The Travel Agent Guide
The Travel Agent Guide is a podcast created for travel advisors at every stage of their journey.
Each episode shares practical tips, real-world experiences, and honest conversations about building a successful travel advisor business—from client boundaries and workflows to marketing, growth, and sustainability.
Whether you’re new to the industry or looking to refine how you work, this podcast is here to help you work smarter, feel more confident, and grow with intention.
The Travel Agent Guide
Scaling your Business: 5 Data Points Every Travel Advisor Needs To Know
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
5 Data Points That Will Change Your Business
If you’re not tracking your numbers, you’re not growing—you’re guessing.
In this episode, we break down the key metrics every travel agent should know:
- Next Follow-Up (CRM): Success is in the follow-up—how bad do you want the lead?
- Lead Sources & Notes: Know exactly where your business is coming from.
- Closed Lost Reasons: If they didn’t see your value, fix how you communicate it.
- Lead Count (YOY): No growth in leads = no growth in business
- Close Rate & Cycle: Track how many you close—and how fast
Track your numbers. Grow your business.
If you’re serious about growing your business, you need to listen to this episode. 🎧
Follow our social media to stay updated: 📲
YouTube: https://bit.ly/4tqDT72
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3OgmpeE
Facebook: https://bit.ly/4mbwMgm
Spotify: https://bit.ly/4tns0yB
Apple Podcast: https://bit.ly/41bxAZ6
#TheTravelAgentGuide #TravelAgentLife #TravelBusiness #TravelAgentTips #GrowYourBusiness
If you're the type of person that's just sitting back and hoping that an email pops into your inbox the next day and that's your next lead, instead of proactively going after them, you're not the type of person that's really going to grow your business like you could. If you want to take this seriously and really make a full-time job out of it, you need to be tracking a few certain numbers.
SPEAKER_01If you're a travel advisor struggling to streamline and get your sales up, let me ask you a question. Are you properly tracking your total consultations, understanding what your conversion rate may be? Are you averaging the total cost of each trip that you do? And do you sit there and consider what your average commission might be? If you're not doing these things, it's time to start implementing them into your business. Welcome to the Travel Agent Guide, the podcast pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to be a travel agent. We're talking real life, the challenges, the wins, the money, the mistakes, and the growth. Whether you've been in the travel industry for years or are new to it, we're in this together and you're exactly where you need to be.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back. We're super excited for this episode because data is my life. I love a good spreadsheet. And by the end of this episode, you're going to learn about five key data points that are really going to change your business. I think a lot of us as travel agents think of data as an afterthought if they think of it as all. And I think it's the key to why I've been able to grow my business so successfully over the years. Um, Haley, one thing that you and I do when we coach all of our agents is we use this beautiful spreadsheet. We call it the profit planning spreadsheet. Now, for us guys, this is this is life. Every single year, everyone on our team does it. Um, and we think it's really beneficial so you can actually understand what it is that you need to do the next year as you set goals. So, Haley, tell us a little bit about the profit planning spreadsheet. What is on it and what is it helping us do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course. So I think first and foremost, with any job, I always tell every advisor that I work with, what is the income that you want to make yearly? I think setting that goal is super important to understanding your business. You're holding yourself accountable and you're trying to get to the next step. Um, so find out what that number is. Some advisors have a higher number than others. Just go with whatever you want to see in your pocket at the end of the year. Then we kind of dive into more in-depth details, right? And understanding what maybe your conversion rate is, um, understanding how many consultations you need to get to that number, um, how many trips do you have to book at the end of the day, and then understanding what the average cost of your trip might be. Um, total sales comes together with all of that added in, but also you need to take into account what your average commission percentage is. Um, so understanding all of those elements combined together will help you set your goals based off of your the revenue that you need to book to get to your goal commission. Um, understanding how many trips you need to book to get to that and how many consultations you need to book those trips.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so the idea is you basically work the math backwards. If you want to make a hundred thousand dollars this year and your average trip is X and your average commission percentage is Y, that means you need to book X number, Z number of trips, right? And then if that's how many trips you need to book, well, how many people end up close lost? We all know we don't win every deal. Um, if you do, please come on the podcast and tell us what you're doing in life. But we all know we don't win every deal. So then you convert that into how many leads you actually need to work. Is that correct? Did we hear that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Um, work the numbers backwards to get to that number that you want to book for that year.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so it's a pretty simple math equation. For those of you that hate math, here's what I would do. I have kind of a ballpark that we use for our agency. You could kind of gut reaction and feel where you go. Now, we track every single lead that comes in the door and we know what our close percentage is, but we find on average it's about 70% if it's friends and family repeat, if it's one of those lead sources. So if that is where all of your leads come from, which most of our most travel advisors, that's where they come from. I would use 70% as your conversion rate. So that means from consultation to actually closing the trip, I would use that 70% number. The other numbers you need to understand and know are what my average cost of my trip is. Um, for for Haley and I, we're uh hovering around 11,000, which is great, but I always want it to be more. But you need to kind of see what you've booked in the past because I know travel agents just really run the gambit on this one. If you're focused on Royal Caribbean cruises and that's your lifeblood, that's gonna be a lot different than if you're focused on African safaris. So I would actually take a step back for a few minutes, just see what you've booked in the past. You should be able to pull those numbers out of your workflow system and get a good solid average. The same thing goes with your commission. We coach our agents to shoot for 15% commission minimum. Um, I know Haley, I think you're close to 19% typically. Is that about right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's about right.
