For Smaller Agencies, Training Newbies Is A Tall Order

Ask half a dozen owners or managers of small and mid-size leisure travel agencies how they train industry newcomers and you’ll likely get half a dozen different answers.

“We talk over the walls a lot and give tons of input,” said one agency owner. “I schedule one-on-ones every other week with every one of them,” said another. “We created a training program where [job] candidates pay to be trained,” said a third.

One thing on which owners and managers agree––training new agents is a huge challenge, especially for smaller agencies where staff is already over-extended.

Here’s how three agencies are addressing the training challenge.

Cruise & Travel Masters, Salt Lake City
Cruise & Travel Masters is a 33-year-old storefront agency whose 40 travel sellers are all independent contractors. The agency is adding new independents “all the time,” said owner and manager Toby Nash.

Nash said she’s found the younger generation of new agents to be “aggressive” and “good at selling” as well as being great travelers. But they still have plenty to learn.

As a first step, she directs newbies to the online product, destination and sales training provided by her consortium’s preferred vendors. “They have to do all our upper-tier vendors’ modules. It’s hours of training. By the time they get through the second tier of vendors, they’re pretty good with the information.”

Because her agents are independents, Nash can’t make vendor training mandatory. But she can make it a prerequisite for receiving new client leads. “If they want access to new business, they have to complete it.”

While they’re working through vendors’ online programs, trainees receive hands-on guidance during and after calls. “As we give them a call here and there, they’re taking what they learned from that webinar, and we’re sitting with them and strategizing where’s the best place for this customer. I’ve got a gal who works closely with the new trainees.”

A sense of teamwork and mutual accountability greases the wheels. “Everyone’s in a cubicle, so everyone can hear everybody. We talk over the walls a lot and give tons of input on how they managed the phone call.” It’s also tremendously helpful for new agents to be within earshot of veteran agents so they hear how they handle vendor and client calls.

Supplier visits to the office are integral too. “I send them to the newbies and say, ‘Go tell them everything you’ve got.’”

Dimensions in Travel, Novato, CA
At Dimensions in Travel, it takes nearly a year to train industry newcomers to the standards expected by its FIT clients. So when two young agents ended up leaving the agency not long after completing their training, agency co-owners Diana Saint James and Jill Romano decided to rethink their approach.

The result is a three- to six-month training program that they’ll offer––for a fee––to strong job and IC candidates who are inexperienced. “We needed people to have more skin in the game,” Saint James said. “In a sense it’s trying to return to an earlier model when we all paid to go to travel school.”

Because the agency has “a more old school” way of doing things, the biggest challenge for newcomers is learning to work in Worldspan, the agency’s GDS. So trainees start by working through Travelport’s extensive online training, which can take two to three months. The training modules are supplemented by practice worksheets that have been created in-house to reflect scenarios that are typical for agency clients.

For training in selling cruises and land tours, Dimensions in Travel has “handpicked the [vendor] programs that we feel give the broadest introduction,” Saint James said. With 12 employees and 16 independent contractors, Dimensions in Travel also benefits from vendors’ in-office seminars.

One-on-one coaching is another piece. “Jill and I will sit down with people and say, ‘Today we’re going to talk about active vacations. How do they work?’ ” New hires also use training headsets to listen in as experienced agents handle sales calls.

“It’s a great training program,” Saint James said. She just wishes it didn’t fall to her and her partner to do the actual teaching. “Our small-business model is complex enough without having to do our own training. I wish those training schools would come back; I think our industry would grow by leaps and bounds.”

You Deserve It Vacations, Irving, TX
Every fourth quarter, Yolanda Meador, president and founder of You Deserve It Vacations, surveys her independent contractors about their training needs, and then builds a 12-month plan based on their responses.

Typically her team of 10 agents asks for product training, but Meador doesn’t think online training is sufficient. So every fall she contacts supplier BDMs to schedule visits to her agency for the upcoming year. “You need that one-on-one to build relationships with the BDMs, so when something goes wrong they answer the phone.”

But Meador found that the combination of online and in-person training wasn’t doing the job. Her ICs needed stronger sales skills. They also needed a plan and a sense of direction, together with goals and someone to hold them accountable.

So in 2016 she added what amounted to personal coaching for her independents. Throughout the year, she has met individually with each of her 10 independents every other week. “We talked about what they were going to do and what they had done toward that plan. I committed to one year to make sure everybody’s goals would get accomplished. As an owner, as a mentor, I gave them all I could.”

But it didn’t work. While Meador’s personal productivity this year is up 35%, the agency’s overall sales have dropped.

So in 2017 Meador will start anew. She’s shifting to a fixed-cost model for ICs and aims to recruit independents who are “sales-minded and a little hungry.”

As for training, she plans to continue the coaching-intensive approach she initiated this year. She’s also thinking about resurrecting a travel school that she and a colleague ran with limited success four years ago.