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What could be worse than missing your cruise sailing after suffering a harried day of flight delays? How about discovering you’re expected to pay for the cruise, even though you’re not onboard? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.

The description of a cruise ship as a “floating hotel” doesn’t fit in one regard. Unless there is an earthquake, hotels typically don’t move. If you’re being delayed, you can call the hotel and ask that your room be held for a late arrival. A ship is supposed to sail at a posted time, whether or not you’re onboard. Unlike a hotel, if you don’t show up, the ship can’t sell your cabin to somebody who arrives later that night.

Most cruise companies have cancellation or no-show penalties that kick in within 45 days of the cruise. The closer you get to the departure date, the higher the penalty. A standard cruise contract calls for no refund if the passenger is not onboard for departure. So you should take measures to help assure you’ll be there on time. You should also consider buying insurance that protects you if you’re not.

If you’re in the insurance business, you may think the premium for the cruise-cancellation insurance is pretty high. Protection of $3,000 or $4,000 may cost you around $100. The term “insurance” may not adequately describe what you’re buying. Think of it more as a fare upgrade, similar to what the airlines offer: The cheapest airline tickets are not refundable; but for an additional charge, you can make changes.

For the extra cost of cruise-protection coverage, you’re actually converting a non-refundable fare to one that is refundable under certain circumstances. Depending on what you buy, the “upgrade” may also offer other coverage, such as medical assistance while you’re out of the country, luggage protection, flight insurance, and more.

While it’s good to have this protection, what you really want is to be on that ship when she sails. Most delay problems occur when flying. Here are some things to consider to improve your chances of a timely arrival.

If the plane doesn’t get you there on time, you’re stuck. The best way to avoid this is to fly in the night before your cruise is to depart. Second best is to schedule an early-morning direct flight on your cruise day. If you can’t find a direct flight, schedule one with as few stops and plane changes as possible. While getting up at 4 a.m. to make an early-morning flight is no fun, you’ll have all day to find later flights that are available should your first flight be canceled or delayed.

If your city is served by a small- or medium-size airport, consider scheduling flights that leave out of a larger hub airport and drive the three or four hours necessary to get there. This reduces the chance of a missed connection due to your originating flight being delayed or canceled.

If you’re forced to fly through a hub airport during the winter, try to select an airline that uses a hub located as far south as possible. Flying through northern cities like Minneapolis or Detroit in the middle of the winter opens you to even more weather-related flight delays.

The cruise lines select the flights and airlines for you if you buy an air-sea package. You will have little say regarding the airlines and flights they use, but you can usually decide the airport from which you’ll leave. Consider asking them to arrange your flight to begin from the larger airport that has several direct flights to your port city, if you don’t mind driving a little farther.

While the cruise companies guarantee nothing, my wife and I have noticed that they work closely with the airlines when the cruise lines make the flight arrangements. We’ve been in the back office of a major cruise line on sailing day and listened as the cruise employees talked to officials at an airline that was experiencing weather delays on many of its flights. We’ve sailed on cruises that departed late so that passengers on delayed flights could get there. One ship we observed waited more than two hours. Depending on the air-sea package and cruise-protection policy you buy, the cruise company may be obligated to fly you to the next port where the ship is to stop. You’ll miss a day or two of the cruise, but it won’t be a total loss.

Flight delays and cancellations make too many headlines these days. You can eliminate this problem–while saving a few dollars–if you can drive to the port city. Back in the mid 1980s, we would book a cruise, then shop for the lowest air fare to the port city–it was simple. These days the cruise lines control most of the cheapest airline tickets to port cities on cruise days. This forces us to make air travel arrangements through the cruise line.

If an air add-on offered by the cruise line costs $300, a family of four will have a total air travel cost of $1,200. That family, or two couples traveling together, could easily drive a couple of days to the cruise dock and save several hundred dollars. Be sure to get directions and parking information from the cruise line before you leave home. You’ll have expenses for several meals and a couple of hotel nights, the mileage on your car, and a few days of parking expense, but it should still be cheaper than air travel for four people. More importantly, you’ll have more control of your schedule.

So how do you make sure your dream cruise doesn’t start without you?

* Buy cruise-protection insurance.

* Schedule to arrive at the port city the day before departure.

* If you can’t arrive a day prior, schedule the earliest, most direct flight available on your cruise-departure day.

* Consider driving to a larger airport that has more direct flights.

* Let the cruise line make your air arrangements for you.

* Consider driving to the port city.

A great thing about a cruise is that other people can do most of your thinking for you. They can show you the exciting ports-of-call, arrange your wonderful mealtime experiences, plan onboard activities, and more. They’re ready to show you a good time, if you can just get them. Do a little planning and you’ll be aboard when the fun begins.

Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It, observed that writers in Montana seldom have to look very far-or very hard-for story ideas. “There are characters and situations here everywhere you look,” he said.

Maclean must have known Christy Leskovar’s family. Leskovar is the author of One Night in a Bad Inn (Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula, Mont., 2006), a tribute to her maternal grandmodier, Aila Hughes Thompson. Thompson was a woman of strong character, a hard worker, and above all, “a lady,” despite the influence of her parents, Andrew and Sarah Hughes, who both “did time” for such crimes as grave robbing and insurance fraud and of her husband, an Irish gambler, drinker, and brawler.

