How to Avoid Giving Away Your Services for Free

One of the biggest struggles all travel agents have is with “clients” who call you up, spend lots of time picking your brain, and then disappear to book their own travel.

And let’s just call that what it is – it’s theft. They have stolen your precious time. Chances are they didn’t do it maliciously, or even knowingly, they probably don’t even understand how you get paid and if they did understand, most people wouldn’t do it because most people are good and caring. But it still hurts you and your business, and it’s frustrating!

So let’s start by forgiving people for their ignorance, and then move onto making sure it never happens to you again.

And, the good news is that there is an easy way to make sure it doesn’t happen again and I’m going to tell you how in today’s Travel Expert Insider Video.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Travel Agent!

If you don’t want to waste your time doing a bunch of research for a client only to have them book it themselves or go with someone else, stay tuned, cause I’m gonna show you exactly how to avoid that pitfall.

The secret to avoiding the free work pitfall is to formalize their commitment in working with you.

So when you’re talking with a perspective client and they want to go ahead and use your services, you then need to formalize that commitment before you proceed.

And you should do that by having them sign an agreement, an agreement that you’re going to do a certain amount of work for them, and then they’re going to pay you a planning or consulting fee, ideally.

But, even if you don’t charge those that you know that they were going to book with you or if they don’t book with you, there’s some sort of a fee that they pay for the work that you did.

So there needs to be a signed a formal agreement.

Now, when you’re just getting started, if you are not quite ready to start charging planning fees or consulting fees and you don’t yet want to do a cancellation fee because you are new.

You’re just getting your feet wet.

And you just want to get some clients you know, in the door and you don’t have any barriers to entry.

You still need to have them sign a service agreement because that in and of itself is going to get them more committed to following through and booking that trip with you.

Even if there isn’t a consequence If they don’t end up booking with you – like a fee or something that they have to pay – just signing that agreement will increase the chances that they follow through with the process.

Now, you can just do a really simple service agreement.

You could even do it online so that they don’t have to, like, print it and sign it and scan it.

You could make it super simple, but you do need to formalize their commitment in working with you before you spend any time working for them.

You gotta have a formalized agreement and that will save you so much time and energy and frustration of clients that make you work, work, work, work, work and then they just go book it themselves.  

For more great tips like this and the seven-layer foundation that you need in your travel business in order to consistently attract those new ideal clients to you come to my upcoming free class. 

You can go to JoinTravelAcademy.com to get details and get registered.

In that free class, you’re gonna get a lot of information on how to have a really profitable and fun travel business.

So I hope to see you soon!