Episode #14: Social selling in the tourism & travel industry

Tourism Tweetup the Podcast

In episode 14 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we discuss to topic of Social Selling for Conference, Meeting and Event planners, bureaus as well as destinations. Author, strategist and keynote speaker Tom Martin from Converse Digital in New Orleans has written a book called "The Invisible Sale". This book offers a social selling framework to help sales teams transition to a social selling model. Tom is very well know across the tourism industry, his company recently conducted some interesting research into social selling for meeting planners.

Episode #14 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we talk to Tom Martin from Converse Digital about using social media as part of the sales process for the tourism and travel industry.

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Highlights, Notes & Links We Mention in this Episode

Things have changed as now a buyer is actively online researching and conducting as much of the pre-purchase as possible without having to talk to a human being.

Social selling is not just about using social media tools or platforms to prospect. It is about using social tools and other online platforms such as email to nurture that sale along and completing that buyers education on the product, service or destination. It is about being uniquely positioned to complete the buyers education using digital and social tools as that is the way these buyers want to do business they don't want to get on the phone with you until they absolutely have to. "Social selling is the art of seducing the buyer to make a buying decision in your favour using social content and email platforms."

[Tweet " "Social selling is the art of seducing the buyer to make a buying decision in your favour using social content and email platforms.""]

Research was conducted to in 2014 to understand if meeting planners were using social media, do they use social media as part of the planning process and if so what role does it play and if they were using it how they would like sales people to 'market' to them. The results found that absolutely meeting planners are on social media, they actually prefer you to contact them through social media more than for you to call them (yet most is done via phone). "Social media has very quickly achieved parody in terms of preference or utilisation by meeting planners with traditional sales tactics like telephone and trade media advertising in terms of the role it plays in the process."

Propinquity: the science of how relationships form between humans, the closer the proximity between two people (be it physical or physiological) the more likely they are to form a lasting relationship. And what this means re sales and marketing is we want to make sure our prospects are running into our brand as many places as possible. A propinquity mindset differs from a pure content marketing driven strategy as rather than always trying to drive people to your site, you want to find out where do people naturally go anyway (social/digital platforms and maybe even offline) and then put your own great content out there so they stumble across it. And plan it so a prospective buyer is constantly stumbling across your destination or your hotel etc and at each stumble point they are learning something new about your brand. Then what happens as they keep stumbling across it, and they get a bigger dataset of things they could like about your brand, they find things they do like and then an enquiry is made and they are at the point of you being someone they prefer to do business with, creating a top of mind preference.

You want to be in a top of mind PREFERENCE not just top of mind AWARENESS

[Tweet "You want to be in a top of mind PREFERENCE not just top of mind AWARENESS says @TomMartin"]

Social media is a great propinquity tool says @TomMartin

Self educated buyers do not want to be sold to and that is where AIKIDO selling techniques can be used by the sale...

Tourism Tweetup the Podcast

In episode 14 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we discuss to topic of Social Selling for Conference, Meeting and Event planners, bureaus as well as destinations. Author, strategist and keynote speaker Tom Martin from Converse Digital in New Orleans has written a book called “The Invisible Sale”. This book offers a social selling framework to help sales teams transition to a social selling model. Tom is very well know across the tourism industry, his company recently conducted some interesting research into social selling for meeting planners.

Episode #14 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we talk to Tom Martin from Converse Digital about using social media as part of the sales process for the tourism and travel industry.

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Highlights, Notes & Links We Mention in this Episode

Things have changed as now a buyer is actively online researching and conducting as much of the pre-purchase as possible without having to talk to a human being.

Social selling is not just about using social media tools or platforms to prospect. It is about using social tools and other online platforms such as email to nurture that sale along and completing that buyers education on the product, service or destination. It is about being uniquely positioned to complete the buyers education using digital and social tools as that is the way these buyers want to do business they don’t want to get on the phone with you until they absolutely have to. “Social selling is the art of seducing the buyer to make a buying decision in your favour using social content and email platforms.”

“Social selling is the art of seducing the buyer to make a buying decision in your favour using…
Click To Tweet

Research was conducted to in 2014 to understand if meeting planners were using social media, do they use social media as part of the planning process and if so what role does it play and if they were using it how they would like sales people to ‘market’ to them. The results found that absolutely meeting planners are on social media, they actually prefer you to contact them through social media more than for you to call them (yet most is done via phone). “Social media has very quickly achieved parody in terms of preference or utilisation by meeting planners with traditional sales tactics like telephone and trade media advertising in terms of the role it plays in the process.”

Propinquity: the science of how relationships form between humans, the closer the proximity between two people (be it physical or physiological) the more likely they are to form a lasting relationship. And what this means re sales and marketing is we want to make sure our prospects are running into our brand as many places as possible. A propinquity mindset differs from a pure content marketing driven strategy as rather than always trying to drive people to your site, you want to find out where do people naturally go anyway (social/digital platforms and maybe even offline) and then put your own great content out there so they stumble across it. And plan it so a prospective buyer is constantly stumbling across your destination or your hotel etc and at each stumble point they are learning something new about your brand. Then what happens as they keep stumbling across it, and they get a bigger dataset of things they could like about your brand, they find things they do like and then an enquiry is made and they are at the point of you being someone they prefer to do business with, creating a top of mind preference.

You want to be in a top of mind PREFERENCE not just top of mind AWARENESS

You want to be in a top of mind PREFERENCE not just top of mind AWARENESS says @TomMartin
Click To Tweet

Social media is a great propinquity tool says @TomMartin

Self educated buyers do not want to be sold to and that is where AIKIDO selling techniques can be used by the sales team.

Second Click Content can be developed by marketers to support the sales team. Second Click Content’s role is to be used as a tool to be pushed to a prospect to help in the sales process and almost gives a third party answers to certain questions. Listen to the podcast to hear Tom explain it further. I really like this idea and where this could be taken too.

Social selling is important for two reasons, one: that is the way the world is going, so you can’t win if you don’t play and two: is conversion percentage (conversion is way higher and people are spending more time converting and closing and less time selling).

Tom Martin Website

Tom Martin Twitter

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