This is the fifth in our series on Consultative Selling in the travel industry.
“Consultative Selling is personal selling in which you play the role of a consultant. You assist the buyer in identifying, or clarifying, their needs, and then suggest products that satisfy those needs.”
As we wrote at the beginning of this series, we believe that your role today is to help your prospective customers (leads) buy. One of the ways you can do that is to teach them HOW to buy.
TEACH THEM HOW TO BUY
A lead will come to you with certain expectations and level of knowledge. Through the consultative selling process you will be able to understand just what those expectations and knowledge levels are. If necessary you can then help change them.
Let’s look at an example.
A lead, aged say late 50s, comes to you interested in visiting Alicante, Spain in January. They are looking for some winter sunshine.
Now in a traditional model of selling you could present them with a package holiday to Alicante, they accept, you take their payment and move onto the next enquiry.
What’s wrong with that you might ask? Simply that when the holiday does not live up to expectations guess who will get the blame. You!
Following the consultative process will help you avoid such problems. During the process you might find out that they enjoy sun-bathing, want to get a tan and participate in watersports. You can then tell them that January is the coldest month of the year in Alicante and that while they might get a tan it would probably not be warm enough for sunbathing or watersports.
You have passed on some of your knowledge and now they know that when planning a holiday they should ask more questions about the climate in a chosen destination. In effect you are teaching them how best to buy a holiday.
In that process not only are you demonstrating your knowledge and experience but you are also creating a feeling of trust. The lead will learn that you have their best interest at heart.
DEMONSTRATE THAT YOU ARE THE EXPERT
As we explored in ‘Be Careful What (Who!) You Ask for’, relational shoppers are looking principally for an expert they can trust. Demonstrate that you are that expert and you will considerably increase your chances of making a sale.
HELP NO MATTER WHAT
Of course you will not be successful all the time. Some people, unfortunately, will just take your knowledge and information and book elsewhere.
However your helpfulness will be recognised and appreciated by most people and, even if they do book elsewhere, you will have a positive impact on them. This could well mean they will come back to you on another occasion and/or recommend you to friends. Of course you do not want to become a free resource for everyone and you must learn to qualify your leads and this we will consider in another post.
In the meantime educate your leads on how to buy a holiday and make sure that you are the expert who can help them.
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