Greg is bowled over with how well his business is going!
He’s celebrating a single booking worth more than £85,000 where nine of his clients will jet off to Melbourne’s iconic Cricket Ground to watch England take on Australia in one of the most iconic test matches in the cricketing calendar on Christmas Day.
From there they will transfer to Sydney and to witness the final Ashes showdown in the series.
En route home, the group will stop over in Kuala Lumpur and follow Greg’s personal tips and tricks gained from his own travels to the region.
“It was quite a feat to organise, especially considering it was the peak festive season,” said Greg, but it demonstrates the sheer diversity of what our travel agents can organise for their clients.
As well as being able to cherry pick hotels and flights and tours from more than 450 suppliers, as a Not Just Travel agent you’ll also have access to red hot tickets for some of the world’s biggest and most popular sporting events.
While this is one of the biggest bookings Greg has made, he’s already reached our Platinum One status since joining us in May 2023.
Platinum is one of the rungs on our success ladder, which starts off at Bronze and goes up in tiers all the way to Diamond. Each of the nine rungs represents the amount of commission earned. We find this is a great way to incentivise our agents and give them goals that they can aspire to.
Reaching so high on our ladder is impressive, but even more so considering that for the first year Greg was running his new travel agency business on a part-time basis while also working in corporate sales.
Although he was keen to retire from his stressful sales job, this didn’t mean he wanted to completely retire and do nothing. Travel is Greg’s passion and the idea of organising travel for a living was appealing. Even more so, the idea of being more in control of his life was hugely attractive.
“Not Just Travel has given me the ability to do what I want, as much as I want, for as long as I want and have much more control over my own destiny.
“The original plan was to generate a business that I could make work no matter where I was in the world. For example, my partner and I could easily rent a gîte in France for May and June every year and I can still operate. As long as I have an internet connection and I offer great customer service I can do this job from anywhere.”
While Greg has spent years as a salesman, he admits that as a travel agent his sales skills are not essential.
“This is far from a hardcore sales job.You’re not selling things to people who don’t want to buy. They want to go on holiday and if they’re paying no more for the service that you offer and you’re giving them great personal contact, why would they not book with you?”
Being able to give great advice is easy because our agents have all the information they could possibly need at their fingertips.
As well as being allocated a Business Development Manager (BDM) to advise them – we have the highest ratio of BDMs to consultants in the industry – they can also tap into the limitless knowledge of our partners and the recommendations from fellow agents.
You’ll be given access to private Facebook groups where everyone assists everyone else and shares recommendations and knowledge.
“Learning about destinations I don’t already know is really fulfilling. It gives me a real buzz being able to utilise that knowledge and pass it on. I love it when I get a call from the client once they get home and they tell me how lovely everything was and that it was exactly as I’d described. It gives me a warm glow inside.”
Learning on the job is ongoing. Training is given top priority and there are always opportunities to grow.
For example, Greg had never been on a cruise before he stepped on board Princess Cruises’ Sky Princess last May as part of one of our Seminar at Sea training trips.
“If I’m honest, I really didn’t think cruising was for me. But it turned out to be a great experience and I got to see first hand why cruising is so popular. Since coming off that trip I’ve sold about 14 cruises since May that I never would have done had I not been on the trip.”
He found our Millionaire’s Retreat in Crete last year equally beneficial. All our Elite agents get to join us on not one, but two overseas training retreats.
First up is the Millionaire’s Retreat which is all about fine tuning how you operate your business on a daily basis. This is followed by our luxurious, long-haul Elite Experience, which helps you put a strategy in place to grow your business. Both these overseas retreats come as part of your Elite package and are on us!
So what did Greg think of our Millionaire’s Retreat in Crete?
“It gave me a lot of direction and the impetus I needed to get ready for the Peak selling season.”
‘Peaks’, as it is known in the travel industry, runs from January through to the end of March and is the period when travel agents tend to sell four times more compared to the rest of the year. So it’s a period not to be missed.
Alongside the training, we also have the tools in place for our agents to secure new business.
Every agent is given – free of charge – access to our swanky new quotation tool, T-Profile. This enables agents like Greg to create really professional-looking quotations for their clients.
“I’m not particularly good at word processing or creative skills, so this quotation tool allows me to very quickly generate some very compelling collateral that customers can view their entire quote in detail. For example, I’m in the process of curating quite a lovely immersive Thailand experience for a client staying in Phuket for six days. I’ve organised a trip around Phang Nga Bay, food tours, a trip to the Elephant Hills nature park and then finally relaxing time in the Khao Lak resort area.
“With this quotation tool I can lay it all out beautifully in a click of a couple of buttons bringing it to life with great pictures and maps. It makes my whole service look really professional.”
Greg is also in the process of partnering up with a local charity as part of our Partners in Travel scheme – the idea being that your partner’s customers are directed towards you for all their holiday booking needs. While you as the agent may give a small share of your commission to your partner to thank him for the business, it does mean you can tap into a whole new stream of potential customers that would otherwise be hard to reach.
Clearly on a winning streak, Greg’s business is growing from strength to strength.
So, what would he say to anyone who is thinking about joining The Travel Franchise?
“Do it. If you’re personable and you enjoy holidays, then just do it. It’s really rewarding. You get fabulous backup from the company and they give you all the tools to do the job.”
