Connecting With Clients
February 6, 2009 By: Jena Tesse Fox Luxury Travel Advisor“To be successful, you can be one of three things,” says Billy B. Martin, co-owner of Houston-based Let’s Travel Together.
“You can be a seller of travel, you can become a specialist, or you can
be a professional. Being professional requires a lot of work beyond
getting a specialist certificate. That’s just the starting point. If
you’re a professional—whether it’s NFL, M.D. or Ph.D.—you have to put
in the work.”
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Billy B. Martin and Melodye Martinelli, co-owners of Let's Travel Together |
Martin has been singled out as North American Kiwi Specialist of the Year-2008, two-time Opal Award Winner 2007-08 and Houston’s only Premier Aussie Specialist. Martin; his partner and co-owner in the agency, Melodye Martinelli;
an office assistant; and six outside agents run the company. “We work
as independents, with no [corporate] affiliations,” says Martin.
After
9/11, Martin retired from his previous career as a trainer of special
ops for the military. As a trainer, Martin visited more than 150
countries. With the encouragement of Martinelli, Martin decided to
devote himself to selling travel full-time.
“I concentrate on
those destinations where I feel a real connection with the people,”
says Martin. In addition to his in-depth knowledge of New Zealand and Australia, Martin is also a South African FUNDI Specialist and Kenya Specialist.
“Melodye
and I participate in about six fams a year,” says Martin. “Although we
concentrate on luxury, since that’s our main client base, we also look
at products across the board so we can make recommendations to a
cross-section of travelers. For us to recommend a destination, we have
to have been there ourselves.”
Martin is a believer in
fostering relationships on the ground with the people in the
destination. The agency regularly works with Goway and Down Under Answers.
Martin gives an example of the kind of service he can provide his
clients because of the contacts he’s fostered. This Christmas he had 16
clients on board a Princess cruise in the waters off New Zealand on Christmas Day.
“Everything
shuts down during Christmas,” says Martin. “We really wanted to create
something special for them.” Martin fashioned a unique on-shore
experience for his clients. “They went to Tauranga to attend a Christmas Day church service. Afterwards, they received an overview of Maori traditions and local history, then proceeded to Gideon’s Fields,
where they enjoyed a traditional Maori feast next to a river and
waterfall. There was no precedent so we designed the product.”
Listening to Your Client
“One
of the things Melodye and I do is take the time to listen to our
clients,” says Martin. “If you put your client first, the dollars will
come.”
Let’s Travel Together builds a psychological travel
profile of its clients’ previous travel experiences and plans for
future travel. “We don’t foist an itinerary on our clients. We look at
it as a partnership where everyone wins—us, the client and the outbound
and inbound operators.
“We had a meeting with a couple who
we knew were meeting with four other agencies,” he recounts. “At the
end of the meeting we said, ‘It was a pleasure meeting with you, and we
look forward to your decision.’ They replied, ‘We already made up our
mind—we’re going with you.’ We asked them what differentiated us from
the other agencies and they said, ‘You didn’t try to tell us what you
wanted for us. You listened to what we wanted to do.’”
