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 contact one of your clients by phone call rather than WhatsApp or email – 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?
Each episode comes with a quiz and an opportunity to win £50 in Titan Rewards, with one lucky agent who's completed all six quizzes being entered into a prize draw for £300 in Titan Rewards (these can be spent at 250 retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Argos, Dunelm and Odeon). So make sure you watch all the videos and complete all the quizzes for a chance to bag the biggest prize!
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 two of TTG’s Smarter Selling Series with me, Pippa from TTG, and our leadership and sales coach expert, Helen Roberts. It’s great to have you back with us again for episode two, which is called “Connection Converts”. So, this week we’ll be talking about building human, personal relationships with customers and how much easier that can be then to make the sale. Helen, it’s probably obvious to most agents that they need to move their relationship with their customers beyond the transactional to something deeper and more human to have success. Can you talk that through for us? What would a transactional relationship maybe be like, and what is the gold standard?
Helen Roberts: Yes, certainly. It’s a great one to get stuck into. So, transactional service – we all experience it every day, don’t we? So, it’s a product and a price sort of exchange with no value attached. It could be as simple as making a booking, offering a discount, a bit of a “computer says no” reference to terms and conditions. So, all very, if you like, step-by-step, follow the bouncing ball. The next level of that, which I should imagine most people are in, if not beyond, is relational service where, what it says on the tin, you’ve got a relationship. There’s some trust, there’s some loyalty, there’s some familiarity. You know, you’ll go back. The layer beyond that, which I challenge everyone to think about, is experiential service. So, this is – nothing’s cookie-cutter about this. So, everything is very, very personalized to the customer, and you’re evoking real emotion.
You know, we know holidays are an emotional purchase. I’ll never forget once receiving a customer complaint who’d booked – as I recall, I think it was something like a £20k Barbados – and they’d booked quite far in advance, maybe a year, 18 months in advance. And we were chasing them for balance payment. And she complained and she said: “look, I was only a day late”. She said, “look, I’ve not heard from you since you took my deposit”. And there was this huge gulf in any contact. It really made me review how every touchpoint can be an opportunity to build anticipation and excitement, and really understand the value as well of holidays being, actually, quite transformative experiences for customers. We all look forward to our holidays so much, so we should really, really cherish every opportunity to build that excitement. So, there’s a bit of a, yeah, different layers of what I would say between the different types of service.
Pippa Jacks: Lots to think about. And you’ve got quite strong views, haven’t you, in terms of methods of communication and how that pertains to the ability to build a relationship?
Helen Roberts: Yes. I hear all the time, “Oh, well, you know, the customer WhatsApped me”, or “they messaged me”, or “they emailed me”. So, you know, “that’s their preferred method of contact”. Often that’s really not the case. We’re maybe making an assumption, or maybe it’s our favorite method of contact. It’s easier to say no via email; they’re easier to be ignored; they’re easier to be misconstrued. So, if we’re wanting to build a connection and trust, we need to embrace good old small talk. You can’t do that on WhatsApp! I can’t find out the dog’s name, you know, if I’m not having a chat with you!
So, firstly, building emotional connection is abou – it doesn’t have to be about the holiday. It’s about getting to know the customer, putting them at ease, and you can only really do that on the phone. So, yeah, any opportunity...
Pippa Jacks: ...or in person.
Helen Roberts: Exactly! Of course! Even the holy grail, in person, for sure. So, yeah, really passionate that that’s the way to build a genuine connection with your customer. And also, if you’re getting an inquiry via email or via WhatsApp, beyond saying, “oh, can I email you? It would be easier to email you”, give them a reason. You know, just say, “oh, I notice it’s a family holiday to the Maldives for the summer. I’ve got a few options in mind and I’ve got a couple of questions for you. You know, what do you love to do on holiday? This will really help me tailor the recommendations. It would be easier if we could have a little chat”. So, tease a bit of your knowledge and expertise, not too much. Build a bit of intrigue and curiosity, and give a reason for them to, you know, pick up the phone to you.