We meet Thompson early on in the book and follow her and her siblings to the state orphanage where they live while their parents are in prison, and later when she works in her mother’s Butte boardinghouse, attends high school, and rebuffs her alcoholic mother’s attempts to force her into prostitution. In one dramatic scene, the young Aila is sent to a boarder’s room to deliver a meal; when he opens the door naked, it’s obvious he’s been promised more than dinner by his landlady. Later in the story, an angry Sarah prevents her daughter from attending college by tearing all of Aila’s clothes to shreds while telling her “You’ll never amount to anything. . . . You could make plenty of money for me right here in this house if you weren’t so high and mighty”.

There’s much colorful Montana history to learn from One Night in a Bad Inn. Unfortunately. The book is so long that my attention flagged, especially in the mid-section where the author revisits World War I for over 150 pages. I think the book’s length resulted from Leskovar’s desire to use everything she learned. I know what that is like from personal experience, so I’m somewhat sympathetic, but there are several places where some judicious editing could have moved the story along.

In a reverse situation, new editions of two terrific travel guides have come out with additional information to enrich and inform visitors about Glacier National Park-and sites along the Nez Perce Trail. Place Names of Glacier National Park by Jack Holterman is now in its third edition, brought out in 2006 by Chris Cauble at Riverbend Publishing in Helena, who is doing so much to keep important Montana material in print. This book contains fascinating facts, legends, and speculations about how familiar names came to be bestowed on mountains, lakes, roads, and way stations in Glacier. When possible, Holterman cross-references mentions of these spots to other works that many of his readers will know-or will want to, such as the entry for “Marias River and Pass,” which not only includes a suggestion of the pass being haunted-certainly a draw for young tourists who usually relish ghost stories-but also directs adults to an early Montana author: “About 1879 Andrew Garcia fled through here or near here and had to bury his beloved Nez Perce wife, fatally wounded by Blackfeet, in the ‘wild Marias Mountains’. This 240-page book is a gem, and its ninety-yearold author is a true Montana treasure. I can hardly wait to revisit Glacier with this informative and reasonably priced paperback guide in hand.

Editor’s note: This month we introduce a new column that will appear periodically. In it, industry experts will offer their insights on how agencies can acquire additional information about prospect and client needs and behaviors in order to serve them better, and in the process, increase sales. Our author for this first column is Jack McMahan, president of Crossing the Chasm, LLC, a relationship management consulting firm, which specializes in innovative growth solutions for insurance agencies.

Your phone rings and you answer to hear this bizarre request: “Hi, this is Pat. You don’t know me. Want to go out for lunch?”

Does that cold call work?

Probably not.

You wouldn’t use this technique to get a date. So why do we use it to obtain prospects? Aren’t the goals the same-to build a relationship?

Over the last decade the terms “relationship,” “relationship management,” and even “customer relationship management” have taken on added interest. None of these terms is new. For me, however, heightened awareness of how selling organizations outside the insurance industry perform has created new interest in getting back to the basics of relationship building.

Harry Beckwith, who suggests that we need to sell like we date1, is one of my favorite marketing mentors. I hope to expand on his “dating” metaphor, with a touch of humor, to address fundamental issues of relationship building and management.

“Want to get married?”

Asking to marry your date the first time you go out isn’t likely to bring a positive response-and if it does, the likelihood of a good marriage resulting is slim. Inexperienced insurance producers often talk first about themselves (what they know or who they know), about products (”We have great___”), and, finally, about price (”We are competitive.”). Initiating any relationship means building trust, which necessitates demonstrating a genuine interest in the other person early on. Relationships take time.

Do not talk about “me,” “product,” or “price” on the first date. Focus, instead, on the prospect. The prospect is not “the business”; he or she is a person. Find out who the person is, what that person needs, and why you should date.

What blank eyes mean.

Blank eyes probably mean that you’re not connecting at an emotional level. If you can’t get, or haven’t gotten, to an emotional level in the relationship, the connection probably isn’t going to work. How do you know when you’ve connected emotionally? Look at the eyes.

First kiss.

Build a foundation for the relationship early on. Gain trust by developing the big picture. Look for and understand the critical issues surrounding the client, such as economic trends, industry trends, and downstream customer demands. Keep in mind the client’s underlying values and behaviors. Look for opportunities, big and small, to be of service, to provide insight, and to offer opinions that demonstrate you understand the person as well as the business. Once you have proved that you understand and you care, then you have earned the right to kiss.

“I can’t get no satisfaction!”

In this anthem of the 1960s, the Rolling Stones sing about the ambiguities of relationship building Chances are good that your prospect is not looking for you to prove your expertise. Expertise is generally assumed, or you wouldn’t be offered the privilege to meet. The prospect is looking for a relationship experience. That experience may mean convenience , confidence , or comfort .

The point is that “relationship experience” is a feeling in the mind of your client. You absolutely must find out what feeling your client or prospect is looking for to make sure that what you are delivering matches that feeling over the long haul. Clients are typically won based on expertise, but the relationship experience is what keeps them coming back.

Let your date know you care.

Reliability is a fundamental component of trust. It goes beyond showing up on time or answering the telephone on the first ring. It means truly understanding the client’s behaviors, characteristics, attitudes, and values and then using your understanding to customize the way you interact with that client. Sometimes you do that intuitively, remembering Joe’s favorite team, for example. My point is, do it better, do it deeper, and do it systematically.

“Will you still love me tomorrow?”

The number one reason why defection occurs is the customer’s belief that he or she has been taken for granted2. That’s the reason that the second most important month to genuinely communicate with your customer, on a personal level, is the month after renewal.

“Just tell me the truth.”

Lying or exaggerating is never appropriate. Building trust, right from the beginning, is the single most important ingredient in a lasting relationship.