Essential Skills: Empathy and Attitude
Empathy
Here’s what we know. Your clients have travel ambitions. Your professional expertise can help them to achieve their goals. What you are selling is your ability to assist the client in making a wise purchasing decision. But your expertise is only important to the client insofar as they benefit from the experience of working with you. Face it – nobody likes to be “sold” anything. People love to make smart buying decisions, however. To the extent that you can assist your clients to be smarter and better informed in their buying decisions, the stronger the relationship you will form over the long term. So let’s look at both the inner and the exterior environments that you want to establish in which to best effect the sales process. |
The psychological shift you want to achieve with clients is one of perspective. Imagine yourself literally moving around to your client’s side of the table. You are not pushing concepts, “deals” or travel product across the table to them. Instead, you are looking firstly at their needs and secondly at the travel products that best meet those needs. Then, together, you arrive at the best possible selection, coaching the client into a good buying decision.
Doesn’t that sound like the way you would like to buy a product, with a well informed, expert coach at your side looking out for your interests?
For your client to fully appreciate this approach to sales, you will have to describe it to them. Very likely, your client will come to you filled with apprehension and misapprehensions. The client may not understand what your services entail. The client may think the entire key to travel is embodied in the word “deal” and be placing all of their emphasis on pricing. Your clients are almost certainly both excited and, if they are new clients, worried. Remember – they get to travel on vacation once or twice a year. Maybe less.
Doesn’t that sound like the way you would like to buy a product, with a well informed, expert coach at your side looking out for your interests?
For your client to fully appreciate this approach to sales, you will have to describe it to them. Very likely, your client will come to you filled with apprehension and misapprehensions. The client may not understand what your services entail. The client may think the entire key to travel is embodied in the word “deal” and be placing all of their emphasis on pricing. Your clients are almost certainly both excited and, if they are new clients, worried. Remember – they get to travel on vacation once or twice a year. Maybe less.
They are about to turn the process of travel planning over to you, along with several thousands of their hard earned dollars.
Isn’t it understandable that they have some concerns?
Isn’t it understandable that they have some concerns?
Thus, your first task is to understand the fears and concerns your client has about working with a travel agent. Tell them how you work, how you view your responsibilities. Let them know the successes you have had in the past for other clients. Speak in terms of enjoyment, satisfaction and memories, not in terms of price. Explain the concept of value and make sure that your client knows that you will take responsibility for finding the best possible value for them, regardless of their circumstance.
Most probably, your new client works under the assumption that there is always a “better deal out there” and that everyone in the world is managing to travel more cheaply than they are. It is this price-driven mentality that is the most difficult obstacle both you and your client will face. For you, the obstacle amounts to a sales hurdle. For your client, however, the situation is worse. If you are not able to shift the emphasis away from price to value, your client risks great disappointment with their vacation – no small issue given the cost of travel. There is always something “cheaper” – you can buy a cheaper car, house, television…the real question is one of value. As a professional you must be able to first understand this concern and then to shift your client’s understanding to value.
So what is a travel professional to do? Many agents greet these exercises with exasperation. A better response, however, is to grasp a client’s focus on price as entirely understandable. Most clients have a retail paradigm in mind when they come to you. They think you sell travel. If you do not explain your role as a consultant, how can the client know better? Your task is to engage the client in an open discussion of your role, and importantly, their needs. You have to make the client comfortable with your role, and, incidentally, with their own.
Attitude
In a service industry like travel consulting, carrying a good attitude into the buying process is vitally important to success. Our outer world reflects our inner landscape. If we view clients as opponents, if we don’t feel good about our skill set, if we don’t fundamentally have a positive perspective on the travel profession, every aspect of your travel practice, including your revenue, will suffer. Clients intuitively detect, and respond to, attitude and mood.
The psychology of travel planning and maintaining the correct attitude is complex, but important. A travel planner with a positive attitude will, over the course of time, successfully interact with more clients than a travel advisor burned out on travel consulting. The travel professional with an authentically good attitude understands the concerns of clients and works with them from a perspective of helpful assistance. A good attitude supplies the energy to prospect for clients, for conducting meetings, doing research and making presentations. A good attitude carries a confident demeanor and makes clients comfortable with the travel advisor’s abilities. A good attitude is the essential foundation for trust.
