Use this as a sample client interaction to help you work your way through a successfully planned trip.
INQUIRY: A client, Adam Smith, inquires about a trip to Las Vegas with his family of four.
YOUR SALES FUNNEL: You'll get inquiries via email, social media messages, and phone. This step takes a significant amount of time and either gets you a client or nothing. Jess has email templates and keyboard shortcuts on her phone ready for quick and easy answering.
SELL YOURSELF AND SET BOUNDARIES: Explain your service fees, how you work, and that you'll be asking for a 100% payment to get started. Why 100%? Because we've already made the mistake for you, and charged 50% and watched client's disappear once they get your hard work. Explain exactly what you do and do not do for them. Either tell them to book their own flights or offer to book them for them for a fee to be determined by you. Typically around $20-$50/ticket. Jess doesn't book flights, there's no money in it, just hassle. She also doesn't negotiate service fees.
DIRECT INVOICE FOR YOUR SERVICE FEE: Send the client an invoice for 100% via Traveljoy (in order to do this, skip forward to step 5 to set up file first) or any other payment method like paypal, quickbooks, zelle, square or venmo. Jess finds it easier to NOT use Traveljoy for this, because you'll end up with client files for a bunch of people who don't end up paying.
FILE IN TRAVELJOY: Now that you officially have a client, create a "trip" in Traveljoy, name it something like Smith Vegas Trip [year]. Add all four members (including children) into the trip as travelers. There is a good tutorial on this on Traveljoy under "help". At Jess, when we receive commissions, we search via the traveler name. So, adding ALL travelers is important.
INTERVIEW: After payment, you'll want to get the deets on your client. You can conduct a phone interview utilizing a list of questions to get to know what they like and dislike, and any custom options/needs they have. You can also create a form (Traveljoy is a good place to start). This is something you will perfect as you go. Re-explain the overall process, so they understand next steps. Verify overall itinerary (cities they will be staying in) and ask how much they'd like to spend on lodging and activities, so you don't spend time researching things they won't approve. Jess believes the follow up questions are key. She sends a form to fill out and follows up with a phone call.
RESEARCH: Start researching on the web things to do in Las Vegas. Jess recommends visiting Frommers' blogs, and other sites using search terms like "things to do in Las Vegas" or "Las Vegas Itinerary" to get a feel as to what your options are. There is no point in reinventing the wheel. You can always add your flair, and the client's custom needs. This should take you some time at first, but you'll get much faster once you've done similar itineraries over and over. Depending on your client, you can also head to our list of preferred companies and see if any of them offer packages/tours in that destination. Jess doesn't work on fine details, like specific hotels, until the itinerary is set is stone and flights are booked. There is nothing worse than redoing research when locations change or flights are better one day off than originally thought.
PROPOSAL: Create a proposal (or two if you want to give them options) in Traveljoy or Travefy (if you have an account there). Jess has used Google Slides to create a quick presentation in the past also. Or, you can do this in plain email by sending links to what you are proposing. Depending on the portal you plan to use, some create a proposal email for you (usually the package and tour companies) and some lend themselves to copying links into your own email (usually the piecemeal companies, like Expedia and Viator). Email the proposal. Set a time to speak with the client to go over the proposal. Clear at least a half hour. Jess requires a call within a few days of proposal delivery. In this time, you should make as many changes as you can "live" with the client on the phone. Trust me, this saves you a ton of back and forth later.
SUPPLIER INVOICE: Upon proposal approval, create a Traveljoy invoice for the items they selected. Make sure it's a "Supplier" invoice and not a "Direct Payment" one. This should be itemized and functions as them giving you the "OK" to charge their provided card for all of the items on the invoice. This is also where you will document commissions later on. Jess makes this before the call in hopes that she can send it to them at the end of the call and wait for them to send it back immediately. This prevents a delay in booking which prevents something being sold out.
BOOKING: Book the trip individually, with each supplier via their portal. Remember to make sure both Jess.Travel and yourself are registered and approved for that supplier. Immediately after, verify you got the confirmation email, add these confirmation numbers and commissions into their Traveljoy trip via the supplier invoice you created, and forward the confirmation emails to your itinerary creator (Traveljoy, Trip It, Travefy, etc). You should also label these emails in your Gmail or whatever email account you use. It's good to keep all correspondence in one place. Jess requires no distractions at this time.
INSURANCE: Offer Travel insurance to your client. Call an insurance provider from the portal list (our preferred agency is Travelsafe) and give the details of the Smith trip to them. They will create a quote. Pass that info to the client. If they accept, book the insurance for them or direct them to book it. If they decline, make sure to send them a form via Traveljoy having them sign off that they are rejecting insurance. You can do this with a normal email as well. Learn from Jess....do this immediately after the first booking to ensure you don't miss out on certain timelines for certain policies.
FINAL ITINERARY: Create a document with all the info day by day for the client. Include times/dates/confirmation numbers etc. This is what the client will use to execute your itinerary. The low tech way is to do this inside an email. Another low tech way is to do this in a Word or google document. The best ways we've found is to use slightly higher tech options using apps like Traveljoy, Tripit , or Travefy. You already pay for Traveljoy. Tripit is free and Travefy is $39/month... however it's much prettier. All allow the client to view their itinerary offline without internet.
Traveljoy offers an itinerary that is easy to use. You essentially convert the proposal your client approved by adding confirmation pdf's and detailed info and POOF! It's not perfect, but it's quick and looks ok. Jess loves this new feature...
Jess used Tripit. To use TripIt, simply send your client’s travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com. TripIt will then automatically create a detailed, easy-to-follow itinerary for the trip. This includes hotel, airline, car rental and restaurant reservations. You will also receive directions, maps and weather for each destination. This works great, but is very time consuming and looks awful.
Google Trips (now called Google Travel) is also an app that works a lot like TripIt. We have never used it, but it's free and has some really cool features. It seems to be a really cool way to do destination research too. Check it out.
To use, Travefy see demos on their youtube page. It costs $39/month. You will have to post each activity/flight/hotel in manually, but you probably already did this earlier at the proposal stage above. They will receive directions, maps, weather, restaurant reviews and general city guide info.
DELIVERY: Send your final itinerary to your clients, get your overall "thumb's up," get ready to explain things that are unclear, and make final changes. Send a final travel planning fees direct invoice to the client via a Traveljoy, paypal, or venmo etc if there are outstanding charges. Jess tries to do this ASAP....especially for those flip-floppers.
HANDOFF: After payment, your client is ready to travel. Inform them that the trip is now their's and you are forwarding all of the confirmation emails for their reference or that they are included within the itinerary. Instruct them to print everything as a back up and to read everything carefully as some items require a printed ticket and some are ok with mobile barcode. Remember, you are NOT a 24/7 Concierge. The client needs to understand the trip, and knows they'll be making last minute changes (not you), unless they ask nicely. Jess tries to mandate this, but it can be difficult.
SURVEY: Follow up with them post trip to see how it went. Ask for a review or pictures from their trip you can share on your own social media for promotion.