Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Enhancing Client Relationships with Exceptional Care
Unlock the secrets to exceptional customer service in the travel industry with insider tips from Sarah Caminiti, host of the "Epical Growth" podcast. Sarah takes us on a fascinating journey through her extensive career, from managing VIP car rentals in Europe to her pivotal role as a travel agent for AAA. Learn how asking the right questions and understanding clients' needs can craft unforgettable travel experiences, and discover why these skills are invaluable even in her current tech industry role.
We also dive into the nuances of providing personalized travel recommendations and the importance of building trust with clients. Sarah shares compelling stories that showcase the transformative impact a knowledgeable travel advisor can have, from suggesting unique upgrades to creating memorable vacations. By treating clients with exceptional care and respect, you'll see how excellent customer service can lead to lasting loyalty and powerful word-of-mouth referrals. Tune in to elevate your travel business and foster enduring client relationships.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? We're really excited to have Sarah Cominetti be our guest today on the Travel Masters podcast. She's the host of a podcast of her own called oh golly, I just lost it Epical Growth. Is that correct, sarah?
Speaker 2:You nailed it. Yes, yes, I am. I am so happy to be here. Thank you very much for having me and yeah, I'm the host of Epical Growth. It is a podcast where I get the opportunity to celebrate really incredible leaders that are daring to lead the way that they always wanted to lead, and meeting some great people along the way. But that hasn't been where I've been for most of my life. This is brand new, and I started my career in travel, which is why I was so excited to come on this podcast.
Speaker 2:I ran the VIP section of a European car rental company for a couple of years and then I was picked up by one of my clients when I put in my notice and did a side hustle for 10 years as the rate coordinator for his business. It was just him and his son, and they're still in business. Gamut LaKite Hi, it was just him and his son, and they're still in business. Gamut LaKite Hi, bob Bester, but they're out in Oregon, never met them in person still, and they're some of the most wonderful people. And then I was an actual travel agent for AAA for a little while and loved that. But my heart is in creating a really cool customer experience creating a really cool customer experience, and I now build and lead teams in the tech space for customer success, customer experience any corner of it, starting from bootstrap startups all the way up to biotech, where I am now leading the US customer service team for Abcam and getting to meet a lot of really cool people along the way, so I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're glad you're here. This is going to be so much fun. Sarah, you know what it's like to be a solopreneur travel advisor out there, an independent consultant, an independent contractor to a host agency. Maybe You're not only the travel advisor, you're also the head customer service guy.
Speaker 2:Yes, you are.
Speaker 1:Right, tell us about that. What sort of things could you share with our folks that might help them to improve the way they do that particular piece and the importance of that particular piece as well? Let me not say that, but let me let you tell us what the importance is of all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think that's why I always loved the travel industry so much because you were able to produce proof that you were listening and that you valued them enough that you wanted them to have the most incredible moment of their lives. And they trusted you with that, which is a huge, huge responsibility, because travel is not cheap and, especially if folks are coming into services like AAA, this is probably a really big deal and you have to be respectful of that. And to have the honor to be the person that gets to guide them on this journey, so that you can take a couple things off their plate and they can actually just enjoy this break from their life for a little bit, was just such a joy. It was such a joy and it plays exactly into everything that I do currently in customer experience, because you have to listen, you have to pause, ask questions, you can't make assumptions, because if you make assumptions, you could be putting somebody on a safari trip when actually they just really wanted to read a book on the beach and that is a cool thing to put somebody through. So it was an opportunity to just really start to hone in my skills of how do I formulate questions to get to what this person actually wants, when they don't usually about how to come up with the right terms for what you want, when you really just want somebody to to navigate that and do it in a way that is also selling something, which was different than where I had done customer support in the past, before I joined the many different travel angles that I found myself in.
