Vacation Certificates: The Ultimate Sales Tool

The sales game can be an absolute nightmare sometimes. If you’re involved in it, you know how disheartening it can be to get oh-so-close to that much desired sale, only for it to slip through your fingers right at the end.

Closing a sale can depend on such a wide range of factors it can be difficult to keep track of them all. One common factor, however, is that it can be hard for the potential customer to justify the end cost. Yes, they may be getting a shiny new car (or a damn nice second-hand one), but they also know that there’s likely a lot of money involved and that most vehicle purchases don’t come with a return policy.

The key to overcoming this obstacle is to add value to the purchase. If you’ve been on our site before or read our other blogs, then you know that we specialize in travel incentives. For the consumer (aka your prospective customers), they would better know them as vacation certificates.

Fly away, go on a 5-day cruise, stay at a resort of your choosing across 3,000 locations, etc. It’s these vacation certificates that can sway the sales balance in your favor.

Vacation Certificates: The Basics

So, what are the basics of vacation certificates? In short, they’re a value-added product you can add to your sales strategy to help you close more sales. When you take a deeper dive into them, they’re a product that is specifically designed to help your business stand out from both your direct and indirect competitors.

The product itself could be a luxury cruise for two or a resort stay for a family. However you look at it, your business gains an edge on competitors because you’re offering your customers something they will truly value: a great vacation that will help them relax and rejuvenate.

Think about a home improvement business. If you were offering to construct a new deck on the back of someone’s home for $15,000. But now, it turns out that a few of your competitors have offered the same service and the same price – one of them has even undercut your price by around $200. How do you secure that sale if your competitors are just as reputable as you are? It comes down to added value.

If you can offer those customers a vacation certificate for a cruise, a trip to New York, a couple of nights away, or maybe two tickets to a concert or sporting event they love, then you will immediately command their attention. And because vacation certificates have a significant difference to many other offers out there, they help you cut through the noise of other competitors.

Do They Work?

It’s an important question to ask. After all, you don’t exactly want to invest money in a product and service that is going to fail to deliver. On average, our clients report a 21.8% increase in sales, which sits well above the industry average of 15%. Of course, this is an average, and we’ve had clients who have experienced astronomical sales increases, such as 300%.

Sutherlin Nissan, who is one of many great auto dealer clients of ours throughout the US, maintains a closing rate of approximately 90% when utilizing our cruise incentives. Willis Amica, who manages three dealerships in Syracuse, NY, has also found that our vacation certificates are a powerful closing tool.

For Royalty Goldsmiths, the jewelry store was able to upsell customers to purchase products totaling at least $1,995 (case study PDF download); the qualifying price to also receive a trip. So customers who might have been looking at a product (or products) of $1,500 were willing to pay for an additional $495 worth of products just so they could get a vacation, as well. Travel incentives don’t just make it easier to sell products or services at a base price, they can also make it easier for you to get customers to spend just a little more.

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