What makes a best in class travel manager? I was asked to speak on this topic at a recent conference for travel buyers. It was a daunting prospect to a room filled with said 'travel managers' but a subject I'm passionate about so was happy to give it a try. Previously I've been a travel manager, held leadership roles in travel management associations for more than eight years and I now lead a TMC consulting group interacting with many travel managers. I also have my own group of outsourced travel managers, so I've met and worked with my fair share of travel managers.
Firstly I think it's important to quickly define a travel manager. I've been a travel manager of a variety of types for more than 10 years. I've had all sorts of job titles such as project manager, travel manager, travel buyer, category leader, business partner and commercial leader. For the sake of this article I'll stick with the generic term travel manager.
So what makes a great travel manager? At the Institute of Travel and Meetings (the UK branch of the Global Business Travel Association) conference where I was speaking I shared a concept I like to call the "selling buyer". Yes, it's quite simple. A buyer that sells. They sell the benefits of the travel programme internally, they sell their company's position externally to suppliers (to ensure the best rates are achieved) and they can sell themselves as the leader of the programme. This is universally the key to success I have seen across all successful travel managers and those that are struggling can generally articulate that it's this they need help with. I used this visual to help explore the concept in more detail.
Source: Caroline Strachan, ITM Conference 2015
You'll see 'You' in the middle with three key traits or skills that I see every selling buyer needs.
1. Communicator
They understand communication is not a tick box exercise. It's an ongoing two-way exchange. I prefer to call it engagement to remind me that communicating to people can be a passive exercise, with no call to action. Whereas engagement is exactly that: it engages people to be involved, whether it's the travellers, the executives, the team or the suppliers. They feel involved and therefore they take action. Very clever.
Where to start If you don't already have a robust engagement plan in place, ask for help. Contact your corporate communications team and see if they have anyone who can support you. If that's a no, ask them for just a quick introductory session as to how to plan so you can be self-sufficient. If that fails bribe them with chocolate brownies, it's always worked for me!
They should help you understand models like the 'know, feel, do' approach. Before starting any communication you need to understand who is the audience and what they need to know. What do they need to feel? And what should they do? It's an action-oriented method that hasn't failed me yet.
2. Influencer
It's all well and good being a great communicator, but what about when the going gets tough and you need people on your side and bought into your strategy and ideas? This is all about influencing people, about understanding that different people need different styles and information to come onboard. For instance, a new team member wants hundreds of pages of detail to feel ready to deliver, yet an executive wants just three bullets of text to understand the issue at hand. A supplier has specific company and personal goals to meet; if you understand those, you have a far better chance of influencing their position.
Where to start Outside of any professional help you may be able to access, I would highly recommend reading the book 'Influencer: the power to change anything'. If you think it's hard to influence traveller behavioural change for example, read this book, you won't look back.
3. Strategist
This is an interesting one. I believe strategy is the most overused and yet misunderstood term in business today. I've been most fortunate to have some amazing leaders around me in my career who have taught me how to break strategy down into an easy-to-understand process.
The first stage is to understand what's happening outside of your environment/company (macro view) and then to look what's happening inside the company (micro view). Then ask yourself, among others: where is the company headed, what are the issues, where are you today? The smart strategist can then take that information and articulate it in a simple three-step way as follows.
- Vision — what we want to be
- Mission — why we exist
- Strategy — how we'll get there
This is never enough on its own. This is just a static view that then needs specific plans, timelines and objectives across a period in time to help you achieve your vision. I would always advocate for having a scorecard that keeps track of progress and all team members to have their goals linked to the strategic plan. Sounds simple doesn't it?
Where to start Strategy seems an immense task and it is. However, it can be easily broken down into smaller chunks of activity to help build the end picture. My first piece of advice is to step away from PowerPoint. Do not try to go straight into slides or a document. You need paper and lots of it, you can then move pieces around easily and keep focused on the content and not the visuals. I would start by writing down high level facts and data points around these key components.
- External world (ie macro environment) — what is happening outside of your company that you need to consider when thinking about your strategy? Fuel prices, for example.
- Internal world (ie micro environment) — what is happening inside your company? It should be easy to articulate the company's key vision and strategy areas. This is also your chance to highlight what you see happening deeper into the organisation, for example structural change, talent retention issues and more.
A picture is starting to build.
Continued below
Getting the wider view is important for managers. ©Ivan Bliznetsov/iStock
Then think about how you're consuming travel today, think of this as your departure point. I tend to use the 5Ws; who, what, when, where, how and I normally add an important sixth: why? If you can articulate answers to all of these six Ws you're starting to build a picture of why your company even needs to travel.
Now the fun starts.
By piecing these three answers together you should be able to see some correlation. For example do you have a high percentage of employees travelling more than 40 times a year? And a high staff turnover? Travel burnout could be an issue. Have you seen a spike in travel to a new destination? This could be travel helping drive growth in a new marketplace.I would need to write a whole article just in building travel strategy itself, but hopefully this will get you started.
The stakeholder network
You'll notice on the above diagram, that the travel manager sits in the middle of many functions across the company. This is not to say that a company revolves around the travel manager (wouldn't that be nice) but more to demonstrate the need for a strong stakeholder network to enable delivery of a successful programme. This was always my starting point when joining a new company to lead their travel programme.
The stakeholder network helps you understand the challenges faced but will also be crucial in helping drive change. A policy change is always the best example, I remember every department in a former company being involved and it was a hugely successful change. We condensed 60 travel policies down to one with a great upturn in compliance. It's worth the effort and can be personally very rewarding too.
In summary, and to answer the question 'what makes a best in class travel manager?', my answer is simple. Those that make it to the top are the 'Selling Buyers'. They're focused on communication, influencing and strategy which, when combined, get the results.
- Submitted during Caroline's tenure as VP consulting at Amercan Express Global Business Travel