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The Travel Professional’s Guide To

The Travel Professional’s Guide toSelling Travel With HumourSteve Crowhurst, CTCPage 1

THE SELLING TRAVEL STORE COACHING PROGRAMTo help you get the maximum benefit from your purchase. The Selling Travel Storeoffers a free coaching session with the author of the e-Guide. The coaching sessionslast for up to one-hour and are conducted via Skype. Once you have read through andstudied this eGuide jot down any questions, challenges you have, then email tosteve@sellingtravel.net to arrange a coaching date and time.Be sure to take advantage of this offer!The Travel Professional’s Guide to Selling Travel With Humour 2015 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co. All rightsreserved. Printed in Canada. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwisewhatsoever without written permission or authorization through payment of a Permission to Copy fee (except in thecase of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews) . For information please contact SMP Training Co.steve@sellingtravel.net or call 250-738-0064.Protected by the Canadian Copyright Act.For general information on SMP publications and services please email:steve@sellingtravel.netIllustrations by Steve Crowhurst.Limit of liability/disclaimer of warranty: SMP Training Co., publisher and the author make no representations orwarranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim allwarranties, including without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be createdor extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable forevery situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author is not engaged in renderinglegal or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professionalperson should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from. The factthat an organisation or website is referred to in this work as a citation and / or potential source of further informationdoes not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information, the organisation or website may provideor recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work mayhave changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.Page 2

143454849515253IntroductionTypes of HumourMore Types of Humour x 20Humourosity VelocitySelling With a SmileBlended HumourPersonal One-on-One HumourSeeding Your DeskHumour in eMailsHumour in Auto Responder MessagesHumour in On-Hold MessagesHumour on the TelephoneHumour at the Meet & GreetSMILE MARKETING Blogging Cartoons Comics / Books Conversations Images Jokes Mascots Postcards Posters Quotations Slogans Stories Tin Signs Trick Shots Videos – Yours/Theirs 50 Shades of HEY!545455TOOLS & HOW TO MS Word Background Remover565758 Garfield Comic Strip CreatorSnag ItAbout The Author Marvel Comic Strip and Book CreatorPage 3

IntroductionYes, it’s true! Customers love to do business with a happy and smiling (for the right reasons)salesperson. They also like humourous anecdotes, articles, cartoons, mascots, images and videosrelated to the “joys” of travelling.Your humourosity (new word!) can come first hand from your own experiences and also 2 nd and3rd hand from your clients and friends of clients and even what you find online, in books andelsewhere such as your preferred suppliers.The first step in the right direction would be to create a folder and label it Humour or Fun andunder that heading you can create additional folders labelled Images, Videos, Jokes, Air, Rail,Hotel and any other title that takes your fancy.An image is worth a thousand chuckles as it were and both an image and video beat out pages oftext to tell a shaggy dog story. On the other hand, some clients love those long missives with acrazy ending. Somewhere in the mix you will find out what makes your clients laugh and thenyou’ll be wise in selecting what you send them to attract their attention.The next step is to understand yourself a little more and to ascertain whether or not you are ahumourous person. Your friends and work colleagues will tell you, your clients too. It comes outusually in the form of, “Oh, you’re too funny!” or, “I have to say, you have a dry sense of humour ”or, you might receive a response to your email or text with an icon such as a Smiley dude orInternet slang such as: LOL Laughing Out Loud (not so much the old hand written meaning ofLots of Love as some think it to be). Then you have LMAO "Laugh(ing) My Ass Off" and ROTFL orROFL “Roll(ing) On The Floor Laughing” – and then there’s always this fella :)A key to using humour in sales and marketing is knowing when you are too blue, over the top,offensive and / or just downright rude. This I call humourosity velocity and we’ll take a hard lookat this later in the guide.Think about past travel situations you have experienced. So what did happen and was it funny?If it was, then you have something new and humorous to post to your clients.Okay it’s time to get busy and find out how you too can sell more travel using humour as a salesand marketing foundation and that should have you laughing all the way to the bank.LOL!Steve Crowhurst.Page 4

