Assessment 2: Reflective Essay on FCTG Customer Sales Experience

This reflective essay examines a student's experience with customer sales at Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), a travel agency in Australia. The essay begins with an introduction to reflective writing and FCTG, highlighting the importance of sales strategies, particularly personal selling, in the travel and tourism sector. The main body of the essay delves into the student's role in initiating clients' purchasing decisions, detailing various sales techniques such as advertising, personal selling, and customer relationship management. The student emphasizes the importance of understanding consumer behavior and describes how they use questioning to identify clients' needs and preferences, including travel duration, destination, and budget, to offer suitable travel packages. The essay further discusses the application of the buying formula theory of selling, including need identification, solution presentation, purchase decision, and satisfaction. It also explores consumer behavior theories, such as motivation-need theory and the theory of buyer behavior, and their relevance to the travel industry. The essay concludes by summarizing the key points and emphasizing the effective application of sales strategies and consumer behavior theories.

Assessment 2 Reflective Essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Reflective Essay is a way of writing through which the writer explains certain experience
of personal life by sharing of the thoughts over the event. FCTG (Flight Centre Travel Group is a
travel agency in Australia, having its headquarters in Brisbane. Sales strategies are used by the
agency to enhance the sales performance. These are important as it helps companies to expand or
grow the current share of customers’ earnings that is spent by them over the products or services
of such business.
The act of selling in which the sales representatives personally interacts with the potential
clients with purpose of undertaking a sales transaction is known as personal selling. This the
most common of sales generation in travel and tourism sector. Consumer Behaviour is the study
of all the parties and individuals that are related to the effective disposal of business offerings to
the end customer. The current essay will be based on reflection upon the role play of FCTG
customer sales experience.
MAIN BODY
The area that is considered undoubtedly the most researched in the travel industry is the
consumer behaviour. It plays an important role in my job role to initiate a client in making his
decision to purchase the products of the Flight Centre Travel Group. There are various
techniques that are used by the agency for the purpose of generation of sales. These are
advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and maintaining effective customer relations.
There are various personal selling strategies that I use for the purpose of making a successful sale
(Font and et.al., 2021). Consumer behaviour is consisting of the emotions, preferences and
attitudes of the consumers. I feel that the most effective way of making the offerings of agency
as the most preferred choice for the clients is by describing them the benefits of these to them in
the best way that attracts such consumers the most.
Encouraging a conversation is another effective strategy that I use. This particular
strategy is used by me in the current customer sales experience. I started by asking the client
how is she today. It is the most general thing that can be asked to get knowing about the day
client have been going through. This helps in understand what will be their potential behaviour
during the entire selling session. I continued conversation with the client by asking various other
questions to help me in selecting the travel package that will be effective in meeting the
requirements they have. Asking the number of people, they are looking to have along in their

travel, this helps in deciding whether to offer a family package of four or more or a couple
package would be ideal (Abou-Shouk and et.al., 2021). The client said that she is looking to
travel with her partner this cleared the fact that the ideal offering will be the ones that are suitable
for couples.
Further the duration of holiday she is seeking to plan is known by me by asking the
number of nights they are planning to have their stay. There are various travel plans and
packages and discounts that are available with the company to offer its clients based on the stay
duration. To know which one is appropriate for any particular client it is important to be familiar
with the number of days and nights before proposing the best of the available packages.
Company deals in providing trip packages both within the country and to foreign destinations.
To shortlist the suitable package what destination the consumer wants to visit and whether it is
within the national boundaries or not is important for me. So in continued are conversation by
asking the location she is in quest of to visit (Cron and et.al., 2021). Further certain offers are
given to clients on booking in advance and according to the dates they want to have their trip the
package varies. On the occasions of festivals or something special seasons that prices for stays
and other things varies. So to consider all these aspects in the cost of package date and month
plays a crucial role.
Having conversation with the consumers in friendly way develops their interest in
deciding to opt for the services and products of the FCTG. What all activities the client wishes to
do at the travel destination needs to be considered for estimating the cost they will be paying for
the same. Asking about the things they prefer to do helps me in knowing the level of excitement
they have for the trip that is being planned. Adding to the activities that agency can include into
their travel package helps in further increasing to the existing excitement levels of the customers.
Certain preferences of the clients like the flight type they will prefer, regarding the equipment
they will be liking for the activities they are planning are also asked for making sure that their
travel experience will be the best they could have. Taking into account all the things, preferences
the last yet the one of the most important thing that needs to be considered before suggesting a
prefect package for the client is their budget, the amount of money they are willing to pay or
thinking will be sufficient for the travel plan (Willardson and Johnson, 2022). Having noting
down the amount per person my client is willing to pay I noticed that she is confused whether her
budget is sufficient or not. So I offered her the two packages that are below the amount she said.

