Tom Stieghorst
Sales can be an intimidating part of a travel agent’s job, but it doesn’t have to be, said Heidi Olsen, manager of certification and training for CLIA, who had her presentation on Power Selling Skills at the recent Cruise360 conference in Vancouver.
Olsen started her hourlong presentation with some anti-anxiety therapy. “You want to make sales fun,” she said. “Sales doesn’t have to be a scary proposition.”
Many beginning agents make sales harder because they get skittish and don’t want to be perceived as aggressive or pushy. Olsen said agents need a reality check for that fear.
When you introduce yourself as an agent, and your product as travel, “Do they frown at you and say I wouldn’t want to do that?” Olsen asked. It’s not exactly life insurance, after all.
She said that by speaking up she’s made sales in the most unlikely places, such as to a doctor treating her in the emergency room who had an interest in her recent Tahiti cruise.
“You never know where you’re going to find someone to make a sale,” she said.
Another useful way to frame sales is as a negotiation, something most people do in everyday life without a second thought. That conversation about who’s going to walk the dog?
“You’re negotiating,” Olsen said. “Think about sales as a negotiation. Even if you’ve never sold a thing in your life, you’re selling yourself every day.”
Afterward, an agent I spoke with agreed it was sound advice, if a little basic. “Some of it I already knew,” she said. The courses are aimed at earning credits towards CLIA’s certification programs. “They always make it very easy,” this agent said.
A couple of points stuck with me, however.
One was that as more agents work from home, the first impression often isn’t made in person. It gets made via the telephone, a text message, an email or a website.
Since first impression is key, it is important to answer the phone quickly and with enthusiasm. Don’t have noises from your home intrude on the conversation. Make sure in your emails that you have a person’s proper spelling and title, and that your message is grammatically correct.
Another segment worth hearing was Olsen’s review of closed- and open-ended questions and strategies for using them. A cheat sheet included with the handout packet detailing ways to overcome sales objections was also a handy primer, I thought.