Avatars

Who Are Your Travel Agency’s Ideal Customers?

When selling travel in the 21st Century, we believe that your role as a travel agent or tour operator is to help your prospective clients (leads) buy from you rather than you selling to them. This concept of consultative selling travel is not new but it’s worth taking a fresh look at given the new social media tools available to you.

“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.”

In this series ‘The 8 keys to consultative selling travel’ we shall be writing about the following:

  1. Research – Who Are Your Travel Agency’s Ideal Customers? (See below.)
  2. Rapport
  3. Discover – Questions are the answer
  4. Listen
  5. Teach
  6. Summarise The Ideal Holiday
  7. Qualify
  8. Close

Research Your Travel Clients

If you are to be successful at helping your lead buy, you need to know as much as you can about them. Whether you are selling face-to-face, over the telephone or via email you want to research your lead.

If you have time you can Google the lead and perhaps find out where they work and their leisure interests. This will also be useful for the next key, Rapport.

The best place to research though is in your own customer list. Take a look at your past and present customers and find those that represent your ideal clients. You want those that are the most profitable, the ones most likely to refer you and those that you actually like dealing with.

Let’s face it, just as people are buying from people you are selling to people. If you like them and they like you, the whole process will be more enjoyable for everyone.

You will probably have more than one type of ideal client so write down a brief description of each: you can think of them as avatars. (Avoid using real names).

For example:
Oliver and Rachel are a professional couple with two children George (9 years) and Sophia (12 years). They like to go on holiday twice per year: during a half-term break they’ll do something active like hiking and sailing in the Lake District; and for the longer holidays i.e. Easter or Summer they have started travelling longhaul for a 2/3 week holiday with a mix of soft-adventure and beach time.

Mr & Mrs Broomfield, a retired couple, enjoy European city breaks, of around 4 days each time. They prefer old historical cities. They choose 3 star accommodation and aim to get away 4 times per year.

You want more clients like these so in your Tweets and Facebook posts you start promoting holidays that will appeal to them. You now know who might be interested in a new activity centre in Wales or who will be keen to know about the latest low-cost flight into Europe.

Research Your Travel Competition

As well as knowing more about your leads, you also need to know more about your competition.

What will they be offering Oliver and Rachel? How will they be appealing to Mr & Mrs Broomfield?

Your aim is to be doing things better than your competition and adding value to your ideal clients. For example you could create a blog piece called: ‘Top ten activity holidays in the UK’; or ‘My favourite sightseeing in Barcelona’.

Research will help you identify and focus on your ideal travel clients.

Having a clear image in your mind of your ideal clients is very useful in making all of your activities focused and more efficient.

However you should avoid making assumptions. Just because Mr & Mrs Broomfield enjoy gardening doesn’t necessarily mean the next retirees will. You still need to ask questions: see Key 3 – Discovery: Questions are the answer.

To make the Discover phase easier you need to quickly establish a connection (rapport) with the lead so that YOU are the travel consultant that they want to have a professional relationship with.

Next time: Key 2 – Rapport

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