Speaker 2:But I ended up winning the New England sales pitch for Dale Carnegie through my journeys there. But it was because I just paid attention and I gave them time and I valued their success. And if you're rushing through it and you're making the person on the other end feel like you've got other things to do, that you don't wanna Google something for them, that them asking this question for the 80th time because they've never been on an airplane and they're terrified is the just most annoying thing any person could do to another human being, then you are not in the right profession. But if you just take it all in, put yourself in their shoes and curate an experience that you would be pumped to go on if you were them looking for what it is that they're looking for, then you're just getting to have fun every day and I had a blast.
Speaker 1:You just opened up so many different avenues of conversation, sarah. It's incredible. The fact is, what you just described was the whole discovery part of the sales process, where you've got to find out what it is they want and why they want it. But the thing that I keep trying to remind folks is that we're not just taking an order. No, this is not. This is not. I want to go to Walt Disney World from day one to day five and we want to stay here. Put me together some oh, I hate this word quotes.
Speaker 2:The quotes oh I hate that word.
Speaker 1:What are you doing? I love a quote. I love a quote.
Speaker 2:It puts it all together for options, and then I have something to build off of.
Speaker 1:I would do hundreds of them. I agree, I just want to call it something else.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Let's call it a recommendation instead of a quote.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that one.
Speaker 1:What do you do when you get a quote? You get a quote for a new roof on your house. The first thing you think is hmm, I got one quote, I better go get another one so I can compare them. Yep Right.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Well, the last thing I want as a travel agent is for them to go find another travel agent to get another quote from this them to go find another travel agent to get another quote from this. Is very true, but that is an opportunity to build trust.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely. But the fact is you and I can take a trip and the pieces of it and twist or just manipulate one or two little numbers somewhere or another and always come up with a lower price. Very true, so it can't be about price, it's got to be about apples to apples and all that. Anyhow, I like to call them recommendations.
Speaker 2:I like recommendations too.
Speaker 1:So I want to take that whole Q word out of the dictionary. Anyhow, it really does come down to learning what it is they really really want, because I think our job is to help people get what they want, whatever that might be. I've got a client that's got the best line in the world and I love it to death. She says look, my job is to help you have the best vacation you've ever had in your entire life, so all you have to do is show up and have fun and I'll handle all the rest.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's a dream. That's why you go there in the first place. There's so many resources out there now for you to go down rabbit holes and build things yourself, but if you can have someone that actually has a little bit of knowledge, which, as any sort of customer service, sales, whatever it is you want to call it the actual gold that you offer to the people that you get to interact with is knowledge, because knowledge is power, and even if your quote or your recommendation is a little bit more, if you have educated them as to why it is a little bit more, then it doesn't matter, because you're proving your value.
Speaker 2:It's actually there's this place and it's having this really great sale right now. I had three clients go there last year and they could not stop talking about the eggs Benedict at breakfast. It was like nothing they'd ever had before and they have this really cool place for the kids and it just was a lovely experience. They were taken off, they were taken by surprise from it. It is about $50 a night more than this budget place, and that is the place I usually do recommend people to go to, because I think it's a lovely place as well. But this one has just been shining so much brighter and I think they're really on to something.
Speaker 2:I would love to talk to you more about this place. Then it's not like, oh, they're trying to throw in, you know, the kitchen sink. It's no, this person cares enough that they want me to have not the budget experience, they want me to have that four and a half star experience that I can't afford. And it's just the smile on people's faces when you get to talk to them about these aspirational vacations that are actually in their reach. It still gives me the chills just thinking about, because you're kind of like you are someone that is granting wishes.
Speaker 1:Yeah totally, and there's so many situations, especially in travel nowadays, where in reality, the traveler does not even know what's possible. Yes, they don't even know what they could have. So if all you're going to do is take an order, heck, they don't realize they could supersize it and I know that has negative connotations in today's world nowadays.
Speaker 2:But that's not on vacations.
Speaker 1:But it's the truth. They don't realize they could get that better stateroom on the boat with a balcony for just a few more dollars per person per night. They have no idea that that even exists, probably, and it's not anything wrong with them. It's just the fact that that's not their world, that's not their profession, and most folks who engage business with us they don't either. They may not want to, but they also may want to, but just don't have time to do all the research and do all the work and to take the years that it took for a good travel advisor to learn what it is that is available and what they could have.
