What's Your Story?
From earliest childhood, we are taught to listen to stories. We develop a real, active interest in the lead character of a tale. No doubt some people tell stories better than others. But the one story you should spend time writing and polishing is your own. Why are you in travel? What do you do? How do you do it? Have you ever had a really special moment traveling? What was it? Is that why you are a travel agent? Did you travel with your parents? Why do you think people should travel?
The process of thinking through your own story, of putting it together in a narrative form, will help you to better articulate and express your passion for travel. Practice will make it easier to convey images of travel to clients and to help them to understand the benefits of your recommendations.
Take some time out to write your own travel history, to put together your own story. Answer the questions above, and then later, come back and polish it a bit. Read it over. The value to knowing and rehearsing your own stories can not be over-stated. Your story reveals your passion for travel and it is your passion that sells you to clients. |
Now, learn to tell the story by putting your client at the center. Can you describe a location or a trip so well your client can feel the wind, or see the sights while in your office? Tell your clients about the history of the destination, the people they will meet and the ideas they will experience and encounter. Make it real to them.
Tell them why you travel. Remind them of why they travel. It isn’t logistics, airplanes and ships, hotels and trains. There is something deeper, more emotive in the experience. Learn to express the experience.
Continually practice working with the art of describing sights and telling stories. Remember many buying decisions are based on emotional energy, and to the extent you can tell a story well, your clients will respond.
Why? Because we love stories, especially when we can identify with the hero’s passion. We somehow feel a part of it.
Your clients are the heroes of their own stories.
Learn to tell your story, and theirs, and to tell it well.
Your Company's Archetype: Persona
“Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.” ~ Carol Pearson
Tell them why you travel. Remind them of why they travel. It isn’t logistics, airplanes and ships, hotels and trains. There is something deeper, more emotive in the experience. Learn to express the experience.
Continually practice working with the art of describing sights and telling stories. Remember many buying decisions are based on emotional energy, and to the extent you can tell a story well, your clients will respond.
Why? Because we love stories, especially when we can identify with the hero’s passion. We somehow feel a part of it.
Your clients are the heroes of their own stories.
Learn to tell your story, and theirs, and to tell it well.
Your Company's Archetype: Persona
“Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.” ~ Carol Pearson
The psychologist Carl Jung posited that all humans share in the unconscious portion of our minds what he termed “archetypes”: images of mythological importance that we instantly recognize in stories and the events of day to day life. According to Jung’s theories, our mind responds to situations influenced by those same archetypes. Thus, in some leaders we see the “King” or “Hero” archetypes. Characters on television and in the movies are often very intentionally developed to mirror particular archetypes like the “Magician” or the “Warrior”.
This too brief and painfully inadequate introduction to Jung’s archetypes suggests that the persona of our business will be better articulated, more imaginative and forceful if we pay attention to the archetype it mirrors. The stories we read in novels, plays, movies and even our personal histories are all told in a narrative fashion, influenced by shared archetypes. Jung and his followers called these stories the “hero’s journey,” and it explains why we are captivated by a good story. Look at some cutting edge companies with which you are familiar – Virgin Atlantic, Apple Computers, Microsoft, Google…can you see in their corporate images a familiar archetype that fills out the corporate personality and makes it attractive to consumers? What story is inherent in the image of these companies? |
So, what’s your story?
More importantly, what story is inherent in the image of your own travel practice? What image do you outwardly project? Are you conscious of your business persona? If not, you may be projecting a less than clear image to your clients.
Take a moment to look at your own travel persona. Does it have an archetypal personality? What is your business archetype? Do your clients see in you the Wise Old Woman? Hero? Is the Explorer archetype resident in your company logo? Magician? Outlaw? To the extent that you can reflect an archetype in your company’s image – in its name, its logo, its color scheme, its tagline…the more powerful will be its ability to capture the imagination of potential clients. Archetypes help us to identify with companies.
Without a little bit of archetypal flair, we sink into the mass of faceless anonymity, just one of the crowd of travel agents looking to book an airline ticket. Let’s find some flair in what we do.
We don’t have to look far – the travel industry is especially keyed into the concept of archetypes. The very nature of our profession is romantic. Every traveler wants to be an explorer, a pilgrim or a wanderer. Every journey has both an inward and an outward meaning and reverberation. I’m firmly convinced the best travel consultants manage to build a rapport with clients, a sense of community by properly projecting their own persona and by stimulating the clients sense of adventure and wonder. Travel manages to hit some profoundly emotional chords with us. Understanding just a little of the psychology of why people travel, the archetypes in our lives, will help you to better reach the emotional buttons attached to the desire to travel.
We all have a story to tell. To the extent we can do so in a way others find romantic, challenging, inspiring or engaging, the better our ability to grab their imaginations and provide the incentive to travel with us. Perhaps a bit of investigation into the psychology of our business persona is in order. We need to develop the ability to tell stories in such a way as to inspire our clients to travel, to engage the emotional side of their wanderlust.
Examine all of the points of contact that you present to the public and ensure that the archetypal message you present is consistent and focused. If you do, you will have a better story to tell and others will turn out to listen.