal experience with a cruise line, that of other satisfied customers, the pictures in a brochure, or slides or a video you can show the customer.

Close

Once you have presented the benefit and proved its worth, you should make a trial close to test that the customer has accepted the benefit as valid.

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