The travel industry thrives on selling travel products—but they don’t sell themselves. That’s where you, the travel professional, come in. Yet, with busy schedules, it’s easy to overlook or forget key sales skills that you need to succeed.
So, let’s start by refreshing your skills in identifying customers—a key step in the sales cycle. And for deeper insights, enroll in our award-winning Certified Travel Associate (CTA) program and see why our graduates sell more!
Identifying Customers
The first step in the sales cycle, identifying customers, involves basically two separate activities: prospecting and following up on leads.
Prospecting: There is no limit to the ways you can help your agency attract new customers. Here are a few examples of common prospecting techniques:
- Review your existing customer database for travel preferences that indicate these customers might be ready to try something new. A frequent cruise customer, for example, may become a prospect for the escorted tour segment of your business that you’ve been trying to increase.
- Ask for referrals. Often, satisfied customers are some of your best sources to provide new leads. In fact, some travel consultants make a point of asking for referrals even from leads, whether or not they become customers later.
- Contact local groups with specific travel needs. If your agency, for example, specializes in accommodating travelers with disabilities, members of a rehabilitation center in your community might appreciate your offer to cater to their special travel needs (you, in turn, will have identified a whole new group of prospects).
- Call your defectors. Every agency has customers who have made a purchase in the past but have since ceased doing business with the agency. In most cases, your defectors have become your competition’s customers, and it may be worth a follow-up call to win back their business and turn them into customers again.
- Use advertising, direct marketing, social media, and trade show exhibits to identify new leads. It takes time to follow up on the scores of leads such activities often generate, but your efforts could well be worthwhile if these leads eventually become customers.
Following up on leads: If your prospecting succeeds, leads become prospects interested in booking travel with your agency. At this stage, assess their buying readiness by determining if they can make a decision and how close they are to doing so. Start by asking simple questions like:
- Who would be traveling (the prospect, the prospect and his entire family, etc.)?
- What type of travel do they have in mind?
- Where would they want to go?
- When are they thinking of going?
- Why are they planning this trip?
Answers to such basic questions will give you clues about how involved the sales process must be, how close the prospect is to making a purchase decision, and if this customer is indeed the decision-maker.
This of course is the first step in many steps of the travel sales process. Once you have a prospective client, the very next step will be the qualifying questions that bring you closer to understanding your clients’ needs and goals for this particular vacation. That step is one on its own in which you will learn about your clients’ habits, preferences, history, and so much more. The more robust knowledge you have about your client, the better prepared you will be to match them to the right vacation. The CTA module Customer-Focused Selling provides an in-depth review of this specific step in the sales process.
And remember—a past client often can lead you to your next vacation booking!
