10 tips to attracting clients that TRUST, APPRECIATE and WILLINGLY PAY for Your Services
Getting
more clients in the
travel business is not always terribly hard. Just
hand out your card at a networking event and you are bound to get
someone to bite. But rarely does that bite come in the form
of a $20,000 Tauck Tour booking. More often than not, the new
client will fish for free information, have a measly budget, waste a
lot of your time and after all that, might even tell you they will be
booking it themselves. Finding clients that TRUST you, appreciate your services and bring you profitable business is not so run of the mill. In this article, I provide 10 tips to attracting the RIGHT kind of client.
- Commit to marketing for the long
term – as a travel entrepreneur, 50% of your time should
be spent marketing and the other 50% should be spent working with
clients. Many people are surprised by how much time I
recommend you market. But when you don’t place such a huge
emphasis on marketing, you end up executing a “shot-gun” marketing
approach.
- Establish yourself as an expert –
my
clients who are brave enough to pick a specialty and stick with it get
the greatest and fastest results in upgrading their clients.
Decide today that you are an expert and claim your expert status by
giving good information, for FREE, as often as possible.
- Farm
– if you don’t
want to pick a specialty, the next best thing you can do is to steal
from realtors. Steal what? The marketing approach
that works best for them: Farming. In other words,
select a geographically small, carefully selected target market and
become the dominant player. There are 2 really good things
about this strategy: 1) very few people in the travel
business are doing this – so you won’t have nearly as much competition
as the realtors do; and 2) farming requires a lot less need for the
most complicated online marketing tools and a lot more old-fashioned
relationship building savvy.
- Share Your Story –
If you want trust, one of the best places to start establishing trust
is by opening up with your prospects first. Be willing to
share your story. Get vulnerable. Go
deep. Maybe you have survived cancer and planning travel
helped you heal. Or perhaps you went through a humiliating
divorce but eventually came out on top because you started your own
travel business and found your independence. Share this with
people. It is one of the most magnetic things you can do.
- Create a marketing plan and stick
to it – get your calendar out and commit to certain
marketing activities on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis,
quarterly basis and annual basis. Just get the calendar out
and put items on it. This simple act can be so
profound. Plan it out. For example, you could
commit to the following:
- Daily – Facebook posts
- Weekly – send an Electronic Newsletter; Write 1 article and post to blog
- Monthly – Record 1 or 2 videos and post on YouTube as well as blog; Speak at 1 networking event
- Quarterly – Send a snail mail letter to your best clients
- Annually – Host a local
charity event
- Send a weekly electronic
newsletter – I feel like a broken record preaching this,
but so many people are not doing it. When done correctly, the
electronic newsletter, sent weekly is the most powerful marketing too
you have. But you must follow a formula. To get the
right formula, CLICK HERE.
- Joint Venture –
Approach another business owner who already has an established
clientele of the same people you want to be in front of. This
is an important distinction – you want to approach a business owner who
already has an established clientele, not someone who is also
struggling. Open the conversation by telling them you want to
help them. Here are some ideas of types of businesses you can
approach:
- Realtors
- Restaurant owners
- Boutique clothing store owners
- Wine store owners
- Jewelers
- Financial planners
- Offer to provide an article for their newsletter on a monthly basis
- Plan a joint function – i.e. like a wine tasting and you can talk about traveling to the region from where the wine originates.
- Co-host a webinar with them
- Offer a coupon they can give away with their sales
- Send a warm letter on a quarterly
basis – Your existing clients are the best place to start
to get more
business. Very rarely do people use snail mail
anymore. Use this to your advantage and put a personal touch
on it. Write a heart-felt letter to your clients, updating
them on where you are in your business. Then ask them to help
you grow your business through referrals. Hand address the
envelopes to ensure it gets opened.
- Pick up the phone and call people
- You are in a relationship business and part of that means connecting
with your clients even when they don’t need your services.
Create a system where you commit to calling 5 clients a week.
Your intent for the phone call should be to 1) ask them how they are
doing; 2) double check that you have contact details correct and 3)
plant the seed of a vacation idea…for example, you could say something
like “John, I see you and Mary have an anniversary coming up in
November. Have you ever considered surprising Mary with an
anniversary trip to Italy? I would be happy to take care of
everything...”
- Volunteer – This is
another way to nourish relationships. Get known in your
community for something, whether it’s a charity event or being on the
board of directors of the public library. Get out there and
get known.
If you missed part I of this post, feel free to check it out here.
Read below for Part II:
Bundle services into packages and charge a set price for each package to add value and increase transaction value.
You can write your own paycheck and make as much money as you want in travel by systematizing your travel planning process. When you are working with a client for the first time, notice what you are asking them and what you are doing, then write every step down and create your system. Streamline it so you can spend less time with each client. For example, instead of spending time on the phone asking general questions, design a survey for them to complete before they talk to you.
Package your services, rather than charge per item. Have two or three service packages and give them choices. Include unusual items in your bundles, such as taking care of passports for them or sending a list of airline security guidelines. Make restaurant reservations and create a driving itinerary. Schedule house or pet sitting. To increase the dollar amount of your bookings, target high-dollar packages and markets, such as family reunions or corporate groups, and focus your attention on those. Find ways to receive commission on other products related to travel, such as travel insurance, affiliate products, and your own products.
