As we gear up to handle the pent-up demand for travel, can I suggest a $50 marketing investment that I guarantee will bring a minimum of $10,000 in sales to your agency? In all industries, sales are driven by being at the top of the customer’s mind when they are thinking of buying. Are you? For that $50 I mentioned, you can definitely find a place toward the top.  Ready for this low-cost piece of high-tech?

It’s the business card!

Like travel agents, they are NOT…

Marketing is about winning new clients and keeping old ones: from the first we achieve growth and from the second stability.  The business trinity of marketing, sales and customer service is oriented to accomplishing exactly those objectives. Smart marketing, relationship sales and good customer service should combine to ensure continual growth.

If only it was that easy.

Unfortunately, we have a hole in our bucket. It may be true it costs five times more to win a new customer than to keep an old one, but somehow or another, despite our best attempts, we lose customers. Some, of course, we lose to the inevitabilities of life and circumstance, but others we lose to something far more insidious:…

Even by my standards, today’s article may sound a bit edgy. Good. If it serves as a whack in the head and gets you off the bench and back in the game, then I am sticking to my guns.

The reference to “drinking the Kool-Aid” stems from the Jim Jones tragedy in Jonestown, Guyana back in 1978. Over 900 cult followers lost their lives after believing the words of the wrong guy. They played “follow the leader” to their demise. And in this case, the leader was less than squared away.

I’m afraid that many of you reading this article, and a great many who are not reading it, are listening to information that is not helping you get back in the game of…