SPEAKER_00All right, so Haley has to book like, you know, a half a trip for every one trip that other people have to book, usually. So these are the numbers that I would use. I would use that 70% conversion if you really don't know what you're doing. I'd use $5,000 as an average trip cost if you're brand new to this business. And I would probably use 10% again if you are brand new to the business. Um, if we should do a whole episode around getting the 18% commission because there is an art form to it. Um, all right, so that's the profit planning worksheet. Anything else that's on there that you think's important?
SPEAKER_01No, the one thing that we kind of talk about a lot with coaching and goal setting um is really affirmations. So, you know, set up some affirmations. If you want to book $40,000 this year, remind yourself every day that my goal is to book $40,000. Stick with it. Um, just repeat it in your day-to-day, and that's gonna just give you that motivation and drive to really get to that $40,000 booking mark.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I think that's beautiful. Um, we do take it one step further. So then we have kind of, you know, the goal of how much you want to make for the year, and then that's how many um leads you need in the door, right? We work that math backwards. Those leads in the door, they don't all come in in one day. They don't all come in in one month. They're gonna come in throughout the year, and we really work hard to break it down on a month-by-month basis for our coaching clients. And the reason I think that stuff's important, so you'll see that as another tab, and we'll link to this profit planning sheet. This is nothing proprietary. I want everyone to be able to see what we're talking about. Um, but there's a second tab where it's month by month. I think it's really important to break it down just for the simple reason that you want to understand if you're behind when you get to the end of January, or if you're ahead when you get to the end of January and what you're doing at. And if you're sitting there thinking, I have no control over these numbers, that's where this episode's really gonna come into place. I think you have a lot of control over these numbers if you're doing things purposefully with intent. Um, and that's where we will kind of come through with this. So, Haley, talk to us about our first data point that we really want to pay attention to.
SPEAKER_01So, first data point that we really want to pay attention to is follow up in your CRM in kind of how our CRM is so important to us. So, our customer relationship management, um, how are we using that in our business? How are we keeping track of each client where we are with the sales process so we know how to operate our business every day when we get on our computer?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And for anyone that's out there that is using Tess or Traveljoy or Turn or those type of platforms as your CRM, I've made the argument before and I just want to highlight, I don't think that's a CRM. I think it's a workflow system and it's what is holding the information for your trips, but it's not truly doing a great job of tracking leads. And that's why our biggest data point is what the next follow-up looks like for your lead. Um I don't think you just follow up once with a client and then you're like, oh, well, they didn't answer. I guess they ghosted, move on with my life.
SPEAKER_01Not cool enough.
SPEAKER_00Uh I know Haley and I do the follow-ups first thing in the morning and we follow up often. Haley, tell us a little bit about your follow-up strategy and why your CRM kind of keeps you on track with who to follow up and when to follow up and what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course. I mean, so each client I keep, I have probably about five or six categories of where the client is in the sales process from, you know, consultation to close. So depending on where they are, I usually keep a client in a hot lead. Um, so a hot lead means that we've talked about your trip and now I need to get a consultation on the books. So am I following it up trying to get a scheduled meeting? Probably. So I will just go at the client, continue to either send my calendar link or tell them to let me know what time and I get it on the calendar myself. Um, that follow-up I will do until we finally get something on the books, right? So, I mean, very rarely will you be ghosted in that sense. Um, if you are, then just stay on it. How bad do you want the lead, right?
