Sell Your Skills, Your Experience, Your Value!
by Ken Hall

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Now, the key issue is this: Do you tell them your experience helps you determine when prices look right or wrong, too low to include all they want, or too high and worth additional searching? Do you tell them the value you bring to the shopping experience?

While there are more and more search engines looking for the lowest possible prices, how do buyers know they are getting the best price? Do they have the experience to "feel" when a quoted price isn't right? Do they realize your skills as a travel professional can save them money as well as time - and your vested interest in doing the best job possible for them is to get them back as clients year after year?

Many consumers still think the best way to find the lowest price is to go on the Internet and look ... and look ... and look. What they don't think about, though, is that you know more places - and better places - to look than they do. They don't consider that your years of experience give you an edge.

Do you tell them?

You need to tell them that your skills and your experience make it more likely that you will find better prices ... better values ... than they will. And this is just one of the many advantages they will enjoy when they use you as their travel professional. Like many of the services you provide, unless you tell clients and prospects about it, it doesn't mean anything to them.

Sit down right now and write an email to your top 10 clients. Tell them how your skills and experience can be of benefit to them in finding great travel values in less time than they can do it themselves. All they need to do is tell you what they want to do and when they want to do it, and then you will use the expertise you have gained over the years to help them find those great travel bargains.

And, after you have sent off those 10 emails, do 10 more ... and then 10 more ... until you have contacted your top 100 clients. If you will do that, you will find you have all the business you can handle for the next month!

Ken Hall is president of www.HomeBasedPros.com. He studies the best practices of home-based agents, as well as the latest reports on consumer behavior, and provides marketing and sales ideas for the home-based travel agent, condensed into weekly e-letters for his subscribers. For more information and to sign up, go to www.HomeBasedPros.com.

(Credit: Ken Hall/HomeBasedPros.com)