Become a Home Based Travel Agent

A Sales Game Plan – Part 1 – Setting the Stage
By Cory Andrichuk

It is my pleasure to present a series of articles over the next six months that will help you establish a successful Sales Game Plan to grow your business.   My intention is to bring you specific, creative, and tangible steps to grow your sales into better profits.

I have recently been hired to teach a sales class to beginning entrepreneurs.  My objectives are to help these adult students understand salesmanship by growing their self-confidence, introducing personal brand awareness, appreciating sales-psychology and then finally to ensure they find a SALES PROCESS that fits their personality!  My work is cut out for me as I only have two five- hour days to accomplish this task.  As a result, I have become personally and professionally, a better and stronger sales entrepreneur, and want to share with you, my fellow travel entrepreneurs, the sales process I have outlined for my students.  

There are endless sales training opportunities in the marketplace that help you to become better, faster, and stronger in sales.  However, after much research in both on and offline resources, I have found that there are few sales training/coaching programs that emphasize how to combine the Art of Selling with a process that fits your personality and also adds practical tools, tips, and techniques that can be implemented specifically for your home-based travel  business!  

 I have found that your sales success always starts with a positive and healthy mindset.  So, let’s start at the beginning with your own sales mindset…Your attitude towards sales and about salespeople in general affects the kind of salesperson you are. So, how do you personally define sales?   Stop and think about your last purchase you made and your experience as a consumer.  How did you feel and what made you buy? Did your experience reflect your attitude towards sales?  Take a couple of minutes to write out on a piece of paper your definition (or key words) of what sales means to you.

Now, if you believe sales and salespeople are insincere, aggressive, money- motivated, heartless, and pushy well then, guess what?...  you probably will have a hard time convincing others to buy you and your product because that is how you see, feel and think sales is all about.  However, if you believe and adopt a sales mindset that is all about: 

(1)    gathering personal information to effectively develop a friendship…a relationship,

(2)    helping people from the heart,

(3)    listening with the intention to understand,

(4)    providing ideas to meet people’s needs and wants,

(5)    solving their problems,

(6)    and generally just helping them buy…

then you will be OK!  NO… YOU WILL BE VERY SUCCESSFUL in your sales efforts and probably have a list of customers for life!

Unfortunately, too many salespeople sell on price, and price only, and do not take the time to develop a relationship!  If you are losing customers to the internet and price, then you did not have a relationship to begin with.  I will discuss how to overcome such price resistances in future articles, but need to emphasize here, at the beginning, how important it is for you, as a travel sales entrepreneur, to develop and earn a relationship with your prospect, past and current customer. 

Another key question to ask yourself is why people buy from you?  Are you likeable?  Do you provide value?  What about trust..?  Do they trust you over a website?  What about confidence?  Do you instil confidence in your buyers…?  Again, take some time right now to outline 5 reasons why people buy their travel, cruise, dream vacations from you.  Don’t really know?  Then, call 5 customers today and ask them!  Call it homework… but find out, first hand, why they deal with you…

A final idea that I want to emphasize is something called “personal branding”.  Personal branding is about understanding that you are the product for sale before you sell that Caribbean cruise, African safari, and or Italian Tuscan villa!  Based on my 20 years of selling experience, I have found a sale is made or broken in the first 8-10 seconds of contact!  Either you are selling the prospect/customer on a yes or they are selling you on a no!  Whether face to face – over the phone – or over the internet, perception is reality.  Your sales mission on every sale (should you accept it), is to understand that you need to sell yourself (your brand) first, then your travel product or service.  It all begins with you… your prospect must first believe in and like you, or your message has no credibility! 

In closing, I want to offer you some personal branding tips to help you sell better and tell your target market that you are for sale: 

(1)    Write articles, advertorials, and use mass-media to advertise that you are an expert in your industry!

(2)    Get accreditation from CLIA, CTC, Tourist Boards, and destinations.

(3)    Build an online image starting with your www.yourownname.com and begin using some social media marketing tools like Twitter, your own BLOG, Facebook, and many others…

(4)    Be confident, be direct, be yourself!