SPEAKER_00So give us some insight there. How long are you staying on it? When does it get ridiculous?
SPEAKER_01It gets ridiculous when I've had probably five ghosted texts. But even if I have five ghosted texts, I'll pick up the phone and call them. Um, I've even like, I don't know, if somebody's reached out to me on Facebook, this actually just happened a couple weeks ago. Somebody reached out to me on Facebook. We got a consultation on the books, did the consultation, we were texting back and forth via phone. They didn't reply to me a couple days there. Then I went back into Facebook Messenger and went with our original contact. Finally, she contacted me, right? So there you go. You have to look at the strategy behind it. How am I getting the clients engaged? Whatever that takes. So, yeah, that's the hot lead process, right? Then we go from hot lead, you know. For me, I have a waiting for paid feed, meaning I've done consultation. That actually comes after schedule consultation. So once the consultation is scheduled, you go to meet with them. Other one, did they show up for the consultation or did they ghost you? If they've ghosted you on a consultation, that's a problem and you need to address it right away. Wait five minutes in that Zoom meeting. If you don't hear from them, pick up the phone. I always reach out to a client 15 to 20 minutes prior to that meeting just to reconfirm that we're still on track for a meeting in 15 minutes. Um, some people forget. I think truly, unless you're utilizing your calendar and Outlook and email day to day, you're probably gonna forget about it. Um, so I send a reminder. If you hop on that call, they don't show up, then now, now what do you do? Right? Do you follow up? I follow up and continue to until I can get them re-engaged. If at that point they're not excited for this, then I want an answer for them on as to why, right? So I dig for kind of that answer a little more in depth. Then from there, after I qualify a client, I know I'm gonna work with them. I put them into waiting for paid fee, which means I've sent over my link to process my fee, whatever that looks like. Um, if a client isn't paying the fee within I'd say 24 or 48 hours. Um, not only that, I know a lot of times advisors, I always send out forms, right? I think after a consultation, I always send over the form. I let the client know what the next process is. So if you're not obtaining the client information when you've qualified them, start doing that. Basically, you're giving them a green light and you're telling the client what is the next step, and I'm putting that back on you for you to fill out that form, my terms and conditions. You're basically telling me that you're serious and you're ready to move forward. Then I at that point, then I charge the fee, right? So that follow-up will happen as many times as I needed to until I either get an answer from them that they're not interested in moving forward, right?
SPEAKER_00So I think the the key here is that the follow-ups are continuous. Yeah. And I that's why this as a data point was so important, is you need to have some kind of system that's going to remind you when the next follow-up. So Haley and I both use Monday.com, but that's the CRM where we know it just organizes everything by follow-up date. So we know, okay, this is the next person. And as soon as I follow up with them, I just change the date on the calendar to the next date. And it's so much easier to see like where am I behind? Who do I need to touch base with? What does it look like? Especially when you're juggling, you know, 10, 12, 15 plus clients. You're not gonna remember to follow up with every person every day unless there's this cute little machine telling you to do so. And then it just stays organized a bit better. Do you how closely do you track that, Haley? And are you really following up eight, 10, 12 times? Like, what does it look like before you just give up?
SPEAKER_01So, for example, in Monday.com, not only can you track based off of the tabs that you input, but you can keep notes. So every time you do a follow-up, you can date when the last text was that you sent or when the last email was that you sent. You're taking notes from the consultation, you're putting them into Monday. Um, that to me is just a game changer. I can look at my grid when I log in to Monday every morning. I can look and see where each client is with their process. So we even have a tab that's decision maker feedback, right? What decision maker feedback means is you've presented the trip to them. Now they need to pay you money. So those are always gonna be the top ones that you're going to first, following up to see what's going on. Um, then you look at waiting on paid fee. Those are like my two that I'm checking um constantly of where we are in the process.
SPEAKER_00Constantly.
