Your suppliers are an extension of your team when you work with them collaboratively, says Angela Middleton, senior sales manager for Australia and New Zealand, Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL).
Middleton came up with the unofficial tagline for Express Travel Group’s recent conference ETGX 2023 in Singapore. “Sweat your suppliers,” she urged attending agents.
While technically there to discuss how agents can maximise local area marketing (more on that later), Middleton’s phrase was used by many over the event. Unaware that it would be so universally picked up, she joked with Karryon that she “should probably have said ‘Lean on your suppliers’ instead of ‘sweat’!”
“At NCL, we believe that everyone’s a marketer,” she told the agents at the conference.
“And I’m just going to cut to the chase and say the best way to maximise your local area marketing is to sweat your suppliers and BDMs.
“My BDMs are always looking for ways to collaborate with their agents. And I am sure this is the same for many suppliers.
“What all suppliers want you to remember is that we’re here to support you. We’re here to drive local area marketing on a co-op basis with you.”
Middleton recalls attending an industry dinner earlier in the year. At the event, an agent told her about the local community TV advertising she was doing. The agent mentioned that she’d featured NCL in the advertising. She told this to Middleton after she’d already done it.
“It wasn’t natural for her to think to come and talk to a supplier about the advertising that she was already doing.
“I said rather than doing two weeks of advertising on that local community TV program, I could have co-oped that with you and you would have got four weeks’ worth of value out of it.”
Extend your reach
Middleton put the call out to agents looking to develop new marketing plans. She reminded them that their suppliers will work with them to help extend their marketing reach.
She suggested agents organise a meeting with their supplier BDMs to collaborate.
“You need to talk to them about what you want to achieve, what your objectives are, and we’ll overlay ours and come to a great agreement there.”
“Talk about when we’re going to do local area marketing. We don’t want to be advertising the Americas in a Europe peak selling period. Let’s find the right product at the right time to promote with you.
“We’ll talk about how to do it. What channels we’re going to work with you on, what budget we’re going to work with.
“We can even collaborate across multiple channels to give you a broader campaign too.
“So, let’s get those meetings locked in to plan out the rest of the year, particularly into Europe selling season.
“My team are ready, willing and able. They all have local area marketing budgets, like many of these suppliers in the room, and we can’t wait to support you in the years to come.”
Helping with the heavy lifting
“Every single supplier will be wanting to work with you,” Middleton told agents.
“And much of what you share with your clients can be built off the toolkits that they all have available.”
But Middleton also understood that agents are so busy with bookings and enquiries that marketing isn’t a top priority at the moment.
That said, she reminded agents that they don’t have to overwhelm themselves with a huge marketing plan.
“You need to boil it down to what you’ve got the capacity to do. So really think about the time that you want to invest into it, and then build your plan around that.
“Just sweat your suppliers because we’re all in this together.
“We’re here to make your businesses successful because without your success, we’re not successful.”
