Video Helped this Global Travel Company Clinch $42M in New Business

Corporate Traveler, the US corporate travel division of Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), is dedicated to supporting start-up to mid-market travel programs. As a traditional sales organization, the team was heavily dependent on cold-calling and pen and notebook processes. That was until the team discovered the power of technology, including enterprise video platform Vidyard, to transform the way it prospects and sells. As a result, FCTG has dramatically cut its sales cycles, won new business to the tune of $42 million, improved sales team performance, and built its brand differentiation by using technology and video to communicate with prospects and customers in a uniquely warm and personal way.

The Need to Modernize Sales and Cure the Chaos

Corporate travel is an important part of the travel market and FCTG’s highly successful corporate travel brands account for an ever-growing proportion of the company’s overall income and profit.
With a North American headquarters in Boston, Corporate Traveler serves approximately 3,000 small to mid-sized businesses across the United States. Built on the principle of personalized relationships, Corporate Traveler is committed to providing business clients (regardless of size) with better travel experiences.

For the sales team, outreach had always been a manual effort. Driven to meet aggressive sales targets of 400 phone calls and 600 emails a month, the team of 60 relied on cold calling, email, and dabbled in LinkedIn to prospect for new business.

“Our processes were quite chaotic with everyone doing their own thing,” confesses Alex Campione, Corporate Traveler’s Director of Sales Enablement.

In 2017, Alex’s colleague, Joyce Yi, Senior Director of Sales Strategy, set out to move the team from old-school pen and notebook sales processes to a modern sales approach, backed by 21st-century technology. As a first step, Joyce invested in Outreach to streamline sales engagement launching the platform with the sales team in 2018. That change alone had the sales team routinely exceeding its sales targets.

At the time, video wasn’t even on the company’s radar as a prospecting tactic.

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Personal Video Builds Personal Relationships

Alex initially discovered Vidyard when she stumbled across the company’s blog while searching for a more efficient way to scale delivery of customer demos. “I found the content so incredibly helpful, I began experimenting with the free Vidyard platform. That quickly led to me advocating for us to use the paid Vidyard platform to scale our ability to reach more clients with our tech demos and keep up with requests from the sales team. I saw pre-recorded videos as a more efficient way to deliver our services,” she says.

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Video for Sales is a ‘No-Brainer’ Decision

In July 2019, nearly six months after discovering Vidyard, Alex was able to get approval to book a demo of the online video platform. She invited Joyce.

“Vidyard was an instant no-brainer for both of us,” says Alex. “By the end of August, we were doing the paperwork to get the first group of licenses over the line. I’ve never seen a ‘yes’ happen so fast.”

Right out of the gate, Alex recorded a full library of sales demos. “Vidyard was so easy and quick to adopt, I immediately started looking at other ways we could put it to work.”

Personal Video Helps Sales Reps Stand Out

“Corporate travel is a very competitive market. It’s hard to stand out in a person’s inbox,” explains Alex. “Being personable is one of our company’s core values. We pride ourselves on our dedicated service model and on building long-term relationships based on consistently friendly service. So personal video for sales prospecting fits well with that value. We can show off who we are in a personal way and separate from the crowd.”

Previously, Corporate Traveler used to do a ‘call blitz,’ where the team devoted an entire day to cold calling. Now, they do Vidyard power hours which have become a favorite of the sales team. Vidyard is integrated with Outreach. Video is offered up as part of every sales sequence. Vidyard also sends video view data to Salesforce, so salespeople can see which contacts viewed what videos and for how long.

Says Alex, “Video has made prospecting so much easier. Traditionally it took 40 calls or 100 emails to get a sales meeting. It takes 15 videos to achieve the same. With those kinds of results, I mean, why wouldn’t you use video?”

Alex relates one instance where the team was able to close a $3M deal with a Boston biotech pharma client after the managing director for Americas sent the client a personal outreach video. “Video created the rapport that clinched the deal,” she notes.

Account Executives Use Video to Show the People Behind the Outreach These examples are from Corporate Traveler Account Manager Luke Verge. He uses video as a way to connect personally with his clients showing them there is a real person behind the outreach efforts that’s ready to help customers with their travel needs. He uses props and humor to showcase his personality and brings authenticity to his outreach efforts.

