Tom Stieghorst
Vicki's Tips has turned four years old, an anniversary that is being celebrated by its creator, Royal Caribbean International senior vice president for sales and trade support & services, Vicki Freed.
Freed has e-mailed 1,000 of the inspiration-loaded dispatches since sending the first one she wrote in 2014. To mark the occasion, Royal offered $1,000 in prizes for agents that e-mailed Freed telling her which one of the 1,000 helped them the most and why.
Freed said she never intended to be doing the daily tips for so long.
"When I initially started, I thought I'll just do this for one year. And then, every time I was at a conference or every time I was with travel agents they said, 'Oh I love your tips, I really appreciate them.' So it just sort of continued," Freed recalled.
Freed's first tip honored a thought expressed by poet Maya Angelou: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Freed says it is still her favorite.
Another has to do with answering the phone with a smile in your voice.
One of the things that has kept her going, Freed said, is that travel agents need encouragement but many don't get it because so many work at home as ICs, in their own businesses, or in small offices.
Salespeople who work in corporate America have pep rallies, contests, weekly sales meetings and other ways of getting energized. So Vicki's Tips is a way to reach agents where they work today, Freed said.
There are almost 8,000 subscribers to the tips, but one can imagine that they're passed along to thousands of non-subscribers.
Frequently they're a single thought that can be digested at a glance.
"The feedback I get a lot is, 'Vicki it's just a soundbite, it's just a quick tidbit, not paragraphs and paragraphs.' Sometimes they're useful thoughts and sometimes people read it and say, 'Eh it doesn't really apply to me, but I liked it anyhow,'" Freed said.
They come out five days a week, and even if they're simple, that's a lot of tips to generate. Freed says she reads a lot and many of the tips comes from books, magazines, newspaper articles or advertising she sees.
She'll also solicit them from the marketing team at Royal Caribbean, offering a $10 Starbucks card for ones that get published.
"Sometimes I'll go out to the travel agent community and when I go out to the travel agent community, amazingly enough they respond," she said.
Conference speakers are another source of inspiration. Freed said she'll sometimes craft a tip from a speech at a conference and put it at the top of the queue of about 30 tips she likes to maintain, keeping the feel fresh.
"I wanted it to be very relevant so that if someone sees me at the conference the next day they would say, 'my gosh, you just had that tip!'" Freed said.
Freed said another reason she keeps the tips going is that it's a way of giving back, particularly to agents just starting off in business.
"Somebody believed in me when I was just starting out - [former Carnival Cruise Line president] Bob Dickinson," Freed said. "We have a responsibility to give to the next generation and we need to be sure we're as generous with them as [earlier leaders] were to us. I just enjoy doing it knowing that hopefully I'm touching people in some small way."