SPEAKER_01Constantly. Like I want my money. I want my money, right? Um, so I without having that, I would just be completely lost, to be honest with you. Is I need to know, you know, first start. I go ahead, Verg.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I was just gonna say, I we had somebody post in our Facebook group, the travel agent guide, and they were like, well, what I do is I use a Calendly link. So if they miss the calendar, if they miss the consult, it sends out like an automated email that basically says, like, hey, you missed this. Do you want to reschedule? And he's like, if they don't reschedule, I never think of it again. So I responded because I did think it was interesting. There's a lot of studies about this, but generally speaking, you're going to find that over 80% of sales are made after the 10th or 11th attempt to get in touch with this person. And I think the mass majority of travel agents probably stop at one to two, maybe three before they feel like they're being annoying. And we'll do a whole episode about being annoying because there's a right way to do it where you're not salesy. Um, but I do think that the continued follow-up in a helpful I'm here to uh work with you excited kind of manner is the reason you've succeeded. You're incessant about it. Are you gonna pay my fee? You know, like you're you're continuously going after. And I think having a really good CRM that's going to track that next follow-up is that key to your success there. Um, all right, our next big data point that we want to chat about was lead sources and notes. So the lead source is basically where it came from. And I think a lot of people find this task tedious. And there's a reason it is necessary. I have a lead source that says uh networking, for instance. However, in the lead notes, I'm gonna put what group it came from. I'm gonna put, did it come from my rotary group? Did it come from junior league? Did it come from whatever networking that I am part of? Are you part of a BI group? And at the end of the year, I just kind of pull everything together and I'm like, okay, this is how much I made off of Junior League this year. Okay, this is how much I made off of whatever. That's really important, but there's also this beauty to having lead sources around like a referral. This was a referral from a friend, this was a referral from another client. And then you also have in the lead notes who referred them to you, right? So at the end of the year, I think clients or advisors are always like, I'll just remember. I just know where my clients come from. And I think if you don't take the time to analyze, you may not realize the volume of clients that came from one particular referral or the volume of clients that came from one particular networking group. And you may look at that group the next year and say, Oh, that one cost me $2,000 to be a part of. Do I want to pay it again or not? And you might not really realize that you made $8,000 off of it, right? If you're not being very purposeful and tracking that, Haley, what's your biggest lead source?
SPEAKER_01Probably referrals from other clients and repeats. I think it's obviously you know your repeat clients, right? So referrals from my clients are huge because I want to know how to thank my clients. I want to make sure that I'm still valuing our relationship and keeping them up to date with how my business is going. A client refers you because they love the service that you provided, they love you as a person, and they truly just want their friend or family to be taken care of. So they're entrusting you in that. So I think for me, that's probably my most valuable one is understanding where these clients are coming from. So it all goes back to this one client who has sent me $100,000 in business this year, right? Um, and exactly like you said, networking groups and where your investments go, right? So understanding if you did a bridal show this year and what leads did you get from the bridal show, tracking that to see if it was worth your time and the money that you spent into it, super important, right? You want to be able to run the numbers to say, is am I investing in this next year? Did I get back my return on investment plus some? What does that look like? So, yes, very important lead sources. If you're not doing it, start doing it.
SPEAKER_00Another good lead source would be social media, and then in the lead notes, you would put which groups you found them on. Um, I lived in a previous city. I won't, I won't divulge because there's a bunch of travel agents in that group now that I have left. But um I know there's people in that group that ask for travel agents all the time, and I was just getting tagged incessantly. And I I was following these lead sources and just kind of keeping track of them. And after my first year in business, I realized that I made almost $30,000 off of that Facebook group. Um, so it's really interesting just to again look at the big picture at the end of the year and be like, okay, this is where my time and effort needs to be spent. So what I started doing in that group was I started just answering every question, not just the ones about travel agents. But if somebody asked for a realtor, I was tagging my friend, if somebody asked for X, Y, and Z, I was constantly going in and just trying to be relentlessly helpful. And I became known in that group more and more because of those efforts. And I think that that's the type of uh mentality that you should have is let me track and see what's working for me, and then let me decide how I can better spend my time to double down on the efforts for what is working for me and then let go of what's not. You know, if you're paying for a networking group that's not really getting there, or you've gotten a couple of leads but not enough, well, back away and put more time in this other thing. Um, but I think travel agents have a really hard time, especially if you're only booking one to two trips a month. You're not realizing where the lead came from three months ago and attributing it to the same source over and over. It's a lot easier just to keep track over the months and then be able to look back for a year and say, okay, this is where all my business came from. So that's a really, really important one for us. Not only the lead source, but also the lead notes. Um, and I'll go over a couple of our lead sources so it's just, or I'll go over all of our lead sources so it's just obvious to everybody. Um, but basically the options that you would be picking from are friends and family, uh, networking, and we have in-person networking or networking