Breaking Through to Connect with Corporate Travel Buyers

Generating appointments with in-demand travel buyers can be a difficult challenge to overcome. Since 80 percent of GBTA Convention buyer attendees are decision makers in managerial, directorial, executive or C-level positions, CMO Ed Barrett recently led a webinar entitled Breaking through to Connect with Corporate Travel Buyers – Keys to Success.

Travel buyers partake in a range of activities when attending the largest gathering of business travel professionals in the world. Aside from professional education and development opportunities and networking with industry peers, 64 percent of travel buyers come to Convention to meet new suppliers.

So, how do you stand out in a sea of competition? Here are just a few ways you can break through to connect with corporate travel buyers:

• Connect your solution to travel buyers’ key issues. Whether it be ensuring traveler duty of care or improving policy compliance, determine the issues that matter most to the buyer and construct messaging that conveys how your solution can help solve their challenges.
• Offer value to non-customer travel buyers through free tools, reports, or evaluations that would better enable them to overcome complications in their program.
• Seek to serve first and sell second. Be a resource and connect your travel buyer to other suppliers who can help them achieve their program objectives. You will be viewed as a genuinely helpful individual and a valuable resource.
• Educate, don’t sell. Make your products easy to adopt, not easy to sell. Understand the buyer’s pain points and how your product can alleviate them. Buyers are more receptive to being helped and educated than being given a salesy, run-of-the-mill pitch.
• Stay continually connected with the people you’ve interacted with over the course of your career. Continue to stay connected with those in your circle by simply checking in and seeing how things are going year-round, even when you are not needed. Since people frequently transition into different positions, someone who is your customer now can be your boss later, or vice versa. By proving yourself to be helpful year-round, people will think of you when an opportunity arises.
• Ask for introductions. If you are on good terms with someone who knows a specific travel buyer you are trying to reach, ask for help. People are usually willing to accommodate you if you simply ask for assistance.

GBTA members may view the webinar in full through the Hub. These sessions are just around the corner:

• Travel Risk Management: Understanding it and managing it! (Wednesday, June 7 – 9:00 AM ET)
• Maximizing Hotel Commissions: How to boost your earnings and make your collection process more efficient (Thursday, June 8 – 2:00 PM ET)
• Balancing Traveler Satisfaction with Program Compliance (Tuesday, June 13 – 2:00 PM ET)

The full schedule of webinars is available here.