Selling to the top = bigger sales.  Adapted from research by The Forum Corporation,  a global leader in working place learning
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Reaching top managers, makes good sense in the lucrative corporate and group travel markets. Once inside the offices of senior executives, your chances of making larger sales over time, increases substantially. You can become a trusted partner to your clients. Just help them improve the efficiency of their travel business. But first, you have to earn the right to sell higher up the ladder

A difficult challenge
Selling to senior corporate managers is tough, requiring skill, preparation and knowledge. To be successful, you must set different objectives than most salespeople.  Focus, not only on immediate sales, but on developing a strong relationship that will be regarded as valuable by the prospect.

Do not waste opportunities
Some agents, who are determined to reach senior managers don’t know what to say when they get there. They blow their chance by treating executives like any other prospect.  Rather than working toward being valuable, they make their usual pitch, for a quick sale.

Allow yourself to be seen in a new light
Being seen, not as a vendor but as a strategic business partner is critical. Change your view, from closing deals to opening minds, from having all the answers to inviting discourse, from making a point to sparking creativity.

Achieve new awareness
Top managers look for people who can help them achieve insights and new strategies, not just solutions to previous travel problems.  Savvy agents can become partners, to be rewarded with long-term business.  To become an advisor, you need sound account strategies, planned preparation, clear insights, business sense, customer knowledge and great communication skills.  

Three necessary skills
To build good relationships with senior management do three things very well:

• Conduct your first conversation as if you were in a job interview for partnership.

• Prepare a strategy for questioning, that is tailored to the organization and customer.  

• Offer informative insights into the future

• Help them achieve insights and strategies, not just solutions to predefined problems.

• Treat initial conversations as if they were interviews for the job as business partner. 

• Prepare a questioning strategy tailored to the company and the potential customer.

• Offer information about future trends.

• Educate them about their industry’s issues.

Conversation is critical
Travel agents with long-term relationships, understand how to talk to senior managers. They listen actively, hear what they say, and probe their reasoning and experiences. 

Although passionate about their own ideas, they are open to the customer’s ideas. They:

• Engage the client’s interest, and draw them into productive, in-depth conversations. 

• Educate them, beyond products and services, with trends and business issues.

• Enlighten the client about possibilities, and are a catalyst for innovating ideas. 

Being a business partner
High-performing travel agents go beyond closing deals. They become people to call on when needed, for information, advice or to use as a sounding board. They help clients dismiss old assumptions and create new value.    

Their conversations make clients say, “I never thought of doing it that way before.”  

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