Speaker 2:So you know it all goes right back to what you said at the beginning, sarah listening and asking the right questions the beginning, sarah, listening and asking the right questions, no, and you touched on something, too, that I think is really important to acknowledge.
Speaker 2:As a travel agent, you have the opportunity to build relationships with other businesses, and when I was a travel agent, I was getting married and I was planning my honeymoon, and because of the relationships that I had built in a short period of time with some of these really incredible locations and hotels and companies like that, I was able to get that like five plus plus plus star experience at a couple of places, because I knew somebody and and we had built a rapport and they and we respected one another and uh, and so they were excited to be able to do this for me, and I would never have been able to have an experience like that if I hadn't had the opportunity to find a connection.
Speaker 2:Are somebody that goes on vacation a couple of times a year, why the heck are you supposed to be having a relationship with the guy that does the rates for the cruise ship that you went on seven years ago and you're now going back Like that's, that's not, that's not going to happen, but the travel agent who books 10 to 15% of the people that go on that very cruise ship, because she has such a good relationship with the people there, is able to say this is, this is jim's 40th birthday.
Speaker 2:This is this is a huge surprise for his family. If there's anything extra that you think that he would like, these are his favorite things. This is his favorite sports team all those little, tiny, tiny things. Yes, and then you know what, even if they just have a darn baseball cap with the sports team sitting on the bed for him that says happy birthday, jim. That will be a birthday that he will talk about for years, and that travel agent will be the person that he talks about for years, and so that's why word of mouth is so important, and the key is to get to that point.
Speaker 1:What does the travel agent have to do to get to that point? You have to ask the questions and listen. That discovery part of the sales process is so important because every recommendation you make has to be informed by what you learned. If you didn't take the time to ask those questions and learn all of that information, you wouldn't be able to provide that exceptional experience. And they can go online and book a trip.
Speaker 2:Yes, they can and they will.
Speaker 2:If they get that order placed for them the first time that they go to a travel agent.
Speaker 2:They will never go back to a travel agent, and I think that that is something that's relevant in any industry right now especially, I'm coming from the SaaS industry, and so there's a lot of businesses that do pretty much the exact same thing, but there's just a couple little deviations, and in my last role, I was able to build a customer experience team from scratch, and it ended up being the number one reason why people paid a premium because of the customer experience.
Speaker 2:And that's the goal, because if you think about it in terms of time and money and if you start saying I don't have time for this or I can't do this, you're forgetting that. If you mess this up, and then that person is stranded and they didn't get the trip insurance that they should have gotten even though half of them are a scam, but the other half are really great and you get them with the good ones, and then you're on the phone to all of these different places. You are spending hours trying to write this wrong that you did because you, you know, went around a couple of corners the first time around and it ends up taking up so much time and now you've lost a customer, and that customer is going to tell everybody that you did not provide them the service that they need, and it's such an easy thing to forget that following the golden rule is actually like the number one way to be a really, really memorable and entrusted partner in whatever it is that you are going on a journey with with your client.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, it actually works.
Speaker 2:It does.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. It is, it is absolutely amazing. And what is it that? The golden rule is I want to treat you the way I would want to be treated Yep. And then the platinum is I want to treat you the way you want to be treated. Oh, I like that one. I do too, but both are equally.
Speaker 1:You know great concepts to remember and to keep in mind, and it's so easy to have all the other things that are pushing and pulling on you in the world to get in the way. I've got a mortgage to pay, I've got a light bill to pay. I'm not sure where the money's going to come from for the kid's tuition this month, all those kind of things, and I know it's hard to turn that stuff, stuff off. But if that gets in your eyes and in your mind and in your head when you're talking to a prospect, they can see it, sarah, they can feel it. We all do. We all do when it, when I know it's more important for that that person on the other end to make a sale that it is for me to get what I need. I don't have much time for that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that it's because not only now are you feeling bad for the person on the other end, because no one wants to be entering into these conversations with that level of stress.
