Take Your Shot! – Simply Sales with Scott

The Power of Marketing in the Travel Industry

 

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

 

What if you were the best travel advisor known to humanity and your sales abilities were legendary and without flaw? It sounds like you would be riding high in the lap of luxury and dripping with success. However, as important as those two skills are in your career, they will be worthless unless you have one thing.

 

A customer.

No matter how much product knowledge you retain or the contacts you have or the ability to craft the best vacations possible, it will amount to nothing. You could be extraordinarily proficient at each of the steps in the sales cycle so that closing the sale is a given, but it is all for naught.

 

 

Unless you have a customer.

Quite simply, everything in this business starts with marketing. Marketing has one singular purpose and that is to create a lead (or hopefully many leads). Only when there is a lead can you share your knowledge, make the sale and provide mind boggling customer service. Ancient wisdom says: “Agent who waits for cooked goose to fly in mouth, is one.”

 

When you are trying to grow your sales, you need to focus on and be consistent with marketing. Sadly, I am not going to provide one simple approach that will bring you an unlimited number of leads. The problem, as has been quoted often, is that I don’t know one way to get 100 clients, but I know 100 ways to get one.

 

 

And one is your first goal. Then if you are indeed a good advisor and salesperson, that customer will bring you more customers, and so on, and so on, and so on. You may have some customers today but by the fact you are reading this, means you are probably looking for more. Unfortunately, clients are not 100% loyal so even if you are reaching lofty sales goals, you really can’t ever stop marketing.

 

To drive home the importance of this, I will reference the Broadway sensation by the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton. Through the modern telling of the historical figure, Alexander Hamilton, we can learn one very important lesson. With so many media options and choices, we can become paralyzed and simply do nothing. Mr. Hamilton knew he could not take the chance of missing his opportunity in life and so he sang:

 

 I am not throwing away my shot!
I am not throwing away my shot!
Hey yo, I’m just like my country
I’m young, scrappy and hungry
And I’m not throwing away my shot!
I gotta holler just to be heard
With every word, I drop knowledge!
I’m a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal
Tryin’ to reach my goal.

 

These lyrics sound like every travel advisor at some point in their journey! You gotta take your shot. You are young (at heart at least), scrappy and hungry – You gotta take your shot. You gotta holler just to be heard – You gotta take your shot. With every word, you do drop knowledge – You gotta take your shot. You are indeed a diamond in the rough, a shiny piece of coal trying to reach your goal – Don’t throw away your shot!

 

 

Seek out every opportunity to tell people what you do and, in all humility, why you are excellent at what you do. It may take 100 shots but don’t miss the one that will bring you the lead that will change your business – Don’t throw away your Shot!