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knowledge selling from home
Referral networks
Dish out,
£
£
£
£
to cash in
exchange work if they wish.
£
Commission arrangements for
If you are getting swamped in enquiries, homeworker
referrals vary, explains Jane
Schumm, Hays Travel’s north
networks are perfect for enlisting help to ensure every
£
east general manager: “If [the
sales lead is maximised, as Debbie Ward reports
original agent] had done any work
on it we’d look at halving the commission,
if it’s just a lead they’ll just hand that work
H
aving more sales leads than you straight away but if there’s ones on there over but it’s a close knit team and what goes
can handle may sound like a for a honeymoon or long duration holiday around comes around.”
dream come true but it does sometimes there’s a bit of a bidding frenzy Buddy systems are used in many home-
sometimes happen and home- and it’ll go to the highest price.” working organisations to help
working companies have developed different John, a cruise specialist, never uses TC Bay agents cover holidays and other
ways of helping their agents cope. to sell potential bookings for regulars, for crunch times.
Travel Counsellors originally redirected fear of losing customers. He has however
work from overloaded homeworkers via its asked a colleague who is a wintersports Specialist groups
helpdesk. Since 2007 however it has used an specialist to handle a couple of his regulars’ However, when Jenny Jackson and
online eBay-style system called TC Bay where ski enquires. “Now they’d go to my colleague
£
Trisha Holden from Personal
agents can post their excess enquiries and for ski and me for cruise,” he explains. Travel Advisors recently found
earn a fee from the agent who buys the lead. themselves with too many
Buddy networks weddings and honeymoons
Auction your enquiries Recognising homeworkers do sometimes enquiries, they thought beyond
John Watson from Deal, Kent is among its prefer to pass on enquires that fall out- £ these systems and sought
fans. “It’s important to get back to people in side their comfort zone, and that this can permission from parent company
24 hours so if you’ve got a lot of work on at also improve customer service, Hays Travel Future Travel to create their own
£
a particular time it’s sometimes better to say recently introduced a system to help. team of specialists they could trust
‘I will get one of my colleagues to have a In November it restructured its leads-based with the surplus.
look at that for you,’” he says. Homeworker Travel Consultants, grouping Head of Future Travel Sheena Darby
“It stays on TC Bay for two hours. People agents according to their particular
£
explains: “If you’re doing a big wedding fair
can ‘buy now’ for a certain amount of destination or sector specialisms and even and you’ve only got two or three of you
money and that usually gets snapped up their location – a benefit when handling there, you’re going to get more enquires
regional airport enquiries. The agents are than you can manage. Because of the vol-
now suggested “buddies” with niche knowl- ume it would take them days or weeks to get
edge across both their fellow homeworkers back to the customers so this is a scheme
and retail colleagues, with whom they can we’re piloting at the moment.”
£
£
£
28 26.06.2009
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