Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Sharon Meyer, Chief Operating Officer of Trams, Inc. delivers answers to the questions our Home Based Agent Community want to know. Check out our interview with Sharon Meyer.

ClientBase Online is an affordable, web-based, client relationship management tool for travel agencies. It enables agents to develop a sophisticated database of client profiles, full of travel history and preferences that can be easily queried and used for marketing, reporting, generating labels, letters and emails, as well as for passing to booking engines. It also includes tools to help agents manage the entire leisure trip planning process from initial inquiry to welcome home, including importing bookings, generating invoices and creating reminders for follow-up. And, because it’s a web-based application, all of this critical agency information is at your fingertips from any internet connected computer! You would recognize the names of many of the current Trams Customers who have chosen ClientBase as their database management solution, making them more efficient and productive. Some are agencies and many are independent travel professionals.

The key to effective sales and marketing, is not just knowing your customer, but leveraging that knowledge to provide superior service, to turn inquiries into bookings and to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. ClientBase Online provides you with a single home for all of the client details that agents today must manage effectively. The more you know about your customers, the more effective you will be—helping you to generate bookings from new clients, and increasing the likelihood of current clients continuing to come back for more.

What advice do you have for assisting agents that find it difficult to adapt to change?

Change can be difficult, but it is also inevitable. Now more than ever, it is important to arm yourself with technology and tools that make you more productive; tool s that make it easy to improve your marketing, sales, and service, which regardless of change will always remain at the heart of any successful business. The key to successfully implementing change is to break what may appear to be a big job into small pieces. With ClientBase, start your database by consolidating any client files (paper or electronic) into ClientBase Profiles. Then, begin enhancing those profiles as you work with your clients. This is key - update and add as you go. Don’t try to clean up your lists before you get started. New trip inquiries and welcome home calls are perfect opportunities to take the valuable client insight and capture it and update it in a way that can be used in the future. Next, survey your customers and learn where they like to go, their travelling budget, and dates that are special to them. And finally, get in the habit! Start a new Res Card with every trip inquiry, so you can increase your chances of turning it into a booking. Use the Res Card to manage the entire trip planning process all the way to the “welcome home.” Trams, Inc. offers thousands of hours of WebEx training sessions every year, in addition to our conferences, where ClientBase users come together for training and networking sessions. Our recorded trainings are accessible 24/7 via our website, www.trams.com. We also have a daily Q&A hour where you can ask your questions and get suggestions from Trams staff who have years of travel agency experience in addition to their understanding of ClientBase.

Getting started is simple. Visit our website at www.clientbaseonline.com, to learn more about the product and to sign up. A representative will contact you to collect payment information and to issue your login information. Our implementation team will then contact you to get you on the path to adopting ClientBase Online in your day to day operations. From there, the possibilities are endless. ClientBase Online can help you grow your agency; while streamlining your systems. Single users can get started for as little as $20 per month!!

To learn more about ClientBase Online and other products and services offered by Trams, Inc. at www.trams.com, or contact Trams at marketing@trams.com, (310) 641-8726.

Joanie Ogg CTC MCC
Joanie Ogg Marketing Group
Editor

Joanie Ogg is a thirty-five year veteran of the travel industry and has been involved with the independent contractor evolution since 1988. She is the principal of Joanie Ogg Marketing Group, which specializes in consulting and speaking on the topic of Home-Based Travel. She also provides marketing and sales for wide variety of products under the umbrella HomeBasedTravelAgent.com.

A demonstrated industry leader, Joanie most recently served as the President of the National Association of Commissioned Travel Agents (NACTA) and TravelSellers. She and her husband Tom acquired NACTA in 1996 and sold it to The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) in 2000. Joanie’s tenure in the travel industry includes owning and operating one of the first successful host agency models. She has owned and operated several storefront travel agencies (both commercial and leisure), as well as a Hawaii wholesale tour company.

Her decades of success have garnered her numerous accolades over the years. Her accomplishments have been recognized by receipt of two Lifetime Achievement Awards from major trade groups, being named as one of the “100 Most Powerful Women in Travel” by Travel Agent magazine on several occasions, voted as “Travel Agent of the Year” by the readers of Travel Trade magazine, and has been recognized by many other industry organizations throughout her tenure in the industry. In 2008 Joanie Ogg was inducted into the CLIA Hall of Fame, an honor held by some of the most influential executives in the travel industry.

Joanie is a Master Cruise Counselor (MCC) and a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC). Joanie has co-authored two popular travel industry books for cruise specialists and home-based travel agents and has authored hundreds of travel trade articles. She has inspired tens of thousands of travel agents attending her presentations at trade events, cruise seminars, international trade gatherings and numerous local educational venues throughout the United States. With a time-honored background and forward-looking vision, she is often featured as a speaker at many of the travel industry’s major conferences and events. Joanie’s speaking talents are widely sought as a travel industry emcee by the most recognized travel organizations. She has emceed such events as Cruise-A-Thons, ASTA’s CruiseFest, The Trade Show, The Travel Institute Forum and all of NACTA’s National and International Conferences.


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