And it’s not just that one deal where the team is seeing stellar results. Alex shares that in the first six months of Flight Centre’s fiscal ’21 year, sales videos recorded using Vidyard helped close $42 million in new business.

The Company Realizes the Benefits of an Enterprise Video Platform

Corporate Traveler’s President Amanda Vining has also been quick to show her support for personal video. She began using Vidyard to record internal communications and customer messages.

Using Personal Video for Employee Recognition Corporate Traveler’s President, Amanda Vining shares some employee appreciation congratulating an employee on reaching a 20-year milestone with the company.

“She’s been an amazing ambassador for the platform,” says Alex. “She said to our sales team, ‘each of you send me your top three opportunities and I will send them a personal message.’ She recorded over 100 personal video messages. It sent a strong message to everyone that if the President can use personal video, anyone can.”

A Holiday Message to Corporate Traveler Customers Corporate Traveler’s President, Amanda Vining sends a holiday message to all the company’s customers thanking them for their continued support and highlighting the company’s focus on giving back to charities like Feeding America. Her adorable daughter is a frequent guest star in her videos. Something many parents can relate to as they are working from home.

With video proving to be a winning sales-enabler for the US team, word is now spreading across the FCTG organization. The Canadian sales team is currently running a Vidyard pilot and there’s talk about going global with Vidyard, making the enterprise video platform available to all of FCTG’s sales, customer success, implementation managers and learning development teams worldwide.

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COVID-19 Drives Home the Need for Video

Video has become even more critical to Corporate Traveler since COVID-19. The pandemic hit the travel industry very hard. Corporate Traveler’s 60-person sales team was downsized by two-thirds. But with 3,000 customers still depending on the company for support, video became the best way to stay personally connected.

“The pandemic quickly put the entire travel industry in a very bad spot,” says Alex. “Many travel companies shut their doors. We need people to know that we’re still here.”

Right at the beginning of the pandemic, Corporate Traveler’s corporate communications team tapped into video to send out an appeal for government funding to help bring stranded Americans home from abroad.

Corporate Traveler Offers Crisis Travel Support to Stranded Travelers This video from Corporate Traveler’s President Amanda Vining was their most viewed video ever. The company shared as a response to stranded travelers as a result of the onset of the pandemic and demonstrated how the team was steady during a crisis and opened up their service to anyone who required them.

Now, the company’s customer success team is using video to reach out to all our clients who don’t have a dedicated account manager to re-engage with them and foster a warm and friendly feeling.

It’s working like a charm. The campaign has enjoyed a 55% email open rate and a 75% response rate.

A Warm Re-Engagement Message from the Customer Success Team Mary Gioglotti, Customer Success Manager at Corporate Traveler created this video as part of a customer re-engagement campaign to show clients that the team is still available to support them when they’re ready and able to return to travel. Using video as an outreach method, Mary is able to show her warmth and friendliness, exemplifying Corporate Traveler’s value props and their commitment to their customers.

Says Alex, “Never have we seen those kinds of results. Every single customer knows that we’re still here, still there for them, and it’s still the same service as we move into 2021. When they’re ready to come back to travel, we’re ready to serve.”

The Flight Centre Travel Group Limited (FLT) is one of the world’s largest travel groups employing more than 8,000 people across the globe. The company’s vast leisure and corporate travel sales network now extends throughout four major regions:

1. Australia and New Zealand
2. The Americas, specifically the United States, Canada and Mexico
3. EMEA (the United Kingdom, South Africa, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the United Arab Emirates); and
4. Asia (Greater China, India, Singapore and Malaysia)

In addition, FLT’s global corporate travel management network, FCM Travel Solutions, extends to about 75 other countries through strategic licensing agreements with independent local operators. After starting with one shop in the early 1980s, FLT has enjoyed remarkable ongoing growth under its founder and CEO, Graham “Skroo” Turner.

The company now has more than 30 brands, including the flagship Flight Centre leisure travel brand and Liberty, the iconic US travel agency group. Key corporate brands include Corporate Traveller and FCM.

FLT has been listed on the Australian Securities Exchange since 1995 and currently has a market capitalisation in the order of $AU 5 billion, making it an ASX S&P 100 company.