• Do your prospective clients “shop you” and then book elsewhere?
• Have you worked hours on a clients’ itinerary only to be told “no”?
• Do you follow up on client’s request and can never get hold of him/her?
• Have you needed to justify charging a service fee to a client?
• Have you had a potential client refuse to pay a Consultation or Service fee?

Customers would not dream of doing the above with an attorney, a doctor or an architect. Right? We are professional Consultants too. So, why does this happen to us? And what can we do to prevent it?

A client-Consultant relationship begins with a commitment to work together. So, we need to gain a commitment (and deposit or consultation fee) from the client to work together on his behalf before putting in hours of labor in vain. Gaining that commitment requires establishing credibility and building the clients trust in our ability to fulfill his needs and exceed his expectations.

In this highly interactive session, Tara introduces her 3-Step Travel Consulting Method which addresses the top two challenges that Travel Consultants face today:

• How do we get a commitment from the client before putting in hours of labor only to be
  told “I found it elsewhere”?
• How do we handle the issue of charging a Consultation Fee?

She says, “For Consultants, purchasing the product should be about when not if. So, the Travel Consulting Method is far more appropriate for today’s travel environment than the traditional Sales Cycle….where we are giving away our advice and expertise for FREE! And as Consultants aren’t we supposed to be selling our advice and expertise?” In this session she explores how articulating and demonstrating the value Travel Consultants bring to the client is critical to building a client-Consultant relationship which allows us to collect a deposit or consultation fee, from the client before putting in hours of labor. Tara shares techniques how we can build the client’s confidence in our ability to build the perfect vacation experience for him, so the Consultation fee is a pre-requisite for receiving our entire range of our services.

Tara Gupta, President of Comprehensive Training Solutions’, vision is to constantly raise the bar of knowledge, skills and abilities of Travel professionals in a dynamically changing environment where prospective clients recognize the true value of their services. She believes that a Travel Professional works on behalf of the client and is responsible for the time and money the client invests on their vacation. As a trainer, Tara’s goal is to train Travel Professionals to build life long client relationships by providing them more fun, more knowledge, more skills, more abilities and more creativity in doing their jobs so they can exceed goals and WOW the customer at every interaction!