The Courage to Encourage – Simply Sales with Scott

You cannot give away what you do not have. Start with the courage to encourage.

Written By: Scott Koepf, Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) – Cruise Planners

 

A travel advisor wears many hats but like it or not, one of those hats is being a salesperson. Whenever I say that in workshops, I can visibly see the frowns and squirming in the seats from those who consider themselves in the travel business, not sales. However, you can be the most educated, experienced and brilliant travel advisor on the planet and flat broke unless you get someone to buy from you.

 

While selling is the basis of our income, it is the term that holds stereotypes and creates consternation among so many travel advisors. Since it may be the semantics that causes anxiety, I will suggest another word that describes the selling process – encouragement. A great travel advisor does not manipulate, harass or squeeze customers but instead encourages them to make the right decisions that will lead to fabulous lifelong memories.

 

 

Certainly encouragement may be a more acceptable term but just like selling, it takes specific skills and abilities. The most important of which is to have the courage to encourage! Webster’s dictionary actually defines encouragement as giving courage to another person, which means you need to have courage to give it away. Encouragement is extremely valuable when dealing with clients, employees, associates, coworkers, friends and family. With everyone we interact we can have extraordinary impact on their lives by having the courage to encourage.

 

Studies have shown that over 50% of employees feel disrespected, unappreciated and are disengaged which could be rectified with encouragement. It could be that customers feel the same way. By saying the right thing or more importantly doing the right thing we can have a stronger influence than any sales pitch. We tend to judge others on their actions, and ourselves on our intentions. We should not worry that other people, including customers never listen to us, but rather that they always listen to us.

 

 

Having courage as a travel advisor means you have the confidence and knowledge to make the right recommendations that are best for your clients. We may think of those who have courage as heroes with extraordinary confidence and abilities, but great encouragers do not fit any specific personality type and basically don’t think less of themselves, they just think of themselves less.

 

Someone who embodied constant and consistent encouragement that we can learn from and emulate lived in a famous neighborhood. Even though the neighborhood was named after him, his focus was always on how to listen to and encourage others, including everyone who visited his neighborhood. Of course, I am describing Mr. Rogers, an unassuming soft-spoken man who spent an inordinate amount of time in the land of make believe, encouraging millions of people. If we envision his land of make believe as the ability to paint the picture of what a vacation of a lifetime will look like for clients, then we should go there often too!

 

 

Mr. Rogers would not typically be hailed as a great example of a salesperson but if we believe sales is really just building relationships then we look at him differently. In Esquire Magazine Tom Junol wrote an article that said, “It is that voice, his voice, the famous one, the unmistakable one, the televised one, the voice dressed in sweater and sneakers, the soft one, the reassuring one, the curious and expository one, the sly voice that sounds adult to the ears of children and childish to the ears of adults.”

 

One reader of that article, a stand-up comedian, responded by saying, “I bought (the Mister Rogers issue) for a very selfish reason – to make fun of it…but deep into the piece where I had hoped to find irony, I found hope. Where I hoped to find the perfect illustration of our broken values, I found the essential nature of a man who actually had a vision.”

 

There is an element of fear as you enter every relationship. Will this customer become a lifelong client? Will they like me? Will they buy from me? Those questions will be answered based on your ability to connect in an authentic way with all prospects. Remember, courage is not the absence of fear but the overcoming of it. With the courage to encourage every potential client, you will want to visit your neighborhood over and over again.