group you choose. Um, we have called in for people that call into our agency. We have a company referral, meaning it's a referral from another advisor in the agency, current client referral, email campaign lead. My goodness, if anybody's had email figured out, let me know. That's not our highest. Um, friend or family, friend or family referral. Um, we have uh paid ads. This is something that we do as well, social media as I talked about, and then a website lead, because we do use our website quite a bit. So those are our main lead sources, and um, that's where we have all of our notes coming from. All right, Haley, what is our number three data point that you need to track as a travel agent to change your business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so number three is definitely closed lost reasons. Again. With Monday.com, if you know that the sale's not happening, you can create a tab that will put your clients into another board, which puts them as a closed loss. Then you sit here and look at the reasoning as to why it was a closed loss and you tracked it based off that. I think that's really set in place for accountability, trying to understand your sales process, maybe what you did wrong to make the next sale right. Um, and understanding again how this lead came in. If it was an ad that you paid for and it came in and they ghosted you, what does that look like? Now you can easily track things in that sense.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I mean, the reality again is you're gonna lose a lead. It's gonna frustrate you, you're gonna blow it off because you don't want to internalize something too much and let the anger get to you, and you're gonna move on with your day. But at the end of the year, you're not gonna be able to see, oh wow, I lost 60% of my business because they booked direct. You know, you might think, like, yeah, I lost a lot, but you might, you're not gonna be able to really understand those numbers unless you're seeing it with each one. So for us, when we close out a trip and we close lost it, we've got a handful of things and we've we've gotten a little bit granular over the years. It's been really, really helpful. We used to just have one that said book direct and then we split it up. So we have one that says book direct because it was a cheaper price. Oh my gosh, have you guys had this happen, right? If I hear the word Costco, my skin crawls. But there's also book direct that they didn't understand the value. Have you ever had a client do this? Oh, well, I saw this sale and it was the middle of the night. I just went ahead and did it because I didn't want to bother you. Boils your blood just to hear it. But the reality is we've all heard it and we're all going to hear it again, right? And we need to understand that that client didn't understand the value, and that's not their fault. That was our fault for not clearly communicating what we do, how we get paid, and what our value is at the end of the day. So I think that's those two are really, really important to kind of break down a little bit. Haley, do you have any clue what your biggest clothes lost reasoning is?
SPEAKER_01I honestly need to probably evaluate, but I'm gonna guess it's just probably didn't see the value. Um, I think you have those conversations where some trips aren't as complex where they would be like, hey, do I really need you? Some clients hop into a call because they just want that reassurance from an advisor. So yeah, I don't know. I need to actually pull that report and kind of do a little digging to see what that looks like for sure. So some of the other things, oh go ahead. Other than that, are probably budget restraints, I think is something really big. If a client comes to me and they're like, hey, Haley, we want to go to Italy for two weeks and we have eight grand, it's really okay, but eight grand is not, I'm not gonna be able to service this, right? And I think having those conversations and understanding that budget is a problem, it basically takes you back to the next consultation that you do so you can better explain yourself in each consultation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And and it gives you a better understanding of, you know, where the client might have gone wrong. Because my biggest is did not travel. And the did not travel is usually because of that. And maybe they traveled, they just didn't travel to that location, right? How many uh times have you ever gotten a lead that wanted to go to Hawaii and then they give you the $5,000 budget and you're like, have you heard of Mexico? I guess you're gonna love it there. Like it's just unrealistic. So I use that as not necessarily saying they didn't travel, but they didn't travel to the location they wanted to. Um, I also have one for booked with a competitor. So uh that one is usually they decided to go with another travel agent. Now, one thing I will say is if anybody ever comes to me and openly admits, which I ask, it's part of our entire company's workflow is to say, are you working with another travel agent? And if they say yes, we basically explain to them we're not a travel agency for them. Um, that's not how we roll. But if they're it's a little bit different if they're coming to us with a complaint, this travel agent didn't service me the right way, and now I want help. That's very different than I'm competing against pricing, basically. We kind of turn those down. So booked with a competitor is one, ghosted is one, and ghosted is definitely one of the highest ones that we've seen. But again, a lot of times that has to do more with how often and timely the follow-ups were. Because if you send someone a text message three days in a row, if they don't want to work for you, they're probably going to take the time to say it. However, if you send someone a text message and then a week later you send them another text, they're just gonna ignore that. They're gonna be like, whatever, it's fine. So I think ghosting is usually having to do more with um how uh intensely you follow up with a client versus the fact that they just didn't want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01I won't even, oftentimes, Bert, I won't even put a client into clotheslosts until I get an actual answer as to why this didn't work. Yeah, another big one for me is a client who didn't want to pay my fee. I think I track that as well. I mean, it doesn't happen often, but it's good to know. And some people will come back and tell you that, yeah, there's another travel agent I talk to and they're not gonna charge a fee. Okay, perfect. Go with that travel agent.