Be sure to differentiate having a positive attitude from an inauthentic emphasis on “positive thinking” which is often little more than “wishful thinking”. Don’t mistake a phony smile and an overly-enthusiastic handshake for a good attitude. In an authentic frame of reference, a positive attitude means, most simply, that you really like what you do as a travel professional. A travel consultant with a positive attitude has allowed a passion for travel to extend to a desire to assist others to travel better.
A positive attitude may begin with truly liking what you do, but it requires daily care and maintenance. There is a lot of wear and tear on our attitude as we bump up against life’s obstacles, objections, and obstructions. Keep items around you to remind yourself of your passion for travel. Keep your work area fresh and uncluttered. Give yourself time each day to breath, to read, listen to music, walk outdoors, or whatever allows you to refresh your mental energies. Spend some time realigning your perspective on being a travel professional, on your fundamental mission toward clients. Work to not just intellectually understand the need for empathy, but to adopt an empathetic attitude emotionally so that it is your first reaction to the client, not a forced one.
Accentuating the Positive
Most probably, your new client works under the assumption that there is always a “better deal out there” and that everyone in the world is managing to travel more cheaply than they are. It is this price-driven mentality that is the most difficult obstacle both you and your client will face. For you, the obstacle amounts to a sales hurdle. For your client, however, the situation is worse. If you are not able to shift the emphasis away from price to value, your client risks great disappointment with their vacation – no small issue given the cost of travel. There is always something “cheaper” – you can buy a cheaper car, house, television…the real question is one of value. As a professional you must be able to first understand this concern and then to shift your client’s understanding to value.
So what is a travel professional to do? Many agents greet these exercises with exasperation. A better response, however, is to grasp a client’s focus on price as entirely understandable. Most clients have a retail paradigm in mind when they come to you. They think you sell travel. If you do not explain your role as a consultant, how can the client know better? Your task is to engage the client in an open discussion of your role, and importantly, their needs. You have to make the client comfortable with your role, and, incidentally, with their own.
Attitude
In a service industry like travel consulting, carrying a good attitude into the buying process is vitally important to success. Our outer world reflects our inner landscape. If we view clients as opponents, if we don’t feel good about our skill set, if we don’t fundamentally have a positive perspective on the travel profession, every aspect of your travel practice, including your revenue, will suffer. Clients intuitively detect, and respond to, attitude and mood.
The psychology of travel planning and maintaining the correct attitude is complex, but important. A travel planner with a positive attitude will, over the course of time, successfully interact with more clients than a travel advisor burned out on travel consulting. The travel professional with an authentically good attitude understands the concerns of clients and works with them from a perspective of helpful assistance. A good attitude supplies the energy to prospect for clients, for conducting meetings, doing research and making presentations. A good attitude carries a confident demeanor and makes clients comfortable with the travel advisor’s abilities. A good attitude is the essential foundation for trust.
Be sure to differentiate having a positive attitude from an inauthentic emphasis on “positive thinking” which is often little more than “wishful thinking”. Don’t mistake a phony smile and an overly-enthusiastic handshake for a good attitude. In an authentic frame of reference, a positive attitude means, most simply, that you really like what you do as a travel professional. A travel consultant with a positive attitude has allowed a passion for travel to extend to a desire to assist others to travel better.
A positive attitude may begin with truly liking what you do, but it requires daily care and maintenance. There is a lot of wear and tear on our attitude as we bump up against life’s obstacles, objections, and obstructions. Keep items around you to remind yourself of your passion for travel. Keep your work area fresh and uncluttered. Give yourself time each day to breath, to read, listen to music, walk outdoors, or whatever allows you to refresh your mental energies. Spend some time realigning your perspective on being a travel professional, on your fundamental mission toward clients. Work to not just intellectually understand the need for empathy, but to adopt an empathetic attitude emotionally so that it is your first reaction to the client, not a forced one.
