Sales professionals today must be skilled at curating the reams of information available to everybody on the web. Sorting through the massive trolls of data and presenting to others the most relevant is what differentiates the seasoned salesperson from the wanna-bes.
I hope you are beginning to see that your stumbling blocks, when it comes to sales, are not yours alone. When confronted with a sales-related situation that appears to be insurmountable, I quickly remind the conveyer of bad news that they did not invent this problem. I politely invite them to “join the club.”
There appears to be massive amounts of information available to everybody regardless of the industry. There are only two-thousand ways for anybody to book any reservation to anywhere. You must recognize this truth and decide to combat it logically. Your new job is one of a curator.
As Dan Pink suggests in his book, To Sell is Human, your job has slowly morphed into one that involves more than “having all the answers.” Your job is to decide what information is pertinent to your client’s itinerary and to share that information in a way that can be easily internalized and used when the timing is right.
In addition, you must become good (better) at asking questions; so, in turn, you can sift through the reams of available data, delete the dead wood and highlight that which is important. In other words, it is your job to help determine what is important and what is superfluous fluff.
The bad news is that this will take some time on your part along with some focused, client-centered effort. (Hey! I never told you it was going to be easy to become the best.)
But the good news is that you are in position to pull this off.
Welcome to the world of curation.
Mike Marchev freely shares his experiences, strategies and observations with travel professionals in an effort to keep them on top of their game. For a complimentary copy of his 12-Word Marketing Plan send him an email at mike@mikemarchev.com.
Mike’s daily column is made possible by AmaWaterways.
