14 Jul 2014 Working With Your Agents From Start to Finish

Working with agents is an effective way to grow your business beyond what you could achieve alone, but your relationship with your agents is a crucial one that must be handled with care right from the outset.

Here are the steps you can take to get it right:

Step 1: Prepare your offer

Before working with agents, you first need to decide that you actually want to partner with them. This is not a snap decision you make – it requires you to lay the groundwork and prepare your offer in advance. In your initial discussions with the agent, you need to figure out whether they will be a good fit. Some qualities to look for:

• Financial stability (financial resources, credit rating)
• Relevant experience in your sector (in selling similar tours and activities)
• Good management skills (signs of professionalism)
• Adequate resources (business is big enough and uses modern systems)
• Good product mix (your products fit into their offerings well)
• Sales capability (good incentives and training for sales staff)
• Promotional expertise (plan for marketing your products to their customers)

For the partnership to be successful when working with agents, you need to be confident that you can work well together.

After you have decided to give them an offer, you need to create a sales kit which includes:

• Fact sheets (per product)
• Fact sheets (per type of customer – group travel, conference products, and leisure free independent travel should be separated)
• Brochure
• Map
• Photographs
• Videos

You will want to provide these as hard copies for the meeting and soft copies after the meeting.

In Rezdy, you share your products directly with agents by creating a Partner Catalog. It would be smart to link to this in your sales kit so they can get an idea of what it looks like and see how professional the booking process is.

Step 2: Make it official

Once you have hashed out how you will work together, it’s time to agree on your terms and sign your contract.

Include:

• Product range they are selling for you (eg. day tours only)
• What you will provide them to help (ie. price list, printed brochures, anything else)
• What market they are selling your products to (ie. what locale)
• How you will deliver your tour or activity (eg. is hotel pickup included?)
• How online bookings will be managed (eg. through your online booking system)
• How reporting will be managed (ie. monthly reports, quarterly reports, and what content will be in each)
• How you will work together to deal with major issues (eg. customer issues)

So that your agent sees your catalog, you’ll need to invite them to Rezdy.

Step 3: Get the ball rolling

Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to start working with agents!

Once the bookings start pouring in, it’s time for you to manage ongoing operations. One of the biggest problems with this is paying agent commission. But lucky for you, Rezdy makes it easy for you to reconcile agent commission, and view your orders by source. That way, you can see how many bookings your agent sent you, and how much revenue they contributed to your business.

What’s Next?

• Create a Partner Catalog
• Invite an agent
• Reconcile your agent’s commission
• Customize your sales report

Topics agents, distribution, marketing, OTAs