Speaker 2:So maybe the company that they work for is toxic, maybe there's stuff going on in their life that's not awesome and when I'm on those phone calls, I end up losing focus of what my goal is and just try to make this as painless as possible for the person on the other end.
Speaker 2:And when I'm a customer and I am putting my time and my money and my trust in a stranger to help me in any capacity, then if I'm only focusing on making it bearable for the person on the other end, then I'm forgetting to advocate for myself. And I came into this because it was something that I'm going to purchase for either myself or my family or something like that. And and so you'll probably end up either buying something you don't want, regretting it and canceling it Hopefully you can do that, but or you say I can't do this right now, and then life happens and you just end up getting something on Amazon, or you just end up going, you know, on a website and grabbing those flights because, like it just left a weird taste in your mouth. So, yeah, you have to have the right headspace, and I think that's another reason why pausing and just kind of taking a moment when you're having those conversations with customers is so important, because you're kind of taking yourself out of it for a sec.
Speaker 2:And you're actually looking at the person in front of you or on the phone. You're acknowledging the situation, you're analyzing the situation and the discovery part of it which adheres to travel, but it also is for troubleshooting. Any sort of conversation with a customer is really the only piece that makes any sense and matters and works in the long run.
Speaker 2:Because if you don't do that well and you start going through like the standard ways of value selling and you're getting through there to try to prove your value, you've already disproved your value. You've already lost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've already lost, that's for sure. Step one, like it's goneproved your value. You've already lost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've already lost, that's for sure. Step one Like it's gone. And cut your losses.
Speaker 1:Oh, incredible. Sarah. Before we run out of time, there's one question I wanted to ask you. You've been hosting a podcast now for a while. One of the things that I've figured out is doing over I guess 300 and some odd episodes of podcasts. I doing over I guess 300 and some odd episodes of podcasts. I learned more from doing this than most anything else I do nowadays. What's the one thing you might think of that you've learned from hosting your podcast that might be of some use to our audience out there today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the one thing that I have learned this has been a huge journey for me, a very unexpected journey to have this podcast is to listen to the universe and to give yourself the opportunity to try, and what I've learned from my guests is really cool. Things happen when you try. But I've also learned from my guests and I'm not answering your question well, because you said one thing and I'm going to give you 20, but we're all afraid to try. Something that we can't validate or verify is going to work, and especially in leadership, or especially in a business venture, if it's never been done before to your knowledge, you're usually a little bit more hesitant to do it especially as a woman, I think so and to give a space to leaders that are trusting their guts and in their small little world, in their little corner, they're trying things and hearing that it works and that it is sustainable and scalable. And that it is sustainable and scalable and including your team in conversations and being a valuable resource to your team and being transparent all of those things that, as companies scale, they lose because they think that they have to and you don't Proves to those folks that are starting out in leadership wait a second.
Speaker 2:I don't have to be like everything I've seen in leadership. Wait a second. I don't have to be like everything I've seen. I can be a kind leader. I can change the way that we do this, and it is actually driving revenue, because my customers feel it in every interaction that they have with my team and it's really wonderful to see this community take the time to share with me, go out of their comfort zone Most of them have never been on a podcast before their experiences and in doing so, they plant a seed, and that seed is for change and it's a really, really powerful thing. Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1:That is just so cool. Sarah, you're right on target there. I agree wholeheartedly. It is amazing. Leaders are not born, they're made. You're right on target there. I agree wholeheartedly. It is amazing. Leaders are not born, they're made. And if you oh, we could talk about that one for another hour and I'm not going to go there you can just have me on my show and we can talk about it there.
Speaker 1:Perfect, Would love to do that. Would absolutely love to Sarah. Thank you so much for being on the Travel Masters podcast today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad that I'm here. Thank you for having me. I hope you have a really lovely day.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you too, and for everybody else out there. Hey, go talk about your business. Go meet somebody you haven't met before and ask them what they do. And when they say, gee, what do you do? Make sure you got that answer. You can make a difference in somebody's life today. Get out there and have a great time. I'll see you again next time right here on the Travel Masters podcast. My name is Morris Sims. See you then.