Discipline yourself to spend 5 minutes a day visualizing your goals.
If you make the decision to move forward with a marketing plan, create your goals, and take action toward reaching them, you’ll be rewarded with even more opportunities to reach your goals. Your mindset creates your reality, so you want to spend a little time each day visualizing yourself having reached your goals.
Mindset is 99% of your success. People talk themselves out of goals because they don’t see how it will ever happen, but the “how” doesn’t show up until you make the decision. Everything you want to achieve is available to you now, but you need to make the decision to move and visualize yourself reaching the goals.
Figure out where you are and where you want to go.
You don’t plan a trip without knowing the destination, why would you plan your marketing without one? Know your business numbers: gross sales, revenue, number of bookings, average revenue per booking, conversion rate, and number of repeat bookings.
Now that you know where your business stands now, determine where you’re going. A fun and enlightening way to do this is to write down what you want in life and assign a dollar amount to it, and you’ll see how much you need to make every month. You have the hard numbers, so you can calculate exactly how many prospects and bookings you need each month.
As you create your marketing plan for 2011, remember that you can always self-correct later—the important thing is to get started. Always focus on the benefits, results, and solutions your clients receive.
Share this post with friends on Facebook.
The best way to grow your travel business is to have a written marketing plan. There are only three ways to grow your business: increase the frequency of client purchases, increase the number of clients, and increase transaction sizes. Following are six parts of an effective marketing plan that will produce the results you’ve been looking for.
Come up with your message. Whom are you targeting?
Decide who your ideal customer is and why you want to work with them. An easy way to do this is to think of who your favorite current or past clients are and why. Get into your ideal client’s head. What are they saying to themselves, what are the problems and pains they are avoiding? How do you help them solve those problems, and why should they listen to you? The benefits you bring to your clients will form the cornerstone of your marketing efforts.
What are your list building strategies?
Very few travel consultants make concerted, consistent efforts to market by growing their lists. You’ll be a step ahead if you collect names and contact details in an authentic way, create a relationship with them, and ask for their business. Get online with a site or blog, create an irresistible free offer, and drive traffic to your site with social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Try speaking engagements for instant credibility as an expert and gather names with a drawing for a prize.
Frequently engage with your lists through social media and regular newsletters.
Engaging is all about sharing. Tell your list about your a-ha moments and provide value with travel and product reviews, guest bloggers, surveys, and travel resources. Always tie content back to your expertise and give calls to action. Be creative, be authentic, and ask for feedback. On Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, share personal information and fun tips and advice, but don’t advertise.
Market yourself as a leader and expert and give them reasons to visit your site. Invite comments by asking questions. On Twitter, retweet influential people and followers, tell jokes, offer quotes and videos, and ask open-ended questions. Send warm letters asking for referrals, to those who know, like, and trust you. Keep in touch with your list and send out offers with an automated system such as Send Out Cards, which you can try free at www.sendoutcards.com/75668.
Visit the Safar2Success blog this Friday for Part II of this post!
Lack of clarity. In order to receive what you ask for, you must be clear about what it is you want. Many of us think we know what we want, when we really aren’t clear at all. When we say we want the direction of our travel business to change, we think the solution to our problems will simply arrive. Essentially, we think that, by saying we want more money and more clients, more high-paying clients will call us and everything will fall into place. If you want to receive what you ask for, you must be crystal clear on what it is you’re asking for.
- What does your life look like when you have the travel business of your dreams?
- What do your ideal clients look like and act like?
- How do you act, and how do you feel?
Your assignment: Take some time to write out what your business and your life look like when you get what you want. Be as clear as possible. Find images and photos that support your vision.
Lack of faith. Once you are clear on what you want, you must believe you can have it. Often, we ask for a million-dollar travel business and set up great marketing plans to get us there. We work and work and work and, yet, we struggle to reach our goal. Having faith—even in the hard times—is vital to achieving your dreams. What negative views about yourself are holding you back? Do you subconsciously believe you don’t deserve what you want? You can market all day long and do everything you need to do to achieve your goals, but if you feel unworthy, you will deflect what you want because you are not in faith. It takes a lot of courage to believe that the results are coming. Having unwavering faith is the biggest magnet for bringing in the clients and income and leading the life you desire.
Your assignment: Take out a clean sheet of paper and write about what keeps you up at night. Write about your frustrations, fears, anxiety, worry, feelings of overwhelm—brain dump on the page. Often putting it on paper helps us see what’s really going on in our subconscious. The more aware we are of our limiting beliefs, the quicker we can step into those fears and succeed.
Stopping when you hit a speed bump. When many of us hit a speed bump—a rough patch in our business or in our lives—we tend to freeze, slow down, or even stop. Every time you are faced with a situation that brings up fear, all you need to do is acknowledge that fear, and keep going. Make a decision, and act quickly. Dwelling on the problem, asking ten of your close friends what you should do about the situation, or ignoring whatever requires your attention will only make things worse. When you ask for increase in your business—more clients and more income—you must be willing to do what it takes to make it happen. Understand that issues will arise and that what may seem like a speed bump might actually be an opportunity in disguise.
Your Assignment: Write a list of missed opportunities. Then, circle those you can take action on and do it today.
Did you find this post beneficial? Share it with your friends on Twitter.
