9 Practical Steps to Increase Your Group Sales

For agents who are serious about making more money, group business is the way to go.

Done well, group business will prove exponentially more profitable than individual travel sales, according to Stuart Cohen, president of ExclamationPointsInc.com and author of the group sales seminar DVD in the Travel Agent Success Series.

“Groups generate higher net profits per person than if the same number of bookings were done individually, on various products and departures,” Cohen told Travel Market Report. “Group bookings are more efficient in every aspect.”

Groups also will generate repeat and referral business, Cohen said, and that’s the lifeblood of the successful travel agency.

Following are Cohen’s tips for growing group sales.

#1. Find hot prospects. There are group prospects “right in your own backyard,” Cohen said. Existing clients who are members of organizations, clubs or associations may be taking part in group trips that have been arranged through another agency.

“I bet most of your existing client database has no idea that you can book groups too,” Cohen said. You need to tell them. “Best of all, they are already pre-sold on you, so the selling process will be simpler.”

#2. Do your homework. Before approaching a prospect, find out whether the organization has done a group trip before and whether it was a success. If they have never tried a group trip, find out why.

“Next, get to the core reason why traveling together would be an awesome idea. Frankly, it’s got to be greater than just wanting to all be together. There has to be a larger value proposition.”
 
#3. Supersize your group business. Focusing on groups business is efficient only when agents sell to multiple people at the same time, Cohen said. One way to do that is by scheduling your own webinars, he suggested.

Cohen noted that offering value-add options, such as cruise cabin upgrades, will both supersize a group’s experience and supersize an agent’s profit margin.

#4. Manage groups wisely. You can’t sell or manage groups the same way you manage individual travelers, Cohen advised. There are numerous tools available that allow agencies to manage group business effectively, and many web-based productivity and marketing tools are free or “ridiculously inexpensive.”

It is also critical to manage communications cleverly, so you are not overwhelmed with emails and phone calls from everybody in the group. It’s all too easy to let a group take over your agency and lose other customers in the process, Cohen warned. 

# 5. Work with pre-existing groups. Don’t bother creating your own groups, Cohen advised. “Taking group space and filling it with individuals is a losing proposition. Unless you can generate thousands of leads to increase the chances that the date, product and rate you’ve chosen is agreeable to eight couples, it is a waste of time. Find that organization, pick one date, one product, one rate and sell it out.”

#6. Watch your bottom line. “One huge area that most agents never consider are profits and losses,” Cohen said. “Agents can create a really simple P&L, so they know how to price out a group intelligently. Best of all, when the group is completed, they know precisely how much money they’ve made.”

#7. Ask for the business. Develop the habit of asking for repeat business and referrals. “Whenever you touch that client by email, in person or when you send a thank you note, ask for referrals.” Cohen urged agents to use “the phrase that pays — ‘Thank you for making me your travel agent. Your business is very important to me. Do you have any friends or family who need a vacation?’ Say it every time.”

#8. Never close a sale. “We seem to rejoice in closing a sale, when we should rejoice in opening it,” Cohen said. “When a consumer says yes and hands over their credit card, it is indeed a sweet victory, but not the end of the race. It is the beginning of a relationship.”

#9. Reap the rewards. When group clients love their travel agency, they are likely to start booking all their trips through the agency, even if they already have a personal travel agent elsewhere. Groups can deliver serious, exponential growth for an agency.

“Happy customers brag to their friends and family that they’ve found a fabulous travel agent, so here come the referrals. This group agency will also become a group magnet as members of this group, and other group leaders, hear great things and bring their own group business over as well. One successful group can multiply in just one year. That becomes the key motivator to achieve group success.”