Become a Home Based Travel Agent

PAINT THE PICTURE
By Geoff Millar

As travel agents we are constantly looking for ways to improve our client interaction, demonstrate our superior product knowledge, build trust, and develop a relationship with our clients and prospective clients, and ultimately making the sale.

One tool we can use to really help this process is “Painting the Picture” with the client. This does not replace the tools and steps we use in the sales process, qualifying, educating, overcoming objections and closing, but look at it as the glue that holds them together.

“Painting the Picture” is very simple. It is using your product knowledge, knowledge of your potential clients priorities and wish list for their vacation, your experiences, and your past client’s experiences to paint a real life picture for your potential clients with them in that picture.

In a very simple explanation, it would go like this. Once you have qualified the client, educated the client, and answered their first round of objections but before you ask for the order, take what you have learned from the client and your knowledge and then start painting the picture. An example, “Picture yourself rising around 10:00 AM ordering room service, and sitting on your patio overlooking the turquoise blue ocean while enjoying you first cup of coffee?” This is one picture. Another might be “after finding the perfect spot on the beach under a colorful beach umbrella and settling down with a good book, just raise the flag on your chair to have the beach waiter come take your drink order and inquire if there is anything else you may need”

Another type of Painting the Picture may be relating an experience that you or a past client may have had at the resort, cruise, or tour that you are recommending. One I always tell for the Excellence Playa Mujeres is. “I had a client and his wife who after ordering a sandwich in the restaurant, decided to walk on the beach while it was being prepared. Losing track of time they ended up about ½ mile down the beach. They happened to look back and see the waiter approaching them with their sandwich which he laid out on the beach for them and returned a little while later with their drink order.” Another one I have used for a particular resort is, “This is the only resort I have had clients call me from, the day after they checked in to extend their vacation”.

Using these types of Painting the Picture should demonstrate and include, your extensive knowledge of what you are recommending, the fact that either you or one of your clients has actually been to this place, and putting the client in a very receptive state and verifying in their mind that they are making the right decision, all helping to move to the next natural step in the sales process, asking for the order.

So, Paint the Picture for your client and watch your credibility, relationship with the client and your sales close rate increase.

It has a secondary benefit. It gives you an opportunity to contact your previous clients to obtain some of their stories. Believe me they will love relating them to you.