Cruise Into More Sales

PHOTO: Vicky Garcia, COO of Cruise Planners and Drew Daly, general manager off network engagement and performance for CruiseOne and Cruises Inc.

How do you get where you’re going if you don’t have a map to get there? That’s a question that applies to your home-based cruise-selling business, and it’s critical for you to map out your goals.

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“Every small business should have a plan,” says Drew Daly, general manager of network engagement and performance for sister companies CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. “It’s definitely essential to the growth and success of a business, especially a small business.”

But many business owners procrastinate when faced with drawing up a business plan. Where to start? How to format it? What to include?

“Like anything, when people start thinking about a business or marketing plan, they can get overwhelmed,” he says.

Agreeing is Vicky Garcia, COO of Cruise Planners, an American Express Travel Representative. “People get analysis paralysis, and never get to it,” she says. “But businesses absolutely need a business plan, even if it’s on a paper napkin.” It’s more important to write down your goals and how to reach them than how you format your plan.

“It’s nice to have a vision in your head and very easy to say you want your business to be profitable and to grow, but the business plan helps you to be very specific,” Daly says. “Even if it’s a 12-month calendar view that lets you focus on each month and helps guide your business in the right direction.”

In fact, you might consider your home-based business plan today to be more of a marketing plan because they tend to be simpler than when travel agencies operated out of storefronts or offices.

“In the old days, a business plan encompassed whether to hire a human resources person and you had to pay for a location on a street corner or in a building. Now all those things are out of the equation,” Garcia says. “Now it can include simpler things. Do you want a professional phone system with multiple lines? Do you want to hire people to help do data entry? What kind of technology should you use? Do you want two tablets for when you are at tradeshows?”

But the focus on marketing is most important. Cruise Planners, for example, believes business/marketing plans are so important that agents are given templates to get them started.

“We do a lot of it for [our agents] and provide so many tools for someone just getting into the business,” Garcia says. “You need to know what you want to focus on and what your existing strengths are. We might have someone very well connected with the LGBT community who can look at how to maximize and leverage relationships and build his or her business. We have people who are first-responders, firefighters, and we teach them to leverage meetings they have, periodicals they read and might want to advertise in, and how to network.”

Daly recommends starting simple. “[A marketing plan] could be as simple as ‘I’m going to go through my database and send them cards,’” he says. “It should include local events and when you’ll send out a weekly or monthly email. What is the messaging each month?”

The plan should also include budgets. Are you going to tradeshows? Advertising in local publications or on the radio?

“A small business might partner with the local chamber of commerce, and spend $100 here and $100 there in cooperation with other merchants in its area,” Daly says. “Then there’s the online spending. You can use Google ad words for a small business by targeting and focusing in a local community.”

Take it one step at a time. “It can get overwhelming for some people when they get swamped by details,” Daly says. “By an inch it’s a cinch, by the yard it’s hard.” Start by writing down the little things you can to attract people to your business.

“The number-one goal is to grow your database, because then you can hopefully convert prospects into actual customers,” Daly says. “How do you expand your database? Attend community events. We do a ‘win-a-free-cruise’ sweepstakes, and during a period of time people register into your database for the option to win a free cruise.

“Perhaps invest a certain number of hours per month in training to learn about a new product you would never know. Join an organization you wouldn’t normally — maybe take a cooking class to meet people you normally wouldn’t socialize with. Anything you can do to expand your reach.… When you have these new people in your database, you can send them emails. So your plan should show a frequency of emails as well as a clear message.”

Cruise Planners also has an online portal with “hundreds of different versions of postcards and flyers,” Garcia says.

To drive home the importance of a marketing plan, Garcia recalls a year or so ago when a cruise line business development manager sent out an email blast to agents at year’s end. “He said, ‘I have some extra co-op dollars left in my budget. All reasonable offers are accepted. Send me a plan,” she remembers. “One of our Cruise Planners owners got this email and called me, so we decided to pull a plan together.”

The agent sent the BDM an idea and some bullet points in an email. The BDM said he’d consider it, but warned that the agent was asking for a lot of money. “But in the end, our agent got the whole thing because the BDM said ‘you’re the only one who responded,” Garcia recalls.

Remember the old saying — “good luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Have a plan in place and you’re ready to share it when BDMs are offering money to help make it a reality. That’s even more important if your plan is specific enough for certain segments, like river cruising or the luxury market.

Garcia says one agent was determined to become successful in the river cruise market. “He focused on river and actually created a blog for himself about river cruising. He marketed and promoted that blog, and he made himself the river cruise expert. Part of his plan was to train himself, get certified with the major companies that are preferred, and host cruise events with the reps from the river cruise lines,” she says. “They loved it. He’s now either the number-one or number-two river cruise salesperson for us every year.”

Focusing on the luxury segment “might mean you have to join or be a guest speaker at a country club, sponsor a golf tournament or align yourself with an upscale restaurant,” Garcia suggests.

Daly recommends looking at your business from the prior year. “If you really missed the boat in luxury or river cruise, ask yourself, ‘What can I do to grow that particular segment?’ Determine if you need to invest time and money there,” he says. “With the growth of river and the growth of luxury, an agent would be remiss in not having those in the plan. Even land trips — we’re seeing great growth in our land, so even agents who specialize in cruise should become more knowledgeable about land trips.”

Social media should figure heavily in your marketing plan. “If you have a Facebook page and never post, it’s not worth it,” Garcia says. “You should have a mix of social elements and dedicate time to it.”

Don’t worry that your content isn’t polished enough. “Anytime you have an opportunity to share a video, you should. It’s a way for you to bring to life the products that you sell,” Daly says. “People love to see raw organic content like that. You have to take the time to do it.”

In the end, start with a basic plan with basic tasks and activities. “Just do it,” Daly says. “Start simple and expand upon it. You can start with one email per month and then add another email and add another event. When you start to see results, you start doing more. You have to take action with whatever plan you create, and you have to measure it.”