From John T. Peters: Agents Must Specialize
Here’s a fact; according to Forrester Research, 27% of online travelers would rather work with a good offline travel agent, IF they knew where to find one. So, more than a quarter of the people shopping online would rather work with an offline travel agent; they just have no idea where to start looking for the right one. These consumers are frustrated with online booking engines and the plethora of generic, meaningless travel information and want – get this – to talk to a human being. Enter Tripology.
I’ll be the first one to tell you, Tripology isn’t for every travel agent. Our best Tripologists are not only specialists in a particular destination or trip type, they’re experts in selling to online consumers and they’re experts at Tripology. They buy leads and respond with an introductory email in a very timely fashion. They under-promise and over-deliver, each and every time. They’re always connected and they are always engaged.
To prove my point, Tripology had invited a handful of top Tripologists to New York for a brainstorm session. During our dinner conversation, I noticed one top Tripologist, Kristen, was typing on her iPhone. I remember thinking, “I wish she was paying attention to the conversation” so I asked her a question and hinted I saw that “she was busy.” Her response? She showed me her iPhone screen and showed me she was buying a Tripology lead from her phone that “was right in her sweet spot.” My response? “Please continue.”
We recently registered our 14,000th travel specialist. Some travel agents register and get a booking right away. Others try Tripology yet simply don’t succeed. It doesn’t mean they’re not good at what they do, it’s just means they haven’t yet figured out how to sell online or they took too long to respond or, the big lead-killer; they come off as generalists. Online consumers don’t want generalists; they can get that online. They want a skilled professional who specializes in the exact trip they are looking to take and who demonstrates he/she has first-hand knowledge of the destination and local contacts there.
Do some consumers want a cheap price? Sure, but that’s no different from consumers who call a travel agent’s office. With Tripology, you can choose the customers with whom you want to work. If you don’t like the lead, don’t buy it. If you’re seeing leads that don’t apply to you or aren’t for your specific specialty, your profile filters need to be tweaked and you should contact us for help. If you don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t have at least $X to spend, set a filter and you won’t even see those leads in your in-box. I have to tell you though, some of our more successful Tripologists ignore the budget field because they’ve found consumers just don’t know how much travel costs and they’re certainly not going to guess high.
Finally, some agents are getting ALL of their business from lead generation sites. They’ve stopped most other marketing efforts and are concentrating on leads from Tripology. Don’t take my word for it, check out www.tripology.com/successstories and see the success stories from real Tripologists.
Finally, are you following us on Twitter and Facebook? You should!
www.twitter.com/tripologypeeps
