Behold, the power of travel

Rich Liu has had a somewhat circuitous journey with Navan Group, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based travel and expense company that sits at No. 10 on Travel Weekly’s Power List.

Liu spent three years as the company’s chief revenue officer, from 2018 to 2021. Then he left to become chief business officer at Everlaw, a technology company focused on the practice of law, before he boomeranged back to Navan earlier this year.

Now CEO of Navan Travel (the company also has an expense-management division), Liu has even more perspective on the products and services Navan offers its customers; Everlaw is one of them.

When he was at Everlaw, the company, like many others, was looking to drive more efficiency and save money. When its CFO told Liu the company had underspent on the company’s travel and expense budget, it was “unexpected,” he recalled.

“We have an enterprise sales team that should be on the road,” Liu said.

He used data from Navan to look into which employees were traveling more, what kind of travel they were doing and where they were going. Some 80% of sales reps were using digital meetings more in lieu of meeting with customers directly.

“But we had a small chunk of people who were traveling way more than average, and surprisingly — or maybe not surprisingly — there was almost a one-to-one correlation with some of the very, very top performers in the company,” Liu said, adding, “They’re spending $30,000 more on travel but closing a million or $2 million more in sales.”

It turned into something of a “playbook” for all other sales reps to follow, Liu said, and accelerated the entire sales team.

It offers an interesting lens into the power of travel.

A similar lesson can be applied to frontline travel advisors. I’ve been in the industry for nearly a decade, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked seasoned advisors for their best piece of advice for their peers. 

The answer is almost always to experience the products you’re selling.

If you can describe the product well, from firsthand experience, it gives you a unique perspective, and it’s almost always easier to sell.

It can also be a major lead generator. That’s been true for Jennifer Doncsecz, president of VIP Vacations in Bethlehem, Pa. She talked about the phenomenon on a recent episode of the “Trade Secrets” podcast I co-host.

“Every time I come back from a place and I post my pictures, we get a wave of new bookings for that destination,” Doncsecz said. “I was in Japan in April and went to Hong Kong and South Korea. And this year we might book more Japan than we have cumulatively.”

Liu’s path from Navan, to Navan customer Everlaw and back to Navan also sparked another takeaway for frontline advisors. He found Navan’s data available, helpful and useful in performing an internal audit on travel.

Here are some questions to ask yourself, as a travel advisor or owner: How is your customer experience? Are you easy to work with? Do customers like your processes and procedures?

If you don’t know the answer, perform your own internal audit. Ask a friend who’s honest and hasn’t worked with you before to go through the process with you (bonus if you actually book a trip for them). Ask for their honest feedback and adjust from there.

It could pay off in spades.