Pippa Jacks: And what about actually trying to push for a face-to-face appointment? You know, obviously some agents are in high-street stores, it’s a bit easier. Homeworkers might be able to arrange a meet-up in a coffee shop. Do you think that will convert at an even higher rate?
Helen Roberts: Massive. In my experience, they are not only the highest converting method of contact, but the average booking value is higher. If you can look someone in the eye and build trust, they’re much more likely to purchase and spend more. So, absolutely. And an appointment could work for a follow-up, or for a – you know, when a customer’s come back and you want to hear all about it and then encourage them to rebook. So, appointments are gold. Video appointments, in person, calls – absolutely max them out.
Pippa Jacks: And what if you don’t get through to the customer? Then you think, “right, I’m going to go for it, I’m going to make that call”, and you get their voicemail. Do you follow up with an email then if you don’t get through, or...?
Helen Roberts: Great question. So, yeah, don’t be afraid to use multiple methods of contact. But actually, think about the voicemail. We all know we’ve all got a very fast voicemail – the “my posh voicemail” voice – but we can sometimes be a bit monotone, a bit dry. So, just like we said if we were emailing them to try and convince someone to get on the phone, think about that voicemail message. Think about building a bit of intrigue, keep the excitement, be very clear who you are, what the call to action is, what the next step is. So, just give a little bit more thought to how you might leave that message to encourage them to phone you back.
Pippa Jacks: Okay. This actually leads really nicely into our challenge for this week. It’s a very simple one: we would love you this week to pick up the phone and call, or try and have a face-to-face appointment with, if that’s convenient, a customer that you would normally email or WhatsApp. So, that might have been historically how you communicate with them, but we would love for you to try something different this week. Make a call to somebody that normally you wouldn’t, and give us some feedback about how that goes. But have your voicemail ready, would you say?
Helen Roberts: Absolutely! So that you’re not caught on the hop if you don’t get through to them, and you can still use that as a great opportunity to use your voice and communicate some passion that just gets lost in the email.
Pippa Jacks: Exactly. Let us know how it goes.
Helen Roberts: Good luck!
Pippa Jacks: And we’ll see you next time for episode three.
Erin Taylor: Hi everyone, I’m Erin from Titan and I’m here today to talk to you about how we can help you make connections convert. So, my two ways that we can help you is:
Number one: we are the absolute experts in our product. So, if you ever feel unsure or feel like you need a hand, that is what we’re here for. We can help by arranging a call with you and your customer, whether that be just a simple phone call or a Teams call. We can sit and chat and go through the itineraries in more detail, what they get included from our amazing chauffeur service, putting your customers at ease with our tour managers being there from start to finish. Or, if you want a bit more personalized, as long as we have some time, we’re more than happy to pop into a store wherever possible, have a sit-down with a cup of tea or coffee, and talk to your customers as well – bringing that service to life and making sure that they know that everything is taken care of.
Number two, our second top tip, would be: we have a wealth of knowledge through our people. Our product managers create these tours, so they know the product like the back of their hand. That is their job. So, if you have a customer who’s maybe looking at something and you’ve seen the itinerary on our website or in our brochure, and maybe they just have a few more questions that they’d like to know and you’re unsure, all you need to do is drop us an email at tradesupport@titantravel.co.uk or even pick up the phone and just chat to us and have a little conversation. “This is what our customer likes about this tour, however they have some more questions like: how long is the journey from here to here?” or “can you confirm what the hotel is like?” or “what other excursions are possible to add on?” We can reach out to our tour managers and our product managers. They live that product, they breathe it, they’ve done the product, they’ve been on the tour. We can reach out and ask them any questions to get a more personalized response for your customer – to really bring that holiday to life and help you nail the sale wherever possible.
Thank you so much for watching this week, and please join us next week for episode three.
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.