SPEAKER_00Um, have a great time. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01So tracking that to understand. Now, if every client's not booking with you because of your fee, then again, you have to go back to that consultation. You need to work on yourself and how you're presenting this and selling yourself to that client. So track your closed last reasons. It's going to help you with your business just overall.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we also have one for not willing to do a consult. Haley and I both feel strongly about this that all of our clients will do a we prefer a video consult. So we use Zoom or Microsoft Teams. If they absolutely can't, we will do a phone call for the consultation, but the proposal call is on a video, period. Dot. And every now and then, I mean, I think in the last six years, we've had five, you know, one a year is kind of what you'll get of somebody that just says, no, I'm not getting on a call. You can't make me, you know, like can you you get that person that says, can you text me uh pricing? And I say that's not what we do here. Um, but most of the time they're willing. But that is a a closed loss reason. And then there's one more that I wanted to mention was it's too early to book. That's a reality is somebody kind of comes out at you and they're like, I want to travel. Oh, my favorite. We had a lady one time that wanted to uh plan her honeymoon, honey, uh her honeymoon, and it was two years out that she was looking to plan. And then I just in the consultation kind of kept digging and digging. She wasn't engaged yet. She's like, but we're gonna be, we're gonna be. And I want to start planning the honeymoon. And I was like, You're a lot. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I appreciated that young woman's confidence, though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I will say off of that though, another thing going back to Monday, right? If you know a client's not gonna travel for two years, you also have the opportunity to put them in cold or warm, right? Where now it's a cold lead or warm lead. What does that look like? Just so you know how to follow up with them in let's say eight months to 12 months, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And those are completely separate pipelines. I love that you brought that up. You should have a hot lead pipeline. We call it open opportunities, but that means something that I believe is going to close within the next 60 days. If I don't think it's closing in 60 days, it's a warmer, even sometimes a cold lead. And the reality then is that I need to not focus on that as much as the others. Now don't forget about it. There's diamonds in the rough there. But the reality is anything closing in the next 60 days should have my full attention as I move through the workday. All right, so our next one is changes in total lead counts year over year. So, Haley, have you seen a change in your lead counts year over year?
SPEAKER_01Of course.
SPEAKER_00So I think it's really interesting if you do pay attention to this, because a lot of people, most people, want to see their businesses grow. I made 20,000 last year, I want to make 40,000 this year, I made 60,000 last year, I want to make 80,000 this year. And that's a percentage, that's an easy math. And if your leads aren't growing at the same percentage, or your commission percentage, or your total cost of your trip, lots of things can grow in the right way. But if your leads aren't growing and you don't notice it really quickly, you're not going to be able to catch up to that goal that you were hoping to make. Um, so tracking lead counts month over month over month is really, really important to see what's coming in the door and what you're driving. Haley, how do you do that in my do you drop everything in Monday? Tell us what you're doing. Do you only drop the ones that are like truly ready to book?
