Ready to win £50 in Titan Rewards?
Answer three questions via the quiz below before 12 June to get yourself in the running! You can also complete an optional challenge – to create your own elevator pitch – to hone your sales skills further should you wish. Good luck!
The competition closes at midnight on 12 June 2026.
This video is part of the TTG Smarter Selling Series in partnership with Titan Travel, a collection of six bitesize videos designed to enhance your sales selling skills:
- Tuesday 21 April – Episode 1: How and when to communicate your value
- Tuesday 28 April – Episode 2: How to make connection convert
- Tuesday 5 May – Episode 3: Your killer questions for initial conversations
- Tuesday 12 May – Episode 4: How to set the agenda, and why
- Tuesday 19 May – Episode 5: How and when to address the "B" word (budget!)
- Tuesday 26 May – Episode 6: What are the do's and don'ts of powerful proposals?
Who is Helen Roberts?
Helen is a leadership and sales coach. She is passionate about helping businesses build high-performing teams empowered to drive their sales strategy, deliver exceptional customer experiences and exceed their targets.
Her career at Kuoni spanned 20 years, starting as a personal travel expert and progressing to sales director, where she led the retail strategy for eight years. She developed and executed a highly successful sales and service blueprint, creating an award-winning customer experience through the development of an innovative sales and service philosophy and exceptional team engagement. This blueprint empowered the team to go above and beyond, showcase their personalities, and truly wow customers. She has since helped numerous businesses achieve similar success, also working with them to implement new sales processes and service models.
After a hugely fulfilling career, driven by a deep desire to help others, she has taken all of her insights, along with her passion for people engagement and exceptional customer service, into developing new leadership and sales coaching programmes. She now coaches founders, directors and sales leaders to maximise performance and deliver results consistently through empowering, inspiring and engaging their teams.
Video transcript
Pippa Jacks: Hello and welcome to episode one of TTG’s new Smarter Selling Series with me, Pippa Jacks and leadership and sales coach extraordinaire Helen Roberts! In episode one, we’re talking about how and when to communicate your value. What do you mean by value Helen? Can you bring that to life for us? What sort of different things could an agent be thinking about here?
Helen Roberts: Certainly. So it could start with your expertise, somewhere that you book a lot, a specialism within your team or your business, or somewhere you’ve been or travelled to. It could be the destination expertise or holiday type expertise, maybe you’re a honeymoon expert. You could be talking about the story of your business, maybe the heritage of your business or any unique points about the business that you work for. It could be the suppliers that you work with, the connections that you have. Your financial booking is totally important – your financial backing and regulation. So any or all of those things. The way that you look after your customers from start to finish, even weaving in recent stories of how you’ve looked after customers. All of that counts.
Pippa Jacks: So it’s being really clear on all of those things and having them tucked away. What’s the risk if you don’t have a firm grasp on your value proposition? And when should you make sure you bring that into the conversation?
Helen Roberts: You should absolutely spend some time and just note it down. Even as a team get together; you’ll be amazed. The USPs for your business of booking with a travel agent – don’t forget you personally. Jot them all down and really think about that. And then my challenge to you is: you should be communicating your value upfront. We’ll talk about agenda setting in another episode, but it is about inviting your customer to tell you how they found out about you, where they’re at in their research, and almost giving yourself a bit of a segue to say, “Let me tell you a little bit about us and how we work”. So get it in upfront. Pepper your value throughout those conversations. Don’t wait until you’re faced with an objection like “I can get this cheaper elsewhere” or “I’ve had a look online”. It’s a great invitation for you to reinforce your value, but don’t let it be the first time that you communicate it.
Pippa Jacks: What about an agent maybe that’s really fresh to the industry and might say, “Well, I don’t really have that expertise... I can’t really talk with confidence to say I’ve been doing this a long time”.
Helen Roberts: That’s a really good point. Hopefully some of those examples we just gave you aren’t just around destination expertise or things that you need to earn over decades in the industry. So really leaning on your supplier contacts – that little black book of amazing supplier contacts that only you have access to that you can invite your customer to look at. Again, your business story, heritage, how long you’ve been around. Any of that can apply, no matter how lacking in confidence you might be about that particular destination. It doesn't matter; there’s still loads you can communicate.
Pippa Jacks: Do these need to work verbally and as well maybe in written form?
Helen Roberts: Great question. All of the above. Get used to saying it verbally. If you’re in the queue at Sainsbury’s and you get chatting and someone says, “What do you do?” don’t undersell yourself and say, “I’m a travel agent”. We know there’s so much more that you do and offer to your customers, so tell them! Have a practice. Get comfortable talking yourself up. But it can work in email. Even if someone WhatsApps you or sends you a Facebook Messenger inquiry wanting a price – hold on! Make sure you’re communicating the way you work and your value first. Value before price.
Pippa Jacks: Excellent advice. Love that. So we have a little challenge for week one for our first episode. We would love you to just take a few minutes, possibly with colleagues or on your own, to really think about what your elevator pitch is. Some of the key things that make you different and the best place to book. Put some time into that and we’ll ask you to submit that as part of the quiz after episode one. Could you give us a quick example of what an elevator pitch might be just to bring it to life?
Helen Roberts: Yeah, so you could say, “Hi, I’m a Tenerife specialist. I’ve actually lived out there, I’ve got a house out there, I know the area really, really well. I’ve got so many amazing contacts out there in resort; I can recommend the best restaurants, the best beaches, and I’ll really look after you from start to finish. Our business has been around 50 years, so we’re financially secure and we’re absolutely passionate and love what we do. So I’m really looking forward to looking after you”. You could say something like that.
Pippa Jacks: Nice pitch! That’s a good example to get you going. So we hope you’ve enjoyed episode one. We’ll be back soon with episode two where we’ll be talking about how connection can convert the sale. So we hope you’ll take part in the quiz and we’ll see you next time.
Tricia Doe: Value is what Titan stands for. We include things in our holidays to make sure that your customers are getting everything they can out of their holiday with us, but also to make it great value for them. So from the home pick-up service that is included with unlimited mileage – so even if your customers are up in Scotland or Northern Ireland, we’re going to get them to that departure point completely included in the cost for them. And then whilst they’re away, we’re going to include everything for them to really immerse them into the trip that they’re doing, getting them into the heart of that culture without the fear that they’re going to have lots of add-ons while they’re there. Thank you for joining us this week for episode one. We can’t wait to see you next week when we’re going to bring you episode two.
Competition terms and conditions:
- Applicable to travel agents in the UK and Ireland only. By entering this competition you agree to the TTG competition terms and conditions.
