Understand Your Clients' Needs
The marketing mindset is always seeking opportunity, and sees it everywhere. Every business decision is a deliberate step to building client awareness of the travel advisor’s services. Fortunately, a marketing mindset can be developed – you don’t have to be born with it. But those who develop the marketing mindset do so by mixing their passion for travel with a keen sense of observation of people and the reasons they buy. A good travel marketer understands why people buy travel. Smart marketers develop the habit of translating their passion into emotional hot buttons for the clients, knowing that people’s travel purchases originate in their hearts, not in their heads.
So let’s begin with you – the travel professional. Why do you love to travel? What are the reasons you would list as your own? Relaxation, freedom, curiosity, knowledge, culture, adventure? You probably realize that your clients and potential clients share these passions. There is the point where you need to first touch your clients. Once you realize that your mission is about helping others to travel, your travel practice becomes truly client-centric. You quit thinking with your own set of preferences and, importantly, you quit thinking with your own set of criteria about terms like “fun”, “luxury”, “cost” and “value”. Those attributes are personal to your client. What is a good value to you |
might not be to your client. What is expensive for you might not be to the client. What’s fun for your client might make your eyes roll up in your head.
But your travel practice is all about the client. Any other perspective will soon doom you to frustration with the client that asks too many questions, who cannot make up their minds or who is afraid to go to Cancun out of fear of drug cartels, the flu, earthquakes and Spanish.
Empathy with the concerns and fears of your clients will keep you sane. Understand that their hesitancies are those of an inexperienced traveler, just starting out on the path to what might be a lifetime of business for you. Taking good care of them, making their vacation an experience is a rewarding exercise for a dedicated travel consultant.
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 travel advisors 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.
People love to talk about travel. Give them the opportunity. Start conversations with people about travel. Don’t try to sell them anything. Knowing what motivates any given client is the first step to marketing to them. Most people have a long list of places they want to go and things they want to do. A travel professional with a good marketing mindset is going find those emotional reasons this client wants to travel and is then going to help that client achieve those objectives. Your objective is to connect the client’s heart to your brand – for the sole purpose of assisting the client. Draw the client out in conversation and get to the heart of their desire. Then, ask for permission to assist them.
“I can see you love the idea of a safari. We get information on safaris from our suppliers all of the time. Would you like for me to send you some safari info for armchair reading?”
That’s all you have to do. You have offered to assist the client and touched an emotional connection. You have established that first connection of your brand with thoughts of travel. You now have permission to market to them.
You are on your way to developing a marketing mindset.
Exercise:
Developing a marketing mindset means being a student of marketing. You can learn something from every business, from every product and service you encounter. Begin keeping a journal of your thoughts about good and bad marketing you encounter each and every day. Study other businesses and professions to determine what you can learn from them.
But your travel practice is all about the client. Any other perspective will soon doom you to frustration with the client that asks too many questions, who cannot make up their minds or who is afraid to go to Cancun out of fear of drug cartels, the flu, earthquakes and Spanish.
Empathy with the concerns and fears of your clients will keep you sane. Understand that their hesitancies are those of an inexperienced traveler, just starting out on the path to what might be a lifetime of business for you. Taking good care of them, making their vacation an experience is a rewarding exercise for a dedicated travel consultant.
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 travel advisors 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.
People love to talk about travel. Give them the opportunity. Start conversations with people about travel. Don’t try to sell them anything. Knowing what motivates any given client is the first step to marketing to them. Most people have a long list of places they want to go and things they want to do. A travel professional with a good marketing mindset is going find those emotional reasons this client wants to travel and is then going to help that client achieve those objectives. Your objective is to connect the client’s heart to your brand – for the sole purpose of assisting the client. Draw the client out in conversation and get to the heart of their desire. Then, ask for permission to assist them.
“I can see you love the idea of a safari. We get information on safaris from our suppliers all of the time. Would you like for me to send you some safari info for armchair reading?”
That’s all you have to do. You have offered to assist the client and touched an emotional connection. You have established that first connection of your brand with thoughts of travel. You now have permission to market to them.
You are on your way to developing a marketing mindset.
Exercise:
Developing a marketing mindset means being a student of marketing. You can learn something from every business, from every product and service you encounter. Begin keeping a journal of your thoughts about good and bad marketing you encounter each and every day. Study other businesses and professions to determine what you can learn from them.