This technique is used to initiate her in taking instant decision of selecting one of the packages
that I proposed for her.
The sales theory that I used in this customer sales experience is the buying formula
theory of selling. This theory follows a series of steps that together make the process that
prevails in the theory. The first step is called as need, in this the need of the customer is known.
For knowing the need of the customer there are various ways that can be used like effective
market research, surveys, etc. To know the need of the customer the method that I used is
communication. I interacted with my client over a video call. I asked various questions that
helped me to know about the requirements of the client. Having the acknowledgement of what
all are the requirements of my client I proposed two packages that the FCTG has for her. This is
the second step of the sales theory which is namely known as solution. Solution from the side of
the company that fits to the client’s requirement is given at this step. The third step is known as
the purchase. At this particular stage the client decides to make his purchase decision and pay for
the services and products of the agency. The last step namely satisfaction step is the one in which
the actual experience of the client is done by using products and services of the organization. The
successful completion of this last stage initiates the consumer to opt for the company’s services
and products again in the future.
Consumer theories are used for the purpose of having better customer knowledge. There
are various theories that are applied by the companies for understanding the customer
behaviours. There exist certain factors that largely effects the buying decisions of consumers in
the travel & tourism sector. Geographical factors such as climate of a particular region or
destination have a significant impact on the number of people that will be desiring to make a
visit at the particular destination. The climate of Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, etc. in
Australia attracts maximum number of tourists. Most of my clients prefer to travel to these
destinations. Motivation – Need Theory is one of the customer behavioural theory that is most
applicable to the travel industry (Spangenberg and Lorek, 2019). The Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs consists of physiological, belongingness and love needs. Such needs of an individual
initiates oneself to travel with his family or loved ones. This theory is applied by the company by
launching various family related travel packages. Theory of Buyer behaviour is the one that I use
for ensuring that my clients prefer to go with the packages of the company whenever they plan
for any type of trips or vacations (Rabby and et.al., 2021). In this theory the customer needs are

satisfied and remembered by the seller so that in the future time is saved by such customer in
making his buying decisions.
CONCLUSION
Based on the above essay the meaning of reflective essay and the manner in which it can
be written has been explained. The essay was based on the customer sales experience of the
Flight Centre Travel Group, an Australian travel agency. The essay has explained the meaning of
sales strategy, personal selling and customer behaviour. The importance of such concepts in
travel industry has been described with the Essay. The essay has demonstrated effective
application of sales strategies and sales theory. Lastly it also covered the application of customer
behaviour theories.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abou-Shouk, M., & Soliman, M. (2021). The impact of gamification adoption intention on brand
awareness and loyalty in tourism: the mediating effect of customer engagement. Journal
of Destination Marketing & Management. 20. 100559.
Cron, W. L., & Baldauf, A. (2021). Commentary: practical insights for sales force digitalization
success: the scholar’s perspective. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales
Management. 41(2). 103-106.
Font, X., English, R., Gkritzali, A., & Tian, W. S. (2021). Value co-creation in sustainable
tourism: A service-dominant logic approach. Tourism Management. 82. 104200.
Rabby, F., Chimhundu, R., & Hassan, R. (2021). The elucidation of marketing trends and a post-
positivist approach to understand consumer behaviour–a review. Journal of Tianjin
University Science and Technology. 54(8). 13-32.
Spangenberg, J. H., & Lorek, S. (2019). Sufficiency and consumer behaviour: From theory to
policy. Energy Policy. 129. 1070-1079.
Willardson, S. L., & Johnson, R. A. (2022). Arms transfers and international relations theory:
Situating military aircraft sales in the broader IR context. Conflict Management and
Peace Science. 39(2). 191-213.
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