Richard Turen
The sales department of major suppliers assign individuals to work with the trade. These regional sales directors, or area business managers, have territories, and they are responsible for generating and managing business from travel advisors. Our DSMs are our major contact with those suppliers we tend to sell the most.
Sales managers have to do regular reports to the home office outlining the efforts they have made to generate business. These include seminars, in-office presentations and major consumer shows or special product nights for a specific agency. They also include sales feedback.
Then there is the marketing department. They reside in corporate headquarters. We see their names in the trade press, and they might sign off on certain documents. But we have no personal relationships with that department.
They create marketing pieces and brochures, and, increasingly, they manage major digital efforts, including social media. They are the force that shapes the brand. They are image-makers. They frame the product to make it easier for the consumer to request it and for the travel advisor to sell it. They have a strong interest in generating direct sales because the company that employs them can still get away with charging the consumer the built-in travel agent commission, enabling the company to pocket the commission and enhancing overall profits.
Salespeople tend to believe in relationships. They try to influence the agent seller to support their brand. They are believers in sales training and incentives.
Marketing people want to believe that they create the brand's image and the materials, ads and brochures, which leads consumers to demand that the agent book their specific product.
In my earlier years in the industry, I saw the dichotomy of interests between sales and marketing. They were, in fact, often competing. Each team wanted to take credit for major sales increases and tended to blame the other side if sales were tanking.
And thus it has always been.
That is why, dear reader, I want to see if we can introduce a new concept that I hope might possibly resonate with one or two progressive-thinking firms. The agent sellers talk all the time to the sales side of the corporation, but there is a tone deafness to any direct communication between agency sellers and marketing professionals.
What would happen if a major tour operator or cruise line set up a series of Zoom summits as an exchange of ideas between top sellers and marketers? Every agent attending would need the price of admission: one idea that they have for the marketing team that might enhance sales and help sales and marketing work as a team. No sales team members would attend; this would be marketing and agents, face to face.
Here are just a few questions that might form an interesting framework for this Meeting of the Seller and Marketing Minds:
- How important is a physical versus a digital brochure to our client?
- Do our clients actually download 50-page brochures to print to their $125 home printers?
- Why do you waste your time sending PDFs? We can't customize PDFs.
- Wouldn't it be helpful to have a brochure for sellers that eliminated the fluff and addressed product specifics so the reader could become a true expert?
- Has anyone ever suggested giving sellers a deck plan large enough to read?