How One Advisor Uses Automated Systems to Grow Her Business (and Sleep at Night)

Agency Name: Tatum’s Tailored Trips
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Employees: Self

Like so many travel advisors before her, when Karen Tatum made the decision to open her own travel agency, she jumped in with both feet. In Tatum’s case it wasn’t because she had a passion for the industry. She needed to find a way to support her family when it became clear that her husband wouldn’t be able to work full-time much longer due to a disability.

“Right away, I was like, I need this to grow and it needs to be more than just a little thing I do on the side. I need this to become a full-time income,” Tatum told TMR, explaining how she went from stay-at-home mom to agency owner in just a few weeks in 2016.

Product training came easy, so, too, did learning the administrative side of booking and selling travel.

“What wasn’t clear to me was business building,” she said.

But in trying to figure out how to take her business to the next level she found herself confronted by dozens of courses and business coaches selling advice and tips for different aspects of her business. There were courses for marketing. Others for social media.

“It was like, I need somebody who can know me and help me develop my business. I needed to not be buying a workshop here, buying piecemeal to try and figure it out,” she explained. “And everybody has a different strategy. I needed somebody who could holistically look at my business and help me specifically.”

Eventually, Tatum settled on hiring an overall business coach.

She told him what she wanted. His advice? Start with the outcome – more, better clients and lots of referrals – and work backwards.

“He said, ‘this is how you’re going to show up on Google. This is how you’re going to be known. And that was through getting reviews. But then, it was like, how do we get the kind of reviews that will attract the kind of clients you want?”

To do that, they realized she needed to be serving her clients in a specific way, so they would say certain things in their reviews.

And that, they decided, required a system.

Building an automated system
“We did a brain dump, thinking about my ideal scenario. My ideal client on an ideal trip, and how I would want them to experience my service, from the first interactions all the way through until they’re coming back to me for the next trip,” Tatum said.

From there, they mapped out the different stages of the ideal scenario. Currently, Tatum’s system has six stages, with multiple tasks to accomplish within each stage.

“In an ideal scenario, what information would I want them to hear at this point? What questions so I want to ask at this point? How do I want them to feel along the way?”

Using a CRM system called Pipedrive, Tatum’s coach then entered each task within each stage into a digital framework, which she compared to a sticky note type of flowchart. (She added there are many different CRM or task-management software systems advisors can use to do the same thing.)

Getting started with your own automated system
Tatum’s automated system is multi-faceted with many steps, but she was clear that other advisors don’t need anything nearly as complicated to benefit from it. Especially in the beginning.

“You system doesn’t have to start that specific, with that many tasks. You can build something a little bit more streamlined and then as you gain time, you can add as you go.”

She recommends starting with tasks you always have to do, “like reminding your clients that their final payment is due and then applying the final payments. Or maybe it’s reminding them to check-in for their flights and giving them the website and the PNR info.”

Using your software, you can automate that so that when you’re making the initial booking, you are saving that information and creating an automation that pulls it in and sends the email on your behalf at the right time – “So that it isn’t reliant on your memory,” she emphasized.

“You only have to enter it accurately one time and then it sends it without you needing to think about. It’s like magic,” she said, adding that she can open her laptop at any time and know exactly where all of her clients are in the booking, planning, and traveling process.”

What to put in an automated system
Other things Tatum said can go in the automated system are reminders for touchpoints that will either educate clients at the period in time you want them to be educated, or inspire feelings you want them to have.

“Can you think of something that will make your client feel like the trip is theirs? Something that you can add in a question, in an email at a certain time, to build anticipation? If you can automate that into the right moment, those types of things really make a difference for the client. And it gets them excited and anticipating the trip.”

Rather than provide one or two big info dumps, Tatum divided all the information she wanted to communicate with her clients into the various stages of her system.

“I usually start with information that’s more administrative,” she said. “As you get a little further away from the emotional high of booking the trip, you need them to get into the anticipation. I usually send a travel guide or maybe I’ll send an article.”

For these touch points, her system simply reminds her that it’s time to send the client something, with a general note about what to send.

“What’s automatic is the task reminder that comes up and says you need to send something today that will help the client feel anticipation or is about safety, or whatever it is” she said.

Is a system too robotic?
Tatum told TMR she sometimes hears from other advisors that they don’t want to use automation because they feel like it’ll take the human touch out of the picture, that it turns the advisor “into a computer.”

But, she said, it’s actually the opposite.

“I would say that it really allows you to dive into being a human because you have set up the system for it to be the very best version of you. You gain control, which gives you time.”

Having that extra time allows her to be calmer and more present during every interaction and while managing her clients’ bookings, and it gives her space to be more creative with her clients and with her business.

Rather than being stuck trying to remember what needs to be done and worrying about forgetting, Tatum can use her extra time – and brain power – to come up with new ideas or learn new things.

Do you need an automated system?
Not everyone needs an automated system. Some people can hold more details in their mind. Some aren’t easily stressed out. For Tatum, trying to keep everything organized in her head caused a lot of anxiety. Before she implemented her system, the anxiety often kept her away at night.

“I was waking up in the middle of the night, going through the list in my head. Did I do this? Did I remember that? And just having this feeling of I’m about to miss something… If I want to grow and I need to continue to grow, I can’t handle more details in my brain or on a to-do list.”

If that sounds familiar, she told TMR, you could probably benefit from some automation as well.

“If you’re looking at your workload and you think, ‘What would happen if my business increased 30% How would I feel?’ If you think, now way, I can’t, then that’s probably a sign that you need some systems.”

Another reason an advisor might want (or need) an automated system, Tatum said, is if they’re feeling less than consistent with the service they’re providing.

“It’s the consistency, so that you know when somebody comes to you how they’re going to be served. That helps me feel way more of a professional, of an expert, of somebody with excellent customer service,” she said.

She added that having the system in place reassures her that if her life goes sideways, she’ll have the structure in place to keep her on track without having to remember on her own.

One last sign that you might need a system, Tatum said, comes from your clients.

“If you are finding that your clients are giving you really inconsistent feedback, you are not serving them consistently,” she said.