Charismatic presenter Lorna Richards explains the "whole mind" approach to sales
Lorna took participants through a series of activities to demonstrate the whole mind technique
Jaime Plant from Flight Centre, Summerhill
Lorraine Rose of Sears Travel Markville Centre
Leya Kiloh of Gogo Worldwide Vacations chats with Flight Centre's David Gayle & Katrina Shuttlesworth
Sandals must be one of the best known brands in the travel industry – almost everyone you speak to has a story about their Luxury Included Vacations. Those stories are part of what makes the brand special, and according to Sandals' trainer, Lorna Richards, they’re also what will ultimately help agents sell Sandals.
Attendance at Sandals’ annual training sessions is mandatory to maintain status as a Certified Sandals Specialist – that and a nominal booking requirement of 1 vacation sold per year. So, it wasn’t surprising that the Toronto session was full: the others throughout the country were too.
An engaging and charismatic presenter, Lorna introduced the idea of using a personal “Sandals Story” to relate to customers at a recent workshop entitled Mind Your Own Business. Borrowing heavily from concepts introduced by bestselling business author Daniel Pink, this was not a cookie-cutter training session. Instead, we were encouraged to rethink our approach entirely.
The focus of the 1st half of the morning was on how to make a personal connection with your clients and how to determine what they want from their holiday, instead of a straight-up Sandals information session.
We learned that top agents no longer think of themselves as fact providers or consider their role to find the cheapest price – success is a result of differentiating oneself by designing vacation experiences that are right for one’s clients (do they love golf and running on the beach? Or is gambling their favourite thing in the world? Do they love casual dining or are they looking for a romantic retreat?) We learned that knowing what our clients truly want to get out of their vacation is just as important as knowing the product itself.
As far as training sessions go, this indirect approach was novel to me, and also new to the more experienced agents in the room. Flight Centre’s Jaime Plant explained that, like most product training, past workshops had focused on the Sandals properties and features. Although extremely helpful, an engaged agent would know much of the information or be able to find it quickly on the Sandals website. This recent session was clearly different from previous years.
Different is sometimes good. And the agents at the YTO event all seemed to find it an entertaining and very useful approach. One Sandal’s Specialist, Lorraine Rose from Sears Travel, Markville Centre, explained that the sessions are always inspirational and the trainers are always top-notch. But she couldn’t help telling me that our presenter, Lorna Richards, is the “best of the best”. Lorraine thought we were lucky to get Lorna... and Lorraine should know - she’s been going to Sandals Specialist workshops every year since 1996.
I had to agree; the workshop was excellent. Since I was there to write about the event, I had no intentions of staying for as long as I did, but the session was captivating and useful for me as a new agent, too!
