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 deliver a customer's quote by phone, video call or in person – 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 six of the TTG Smarter Selling Series with me, Pippa from TTG, and Helen Roberts, our leadership and sales coach extraordinaire. Today, we are talking about powerful proposals. So, it's really interesting, Helen, you don't use the word “quote”, do you? You use the word “proposal”?
Helen Roberts: Absolutely. It’s all in the language, isn’t it? Where again, we’re painting a picture, we’re building excitement. It’s not a transaction. It all matters.
Pippa Jacks: So what would be some of your key don’ts about sending over a proposal to a client? What should agents not do?
Helen Roberts: Don’t just email it over! Let’s pick a common scenario where we encourage you guys to get on the phone to your client and really understand their needs and take a fantastic brief. And then let’s make the assumption that you need to then phone, you know, a trusted supplier and give them that fantastic brief, and they come up with something. So don’t say “I’ll email it over”. Arrange a time, almost like a sort of appointment, and say, “What time? Would 5pm this evening be all right? Let me phone you”. So you’ve got that commitment from the customer. Then you’re going to spend that time with the supplier, and then you’re going to pick up the phone. You’re not going to email.
Pippa Jacks: What is the best way to present a proposal then, Helen?
Helen Roberts: No surprises, it’s on the phone! Or person, in person. That way that you can continue that emotional connection, you can read verbal, visual cues, keep the excitement going, and read, read the customer reaction. So that’s what we’re looking for because when you can do that, you’re confidently delivering value before price. When you deliver price, you’re pausing, ask for feedback, ask them to tell you what they love about the proposal, ask if there’s anything that’s not right. All of this is so much easier verbally. You’re looking for buying signals so that you can really start to gauge whether we can close that sale. So super important over the phone so that we can build that excitement.
Pippa Jacks: And what are the challenges if you do send it over by email? I guess, yeah, there can be a bit of a tendency to scroll through all of your excellent positioning and just get to the price.
Helen Roberts: Bang on, exactly that. What a shame. And then it, sort of all that excitement fizzles out. All of that work on your email, scroll down, look at the price. We’re looking to avoid that, we want to paint a picture first.
Pippa Jacks: But what if you do have to email it? What if the customer has said, “I want it on email”, or you just can’t get through to them, there's no convenient time, time is short? If you have to send an email, any tips?
Helen Roberts: Absolutely. And often you will present a proposal verbally and then back it up via email. So again, think even about the title. It’s not “Quote Ref 76543”. It’s, you know, “Your Incredible African Escape” or something super personal. Think about the cover note. Again, you’re weaving in your value, you’re tailoring your proposal to their needs. You’re maybe just picking out a couple of your favourite bits of the itinerary and maybe bolding them out – not big monologues, but also not too short. Make it personalised, build some excitement. So really think about what that email looks like, and make it personal and give a really strong call to action at the end so again, we want to get them on the phone to discuss it again next.
Pippa Jacks: Or an appointment.
Helen Roberts: Exactly. Video appointment… there are lots of different ways.
Pippa Jacks: So, the challenge for our final episode is, rather than emailing over a quote where that’s what you would usually do, we would love you to set up a phone call instead or set up a face-to-face appointment or a video call. Titan’s often very, you know, available to join customer calls as well, so you might be able to think about including a supplier partner. We’d love you to have a go at that this week and share some feedback on how you get on, making sure that you present that proposal in a much more emotional connection kind of a way, rather than sending it as an email attachment. Good luck with the final challenge. We have loved sharing these tips with you across the series, and we really hope you found it valuable.
Chris Woodcock: Hello all, my name is Chris and I'm with Titan Travel. What a brilliant chat we've had today. I think it's really important to discuss the intricate details when talking about a Titan tour with your customers and at the quote stage. It's really important to put yourselves in the shoes of that customer, understand why they want to go to that destination, what they're trying to achieve in those specific parts, or if they maybe want to see something in particular which is an excursion that we offer, and really honing in on the emotive language that you're using during that quote stage. If they can imagine themselves in that position, on that excursion, or in that part of the world, it makes the sale a whole lot easier in general.
Another thing to say is that because we include more inclusions than most, it's really important to compare and contrast along the way as well. For example, we offer porterage in our destinations. We also will do specific uplifts as standard. So for example, on an Essence of Japan tour, we book the hotels that face Mount Fuji in particular, as opposed to the motorway behind. And so those little touches is how it's going to be a successful sale for you selling Titan.
I want to thank you all for joining this series. It’s been absolutely brilliant and really insightful to hear from these talks. And we want to carry that forward with you. We want to be the team that really helps you out. And so I wanted to tell you all about our BDMs. We currently have three BDMs around the country: North, Central, and South. And those folks are there to help you close these sales like we’ve been talking about today. So if you are with a customer and you want us to get involved, we’d be absolutely happy to join you in branch or virtually, either way.
The best way you can contact us in the first instance is with our email address: tradesupport@titantravel.co.uk. And just in general, keep in contact with us there. But we also have our Facebook group, TITANium. You can find that as your one-stop shop for all the different marketing assets you might need, and for ways to get in touch with us. We do a weekly Facebook Live there. And so those two things will get you started in working closer with us to help close those sales.
But thank you so much to the folks at TTG for working with us in partnership on the Smarter Selling Series. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be part of this, and thank you to you guys for joining in and completing those quizzes. Thank you, and we’ll see you soon.
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.
