By Les-Lee Roland

We’ve made our New Year’s resolutions and maybe this will be the year that we keep them.
One of my resolutions is to eliminate the clutter. Nothing new — it’s the same one I make every year. Whether you’re Home Based or brick-and-mortar, the number one clutter issue are brochures. Last year, I vowed to cut down on the amount I was ordering. I could always order more. And some suppliers would automatically send more throughout the year. They probably made their New Year’s resolution to eliminate clutter in their warehouses.
I know a local Host Agency that pays someone to come in once a week just to do the filing of brochures and faxes. The boxes of new brochures would be stacked on a table waiting to be filed, pristine and unopened. Agents never touched them unless they gave them to clients.
I don’t have that luxury. My space is limited and I know I will work more efficiently if everything is where it belongs. But before I file these bibles of cruises and tours, I read them. Maybe not every page, but I do go through them.
Okay, you may ask, Who has the time? Well, I make the time. If you don’t know your product, How can you sell it? If you give a brochure to your client, they may read it and wind up knowing more than you do.
Let’s start with the tour brochures. The basic ones, and physically, the ones that take up the most space — in no special order: Globus, Cosmos, Insight, Brendan and Trafalgar.
I immediately take a black marker and designate one as belonging to the office. I glance through the itineraries, with a yellow marker. And I highlight every place where I find the words “drive by,” or “you may have” or “optional.” I admit that I don’t do this on every page, but I do go to the tours that I use the most, or the new tours that may have been added.
It’s amazing to see these fragments of yellow show up on a page. This makes it helpful to select exactly the right tour for your client. It also helps with preparing them for the upsales, the extras and the options. And with this homework done in advance, I can usually explain the differences to the client, and close the sale quicker.
Besides, I learn from the brochure. I cannot visit every destination myself. But these brochures have great photos, great descriptions, and reading them really teaches me. It also gives me a chance to learn the cities and the correct pronunciation. That’s a big issue with me. I make certain that I know how to say Cannes and Cairns.
Since I sell a lot of cruises, I am always looking for a great pre or post add-on to a sailing — a different option from what the cruise line offers.
So when I offer a trans-Atlantic cruise, I try to always offer an extended stay in Europe. The client will decide if they have the time, the budget, etc. But my job is to whet their interest, to educate them on what opportunities they have, and to give them memories. What’s the worst that can happen? The client says, “No, I just want the cruise.”
You just have to know how to gauge your client and accept a negative answer. But you don’t have anything to lose, and everything to gain, if you lay out the advantages of the offer.
And speaking of cruises, yes I read cruise brochures as well. And it’s a good its that I do that. One cruise line has changed its deployment and many of its Caribbean cruises are not what appears on the written page. Ports are not always consistent as well.
Theme cruises are very popular now. If I didn’t read the brochures, I wouldn’t know that Celebrity was offering a cooking cruise with special excursions and meetings with a chef. I wouldn’t know who the guest lecturers were on Regent.
When I do my newsletter for clients, I mention themes. I have retired clients who choose their cruise around a lecture series.
So much money is spent on the design of a brochure. As agents, we probably just go to the itineraries and the deck plans. But take the time to look through them and see what your client sees.
Norwegian Cruise Line has a very user-friendly brochure. Destinations, itineraries, ship fleet — they found a way to explain all offerings, in less than 100 pages. From the basics to the suites, everything is concise.
Royal Caribbean has great pictures of the cabins, with detailed diagrams of each layout. And the part that I like the most is the square footage of each category. Princess has the diagrams, too, and great pictures of the suites.
I was working with a client who was a homebuilder. He just wanted a basic cabin with a veranda. That would fill his needs. It would have been an easy sell. But I decided to talk in his language — square footage. When I told him the basic cabin with a veranda was just a little larger than the walk in closets he offered in his custom built homes, he immediately upgraded to a suite.
I never accept the often mentioned, “It doesn’t make any difference about the cabin, we’re not in it very much.” Yeah, you’re not in it, because it’s either too small or too dark or too dreary.
I just returned from a cruise and I spent more time in my cabin or on my balcony than ever before. I was there to relax. And sitting on a comfortable chair on the balcony was exactly what I needed. I read two books — a true luxury for me.
Celebrity’s Caribbean brochure is pretty to look at, but could be more agent friendly. This is one that you have to dog ear or use post-ums to mark the pages of deck plans and itineraries for easier reference.
River Cruise brochures like Amadeus Waterways, Uniworld, or Viking, sell themselves. They have a knack of making the itineraries jump off the page. Everything is so complete.
If you’re a member of CLIA, you get a large annual volume of the info on every one of its affiliated cruise lines. The stats on each ship, when built, when refurbished, amenities, etc, are very good tools. But their reprints on the deck plans, in black and white, are hard to read.
If you have a problem reading them, take a few of your most popular ones and make a photocopy of the deck plan. Set the copy machine to make it 120%, and you can laminate it or put into a plastic sleeve. Plus, when you work with a client, and pull one of these out, they can read it as well.
Now the moneymaker. After I read the itineraries, I go through the shore excursions I offer, the ones that I make a commission selling. I make my own little brochure — Eastern, Western and Southern Caribbean. So every time I talk to a client, I can have a set of excursions ready to offer.
With only 17% of the population cruising, we each have so many new cruisers. We are the ones who educate them on what to do in the ports. If you are not offering them excursions, you are losing out on income that translates into big dollars every year. Think of the fact that the passengers buy an average of three excursions each cruise. Whose pocket is getting that business — the cruise line, local operators and taxi drivers, or you?
Now for the small print. Please take the time to read the back pages. If it’s a first time cruiser, and you give them the brochure, they read the back pages. They want to know the deposit, the cancellation penalties and what to bring. And, they want to know about the insurance.
It is the obligation of every agent to know exactly what is or what is not covered with the insurance offered by the cruise line or tour operator. With that knowledge, you can then decide to offer a different policy or use the supplier’s. I cannot emphasize this enough. Selling the insurance is just as important as selling the cruise or the tour. If you sell your own shore excursions, they are not covered by the ships’ insurance. Take that into consideration, not to mention the double commission if you use a reputable company.
For example, one company said they would take the client to the nearest medical facility if necessary. But after further investigation, I found that if a client took ill, they may be left at a facility on an island, but they were on their own to get back to the U.S.
Now some of you would think this is mundane. You may have been selling travel for years, and just because the ball dropped and it’s now 2007, it’s only another day at the office.
Well, mundane details can be the downfall for any agent. If you take the time to read a little, do your homework, and revitalize yourself with knowledge, you will find that you will close a sale faster.
Subtle changes are happening in this business, and we have to stay on top of them. Let me know what you like or don’t like about brochures by E-mailing packagedeals@comcast.net.

Les-Lee Roland is a writer and motivational speaker and has been Home Based for more than 10 years. Her company, The Package Deal, is in Sarasota, FL. Contact Les-Lee at packagedeals@comcast.net.