Let's All be the LONGSHOT Winners!
by Melody Fee, OSSN Vice President

Just a few days ago, a "long shot" colt named Giacomo pulled a shocker in the 131st Kentucky Derby, rallying on the far outside of the racetrack and hitting the wire in 2:02.75. The win by Giacomo whose "odds" at race time were "50 to 1" produced the second largest win payoff in Kentucky Derby history, returning a generous pay out of $102.60 on a measly $2.00 bet!

Now you might ask just what in the world this has to do with your travel business, right? Well, you know the REAL success of any small business is indeed a longshot if you look at what you are up against to "win your race" in creating a successful travel business. We all have so much real competition in our industry and many of us may not have had a lot of business advantage in our "chosen" profession of selling travel. We may not have degrees in business, marketing or finance, but all of these skills are imperative to our success. We may not have traveled the world to know all of our products, first hand either, however our knowledge of the world and its geography is priceless, as well!

So we have to work to develop our skills to put our business in a competitive arena with other agencies and travel marketing companies, especially those that may be more "obvious winners" than ourselves in business. We cannot compete with the advertisements that many larger agencies pay for in the newspapers, online, or their full color advertisements in high profile magazines! Since we also may not be able to compete always with the prices that are being offered by some of these mega-agencies, we have to know our strong points in business! What makes us move from the "long shot" odds (at getting the customer's business) to becoming the "program favorite" in our customer's mind?

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