This is the sixth 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.”
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
You have asked your prospective client (lead) all your discovery questions, listened carefully to their answers and given your feedback and advice. Now you can start bringing it all together.
What you want is the lead’s own description of their ideal holiday.
You want that for two reasons:
1. You will save time searching for a holiday because you will have a very clear brief.
2. If you can present a holiday that matches their description you are more likely to secure a sale.
THE LEAD’S IDEAL HOLIDAY
As you have been working through the consultative selling process you will have been keeping notes. At the end you can summarise from those notes your lead’s description of their ideal holiday.
For example you might be able to say to your lead something like this:
“You are looking for a relaxing holiday in June, lazing around in the sunshine on a tropical beach fringed with coconut palms. You want a room with a sea view in a hotel with a pool and a gym; and you want to be close to local restaurants.”
Next ask if there is anything missing.
If not you can go ahead and seek out a matching holiday. If there is, find out what is missing or what needs to be amended.
Before you go off on your search, there is one key question that ideally you would like answered namely ‘what is your budget?’.
People are often reluctant to answer that question. However, if you are to save yourself a lot of time and trouble, you will need to find a way of getting an answer. This is part of qualifying your lead and we will cover it in another piece.
Once you know what boxes need to be ticked in order for your lead to be happy with your holiday offer, you can start your search.
Then, provided the holiday you find ticks all the right boxes, you can present the holiday as their ideal and close the sale.
YES, THE IDEAL BUT…
Now of course as we know people (and that of course includes us!) are fickle. When you present that ideal holiday your lead might well have an objection. You can simply use that to amend the description of the lead’s ideal holiday and fine-tune your search.
However, even after you have searched again and come back with another option, you might still find that the lead is reluctant to buy. In this situation you have a number of options:
1. Agree to a follow-up phone call in a few days after they have had time to think about the options you have presented. And then seek their feedback and if necessary review some of their previous answers.
2. Ask them what needs to change for them to be happy with the holiday and then proceed accordingly.
3. Apologise that you were unable to assist on this occasion and keep in touch via your newsletter, social media channels or whatever other ways are appropriate.
BUILDING A LASTING RELATIONSHIP
The consultative selling process is not a sure-fire way of making a sale every time but it stacks the odds heavily in your favour. You are often helping the lead discover for themselves what they actually want from their holiday; and in the process you are building a trusting relationship which will hopefully last for many years.
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