Home Based Travel Agent Basics: Mini-Course - Part 6

Home based travel agent mini-course: Part 6: Secrets of Successful Home-Based Travel Agents.

Everyone is different and each of us travels his or her own road to success, but over the years (and in a thoroughly unscientific way) I have noticed a number of qualities that make for success in the home-based travel agency business.

Here then are some observations about just a few qualities that successful agents bring to the table when they start out.

THEY DO THEIR HOMEWORK

If you are not already a home-based agent, the very fact that you are reading this mini-course suggests that you like to arm yourself with all the information available before making a decision.

I regularly hear from agents who signed up with the first agency that caught their eye. Now they regret it and wonder if I can point them in the right direction. I explain to them (hopefully with a certain amount of patience) that I cannot make decisions for them. The host agency that’s right for me might be wrong for them. And vice versa. You see, part of doing your homework is doing it yourself, not having someone else do it for you.

The thing many beginners (especially those with no real experience of being in business for themselves) fail to understand is that the sellers of business opportunities are just that – sellers. Just as the car dealer won’t volunteer that the car you have your eye on sits at the bottom of the
"Consumer Reports" safety rankings, the ads for a host agency offer won’t volunteer the downsides of their offer or reveal that a better deal is being offered by someone else.

Please understand, I am not saying these people are being dishonest. They are simply putting the best face on what they have to offer. That’s simply what sellers do. When you start selling travel, you’ll do it too. I’m sure that if you are considering starting a home travel agency you have visited at least several sites offering such business opportunities and I’m also sure you understand what I’m talking about.

My approach is fundamentally different. I do not sell a business opportunity. The value the Home-Based Travel Agent Resource Center and my home study course bring to the market is to provide unfiltered and unbiased information about how the business REALLY works and the MANY, MANY different avenues open to you.

For example, very few host agencies go out of their way to point out that in many cases you do not have to share commissions with them. I am free to tell you that and explain when it’s appropriate (and when/if it's possible) to deal directly with suppliers and how to go about doing it. And whatever the topic I try to be evenhanded in explaining the pros AND the cons of pursuing any particular strategy.

If you do your homework properly, you will be in a far better position to make informed decisions about how to set up and grow your business. Or you can always do what I did: learn by trial and error.

Take it from me, losing a few thousand dollars by making a "dumb beginner’s" mistake is a powerful incentive to do it right next time!

This principle applies not just in the start-up phase of your business, but throughout your business career. If you want to sell cruises, learn the cruise business inside out.

If you want to sell the Caribbean, visit the islands and the resorts, poke your nose into all the hotels, go to the seminars offered by the tourist authorities and the suppliers.

With this kind of in depth analysis, you can be sure of offering the best product mix for both your market and your bottom line. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

THEY GO INTO BUSINESS WITH THEIR EYES OPEN

If you do your homework, you will start your home travel agency business with few illusions.

Another problem beginners have is that they are dazzled by all the pretty pictures in the host agency ads. "Be a travel agent," they seem to say
and you’ll spend your life strolling on a white sand beach with your significant other." Well, maybe. Sometimes.

I go out of my way to let people in on the dirty little secret of being a home-based travel agent. It’s a business. It’s a job. It means actually doing some (brace yourself) WORK!

If you haven’t read Part 5, "Five Good Reasons NOT To Be A Home Based Travel Agent," do yourself a favor and read it now:

Yes those great deals and those special moments exist. I have cruised free to exotic ports and I have stayed in luxury hotels for motel prices. I also show people how to do the same sort of thing, whether it’s a $299 cruise as part of their continuing education or a bona-fide fam trip. But to
paraphrase the old TV ad, "Home-based travel agents get their perks the old-fashioned way: They EARN them!"

THEY PLAN THEIR BUSINESS BEFORE IT PLANS THEM

You are what you eat, they say. Well you are also what you sell. If you wind up selling a lot of cheap airfare, that’s what you’ll get a reputation for doing whether you like it or not.

I have noticed that successful home travel agents go into the business with a clear idea of what they want their business to look like. This mostly has to do with specialization but other factors are involved as well.

The home-based agent who says, "I offer high-end diving expeditions to the Caribbean" is more likely to make a go of it than the agent who says "I sell travel; where do you want to go?"

As I explain in the home study course, being a home-based travel agent isn’t like being a storefront agent in a different location. (It can be but it doesn’t have to be and, in my view, it shouldn’t be.) Once the fundamental differences between the two sink in, a whole range of possibilities open up.

This part of the start-up process is actually a lot of fun because it starts with big, no-limits dreaming followed by a period of rational analysis. If you are just starting out, take the time to envision your dream business.

You can pull some of the elements out of the clear blue sky, but be sure to balance your dreaming with your own experience. Ask yourself questions like:

Why do I love travel? What first got me excited about traveling? What’s my favorite destination? Where have I always dreamed of going? What are my favorite activities (walking, museums, tennis, golf, etc.)?

This is just a start; I offer many more suggestions in the course. The point is that, if you have been drawn to this business out of a love for travel, your ideal travel business probably already exists inside you, just waiting to be discovered, developed, and defined.

The young mother who has experienced the frustrations of getting good advice for family vacations will have a better chance of succeeding as a specialist in family travel than in selling very expensive opera tours to Italy. That’s just one example. What’s YOUR example?

Obviously, there are other aspects to planning a business. Just because I have only discussed one of them here doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think through all aspects of your travel-business-to-be. The more and the better you think it through, the better your odds of making a go of it. Helping you do that is just part of what my home study course is all about.

THEY TAKE ACTION

Someone calls it "the paralysis of analysis," the danger that you’ll spend so much time thinking and planning that you’ll never actually DO anything.

At some point (and as screamingly obvious as it sounds), you have to do something to enjoy success. If you are already up and running as an agent, that could mean making the leap of faith to promote that pricey African safari without being 100% sure you can pull it off.

To be successful you can’t be afraid of failure. You must do your homework (see above) and do everything you can to insure success, but ultimately every promotion carries some risk of failure. Chances are that even if you don’t fill up all the slots, you’ll fill some. And suppliers know that not every promotion succeeds. If they see you are actively doing the right things, they will be supportive and willing to work with you again.

If you are just starting out, that leap of faith could be ordering the home study course and arming yourself with information that could take you years to amass otherwise.

But, please, please, please reread Lesson Five ("Five Good Reasons NOT To Be A Home Based Travel Agent") first. I have the best money-back guarantee in the business, far better than anything offered by business opportunities that cost many hundreds of dollars more than my course. But nothing saddens me more than people who return the materials saying, "I didn’t realize how much work was involved."

These are people who clearly would like to work at home, make some money, and derive some personal satisfaction, but with that kind of attitude, the cards are stacked against them no matter what they try. There is only one entity in the universe that can make something from nothing. It ain’t me. And it ain’t you.

I hope you have enjoyed this mini-course in becoming a home-based travel agent and I look forward to having you as one of my thousands of satisfied students.

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