TYPES OF HUMOURThe type of humour we’re talking about in this guide is the happy humour! Humour that makesyou and your clients chuckle, feel good, warm up to you and even pass on the humour tosomeone else. We don’t go near the type of humour that’s used when being critical of others,being sarcastic and embarrassing others by joking openly about them. It’s always a good thing tolisten to yourself when being humourous or about to be humourous and looking around, makingsure no one in the room or in your presence will be offended.Here’s four Humour Styles you’ll need to know about so that you can judge your clientsacceptance of one or more of the twenty variations of humour that’s coming up on the next page.Affiliative humor: this style of humour is often used in selling whether the agent knows they areusing it or not. Some people are naturally humourous and “do this” as just part of their day. It isused to enhance one’s relationships with others in a benevolent, positive manner. Travel agentshigh in this style of humour often use humor as a way to charm and amuse others, ease tensionamong others, and improve customer relationships. These agents are more often spontaneousin their joke telling, frequently participate in witty repartee, puns and enjoy laughing with others.Self-enhancing humor: this style is also excellent for building rapport with clients. Having theability to laugh at yourself, your travel circumstances and your life in general in a constructive,non-detrimental manner. This type of humor is often used as a type of coping or emotionregulating humor in which you and your clients look on the bright side of a bad situation - travelor otherwise.Aggressive humor is a style of humor that is potentially detrimental towards others. This type ofhumor is characterized by the use of sarcasm, put-downs, teasing, criticism, ridicule, and used atthe expense of others.Self-defeating humor is the style of humor characterized by the use of potentially detrimentalhumor towards yourself in order to gain approval from others or it can come from how one wasraised.Where do you think your clients fit into the above four styles?Page 5

Humourosity Velocity is the speed at which you can generate humour within aselling situation that enhances the communication and helps close the sale.The art of Humourosity Velocity is based on your ability to bring forth a humourous comment,pun, clean joke etc., that fits the situation right now and causes the customer to smile, nod, laughoutright or end up on the floor giggling like there’s no tomorrow.Listen to yourself the next time you are with a client. Listen to them. Listen to other travel agentsin your agency and again when you are amongst people engaged in conversation. Listen for thehumour. Most times it’s missing. Other times you’ll be surprised at how some sales peopleintroduce it into their selling situation. When you are the customer, look for the humour.As always, “you, me and we” stay away from political, racial and religious humour. There’senough going on in the travel trade that’s funny from the get go. You can search for that onlinetoo.Client: Have you ever stayed in a cheap and nasty hotel?TA: Well yes I have, and the room was so small Client: It was, how small was it?TA: Well, when I put the key in the door, I broke the bedroom window!Hokey I know, but hey, that was from a Bob Hope skit. Who is Bob Hope? Well you can Googlehim too. From Bob Hope to Jerry Seinfeld to any other current comedian you can borrow someof their material without a concern – unless you intend to do stand up in their home town! Usingit as sit down is fine as you weave their clean jokes into your meet and greet with your clients.If you are light on humour, check locally. There are people who can show you how to be morehumourous in life and at work.Page 9

Seeding Your DeskTo seed your desk means to have something on your desk, visible to the client that is humourous.Could be a quotation, a slogan, a photograph, a plaque and it might be, or could be a poster onthe wall behind you.The photograph for instance might be of a situation that you witnessed. The image speaks foritself and so frame it up and let it sit and sell on your desk. For a small amount of money thesedays your image could be printed poster size, framed and hanging on the wall behind you.The fact that you took the photograph adds to the conversation. You’ll notice when the clientlooks up, takes it in, and chuckles and that’s your cue to say, “You should have been there ” andthen you can relate your story. As of ‘right now’ you and the client have come together, a littlecloser simply through a humourous poster that caused the client to chuckle. To smile.The “poster” shown here I put together using someof the travel related graphics found in the softwareI have purchased. The phrase at the bottom hasbeen in the travel trade for many years and appliedto one or two airlines in the past. So with a quickbit of cut and paste you can create your ownposter, have it printed and framed and on the wallit goes.Think about your own desk – what haveyou got on it or around it that’s humourousand gets noticed without you having topoint it out?What could you seed your desk with based on whatyou’ve read so far?Page 18

Here’s where we sample 15 possible ideas as to where and how you can deliver your humourousmessage and turn it into a SMILE MARKETING campaign.1. Blogging2. Cartoons3. Comics4. Conversations5. Images6. Jokes7. Mascots8. Postcards9. Posters10. Quotations11. Slogans12. Stories13. Tin Signs14. Trick Shots15. VideosThis is the look you want to see on your client’s faceduring and after your sales / booking scenario.Page 25