Accentuating the Positive
Several years back, Psychology Today ran an article on what it termed the human “negativity bias.” It seems that our brains have a heightened sensitivity to unpleasant news. We focus on the negative. Very likely that capacity kept our knuckle-dragging ancestors out of harm’s way. Today, however, it serves to allow politicians to manipulate us with negative political advertising and gives the news media a portal through which they can drive advertising. The impact can be seriously harmful to our sense of well-being.
Unfortunately, this bad-news bias is active not only when we sit in front of the television, but in every aspect of our lives. We remember insults far longer than we remember compliments. Fear can paralyze us into acting unwisely or not at all. |
As a travel consultant, you depend on a reserve of positive energy to power your interactions with clients. Your clients are excited about their travel plans,and they want to share that excitement with you. However, if you have spent the morning in a psychological swampland, chances are you will not be at your best. Clients can read your mood, just as certainly as you can read the mood of others. How are we to inspire others if we don’t feel inspired ourselves? Let’s don’t disappoint our clients.
That same Psychology Today article gave a prescription for counter-acting the brain’s negativity bias. In essence, you have to find a way to balance out the negative input to which you are exposed each day. Make a concerted, intentional effort to inoculate yourself against negativity and to detoxify your psyche. Here are a few suggestions: Give yourself a break several times a day. Get outside, listen to music, meditate. Find a way of introducing a quiet, positive space for yourself into your daily routine.
Frequent positive experiences, no matter how small, are an important antidote to the negativity that surrounds us. Remember the quote attributed to Aldous Huxley: ”Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.” Be self-generating and construct your own space and mood.
Otherwise, you give up your power to others less capable of navigating your life.
That same Psychology Today article gave a prescription for counter-acting the brain’s negativity bias. In essence, you have to find a way to balance out the negative input to which you are exposed each day. Make a concerted, intentional effort to inoculate yourself against negativity and to detoxify your psyche. Here are a few suggestions: Give yourself a break several times a day. Get outside, listen to music, meditate. Find a way of introducing a quiet, positive space for yourself into your daily routine.
- Surround yourself with positive mementos of your life. Pictures, symbols and images of items and people that are important to you.
- Find positive influences. TED Talks are great, as are intelligent books on spirituality, science, music or whatever lifts your perspective.
- Limit negative influences. Have a co-worker that is a chronic mal-content? Limit your exposure. “Entertainment” magazines filled with gossip and insights into the worst of human nature – leave them on the rack. The worst offenders? Cut back on the shrill voices of partisan politics and news. It is a most sad commentary that our news media and our political leaders have decided that anger, bitterness and mistrust are the way to influence your perceptions. Equally as bad? The “comments” section of many blog posts that attack individuals and use a curtain of anonymity as an opportunity for letting their shadow out for a romp. Stay informed by all means, but leave the anger to someone else.
- Re-script negative news. When you are exposed to negative influences, find a way of re-writing them to include a constructive element, a path to improvement or to some positive outcome. Here’s an idea – figure out how you can be part of the long term solution.
- Do something physical each day. Give your mind a second break by some form of gentle exercise.
Frequent positive experiences, no matter how small, are an important antidote to the negativity that surrounds us. Remember the quote attributed to Aldous Huxley: ”Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.” Be self-generating and construct your own space and mood.
Otherwise, you give up your power to others less capable of navigating your life.
Exercise:
As you visualize your meetings with clients, make your mood the very first element of the exercise. Your mood will impact every aspect of each client encounter. Before a meeting, take a few deep breaths, relax, and reflect on a positive attitude toward your client and your profession. The outer world reflects our inner landscape, and our mood is contagious. Give your clients the opportunity to see travel through your passion and positive attitude for their well-being.
As you visualize your meetings with clients, make your mood the very first element of the exercise. Your mood will impact every aspect of each client encounter. Before a meeting, take a few deep breaths, relax, and reflect on a positive attitude toward your client and your profession. The outer world reflects our inner landscape, and our mood is contagious. Give your clients the opportunity to see travel through your passion and positive attitude for their well-being.