SPEAKER_01No, I try to put every single lead that I get into Monday so I can track it. Um, even if I know I'm probably not if I do a consultation, right? Um, if I'm gonna pass off a trip to a client, you can still put that into Monday and then understand how many trips you did pass off. So again, you could do like clothes loss reason, pass off to another client for what I and then note it as to another agent. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, I'm sorry, exactly. Another agent. So then from there you are tracking the fact that okay, maybe I don't like to ever sell the Caribbean anymore. So therefore, any client that comes to me, I'm gonna pass them off to another advisor because I have zero interest in working in the Caribbean. Um, so yes, I think every lead that I do get, I put it into my CRM, regardless. I have their information, I have their email, phone number. Then from there, I just move it into whatever direction I need to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love it. I I do the same. So let's say I'm walking down the street, I'm walking my dog, and someone basically says, like, oh, Bert, I gotta talk to you about my trip to Italy. Um, I love Monday.com because they also have an app. It's not a good app. It's also like an okay CRM. The the best CRM is just the one you're gonna use. So pick any of them. It don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. But I would pick one that has an app simply because of the fact that you can just quickly go into and be like, oh yeah, Gina, I'll call you later. And then you pop on your phone real quick. You just put Gina Italy and then you move on with your day, right? And then the next morning when I'm in the office in a place where I can work that, I can quickly send that woman a text message and say, Hey, did you want to get something on the calendar about your trip to Italy? Really excited to hear more. And I think that simple staying organized step is really important. I've had people tell me, like, yeah, but it's rude to pull out your phone right then. That's okay. Finish the conversation, excuse yourself. Let's say you're at a networking event or whatever it looks like. Excuse yourself, go to the bathroom and do it in the bathroom. I can't tell you how many leads I put in a bathroom stall. That is definitely a go-to move of mine. But making sure every lead gets dumped in there every time, not just the people that are ready to book. Because if you do that, you're not gonna really understand how many leads do I really miss and what do I really need to bring in the door. I also think it's interesting just to be able to see spikes in leads. Hey, what did I do last month to get so much? Oh, there was that bridal show. Or what did I do last month? Oh, I was doing all these networking type things, or oh man, that friend blew me up. Man, she sent me four leads in a month. That's incredible, right? And if you're not paying attention to the numbers, it's really hard to be able to really understand year over year, am I growing at the rate that I was hoping to grow? Awesome. All right, our last but not least is basically our closed rate and closed cycle. Um, Haley, what does this mean? Tell us why we need to track this and why it's important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think first your close rate is again, it comes back to your conversion rate. How many leads are you getting and how many from those leads are you closing? Understanding that in that number, super helpful to setting your goals for the year and just understanding your business. Then we look at close cycle or what I, you know, sales cycle, right? How long is it taking you to get on a consultation and actually close a deal with a client? I think this number is very interesting to track. And I think more travel advisors should be doing it. I think understanding where your faults are in this process and and what's prolonging everything, um, it it's you gotta track it. You need to know you want to get paid. What is the average sales cycle, Bird? What should it be for travel agents?
SPEAKER_00So though those are two very different answers. Um, what should it be and what is it for tra? I would not be surprised if you're sitting there listening to this and you're like, it's 60 days. And I think it's a matter of like how quickly are you following up. I often talk to people that'll do a consult and then they're like, well, I'm working with a DMC, so it took me three weeks to get back with the client to do the proposal. Well, then you're working with the wrong DMC. Like, you should be able to work with a DMC and get a proposal back within a couple of days. You should never have a consult to the proposal more than a week. We tell our advisors and we train them, all of our W2 advisors are doing consult to proposal in a three-day time span. Um, we even tell them as short as two days if it's a very simple trip and they can easily put it together. You don't want to do it like later that afternoon or the very next day because you do want some of the psychological benefits of waiting. For instance, it is human nature to believe if something takes longer, it must be more detailed and in depth. So you want to get them to wait a little bit, but you don't want them to wait a week or two weeks or three weeks because then the heat of the conversation, the excitement that you built up during the consultation, it just dissipates and it kind of goes away. And they're like, Well, if she's not uh urgent, this must not be urgent. So then when you finally give the proposal, the reality is they don't feel it anymore. You could say all day long until you're blue in the face, we gotta book these flights. The flights are gonna go up. We should book, we should lock this in. Are you ready? But you just without using your words, explain to the client that it's not important to close this fast because it took you a long time. So I think the average close cycle is probably between 40 to 60 days for most agents. I think it should be closer to two weeks. And I think if you're doing it the right way and following up in a um helpful and consistent manner, it will shorten on you quite a bit. And my goodness, is life not easier when it is short? When you can close that deal in a really short time frame, it just feels a lot better as you move through. Um, Haley, would you agree? Is that about where you say that you are with clients? Or are you like, look, people just don't make decisions quick?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it's again, like you said, there's a lot of factors in the complexity of the trip, what they're doing, who you're using for supplier DMC. Um, but agree. I if I have a consultation today, I will plan to charge fee within 24, 48 hours. Then I plan from there 48 hours of consultation or of proposal time. Um, so yeah, within a week. And then I make it very urgent to clients on that call that hey, we need to put deposit now. But I also reiterate that in a consultation. So I set expectations of, hey guys, are you ready for deposit? Do you have 20 to 30 percent to deposit on this $20,000 trip? Are we ready to go ahead and get this locked in? I think understanding where your client is with the process is gonna help you. If they're like, oh, well, we're getting a bonus in like May, and you know, okay, well, that's a whole nother conversation. What I don't want to do is put together a trip for you where we sit on this for six or eight weeks and prices are gonna change significantly. So you it's really important to, you know, get all the information that you can at the beginning so you know how to set this up for your sales process.
