The key words that resonated with me from the travel conference were:  Specialize, Education, and Service.

I would like to share what two of my favorite presentations were at the travel conference.  They were both engaging and entertaining.

Mr. Stuart Cohen’s presentation was titled “Six Secrets To Achieving Success & Happiness.”  These secrets could be applied to any business, even to ones personal lives.  He used quotations from Zig Ziegler throughout his presentation to emphasize his points.  Simply put, here are the six secrets.
1.  Gratitude Attitude
2.  Aspire Higher
3.  You are caught up
4.  Who’s in your pocket?
5.  It’s not about you
6.  It’s all about you

I will not expand upon those six principle.  Think about how each does or could apply to your personal and business lives.

The second presentation was by far the most energetic and funniest from Captain Lou Edwards, founder of Little Shop of Cruises on “Million Dollar Travel Agents (or soon to be)”.  He presented 20 resources that could be used to build your business to differenciate your business from 95% of the rest of the pack.  I was happy to see that I actually have been doing a few of his suggestions and plan to implement many other of his ideas.

His point was that one needs to speialize, provide a unique level of exceptional personal service.  Cruises are not a commodity, we are not selling toasters.  His tag line is, we will go overboard for you.  I am going to borrow that from time to time.

Anyone can purchase a vacation from a warehouse club, an insurance company, or any number of on-line providers but are you dealing with someone that has product knowledge or experience and truly has your interest at stake?  If your toaster burns your English muffin all the time, all you have to do is return the toaster to the store you bought it in.  If you have problems with or on your vacation it is not an easily returnable item!

Remember, I’m not selling toasters.

Tomorrow starts the fun stuff.

Until tomorrow,
Bon Voyage