SPEAKER_00And we will dive much, much deeper into that conversation specifically, how to close on the proposal call, um, because that is a beautiful skill that I think you and I have both uh perfected over the years. And there's a lot of little details that go into the psychology behind getting someone ready to book after that call. It's not easy and it's definitely not the normal human nature to say, okay, let's do this, right? I think it takes a bit of buildup and a bit of skill to make that happen. Um, all right, so shortening the close cycle, and you won't know that you're shortening it unless you are really tracking it over time to understand, but also that close rate. I mean, something that was really interesting for us, which probably shouldn't have been mind-blowing. Um, but our friends and family, friends and family referral, current client, repeat clients, those sort of things, those we realized were closing at a crazy higher rate than our website leads, called in, you know, the chat leads, stuff like that. We were finding that the friends and family, the personal connections or the referrals, those are closing at about 71%, which is pretty impressive. You can't win them all. And we turn down clients quite often. So I am I'm very happy with 71%. I wouldn't expect it to be any higher because every client is not the right client. And if we had a close rate of 100%, I would actually be coaching to what we need to cut out of that process. But when you look at our website leads and you look at our called in and you look at our chat or people that respond to social media posts, when you look at the people we don't have a relationship with, that close rate goes down much lower. So we're actually at 42% right now for that. I'm still happy with it. I think it's good. But when we track close rates, we're really tracking consultation to close. When we backed it up a little bit further, it was really interesting to see our actual lead. So the lead coming onto the website to close was very, very different. Something we do for um for our agents is we'll when the leads come in, we basically schedule them directly on the agent's calendar. But our reality we were seeing is all of these leads were coming in and they weren't really being tracked to the consult, but there was a lot that were never making it to the consult. Um, and we were actually seeing that close rate was closer to 11%. So if you have a website and you're getting leads coming in those doors, you have to think about how many more of those leads you need versus that guy next door, that girl next door that wants to give you the referral that you just need to strengthen the relationship with, right? I have now been a very, very firm believer that networking is a hell of a lot easier than getting website leads. Um, and that's why I often coach to just leaving your house and what that means and how to be strategic about where you go, but leaving your house and networking because it'll make that close rate skyrocket.
SPEAKER_01Less likely to have a client not book with you and go show if you need to see them at a luncheon next week.
SPEAKER_00Or at least tell you what's wrong, right? At the very exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's fine. I mean, let me know that your parents just booked something for your family because whatever. That's but give me an answer. I need to know why this didn't work out. Um, track it properly, then move on to the next, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that was an absolute great point to bring up. You are a hell of a lot less likely to lose them due to just I don't know. And man, there's nothing that feels worse than I don't, they just stopped responding. Um, so I love that. All right, so our five big data points that we hope you guys are tracking and we think are intensely important to grow your business. The first one is when is your next follow-up for each of your leads? You need to have something that is telling you when to reach back out so you stay on track, especially once you get up to a dozen plus leads. The second is going to be lead sources and notes that go with those sources. Don't just put client referral, have a note that says which client referred them. Uh, close loss reasons so you understand why you're losing the business and where you need to improve, changes in lead counts year over year, so not just month over month, because obviously your leads in January went up from where they were in December. That's not surprising, and that does not mean you're doing good business. So you need to see this January versus last. And then last but not least, your close rate slash close cycle. How long does it take? And at what rate am I actually closing them out? So you can better understand at the end of the day, how hard do I need to work to get to six figures? Or whatever your goal is, we'll support you with whatever that is. All right, thank you guys. Anything else that we want to add to that, Haley?
SPEAKER_01No, one thing I definitely want to throw out there is for any advisor listening to this, if you feel like you are struggling with lead sources or not understanding clothes lost reasons, or you need help on your sales cycle and shortening it, go to our Facebook page, Travel Agent Guide. Um, we're using this as a resource for all advisors in the industry. Post on there what your problem point is, and we'll get in touch with you, right? We'll set up another podcast, we'll dive in more in depth, we will do a webinar or hop on a call with me and we'll talk through it. So I just wanted to throw that out there.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Well, we are Bird and Haley with Sava Travel. Uh, feel free to look us up, and we can't wait to talk to you again next week.