Become a Home Based Travel Agent

OutsideAgents.com is one of America’s oldest and fastest growing family owned and operated host agencies. In business since 1992, we have over 1,500 agents nationwide.

What do you perceive to be the main challenges facing an agent in today’s travel industry?

Agents today face four main challenges: Overcoming competition, eliminating isolation, dealing with information overload, and optimizing efficiencies.

Perhaps the most immediate challenge agents face is competition. Competition in the travel industry has never been fiercer than it is today and agents must be able to overcome it. Online competition, giant online agencies, aggressive discounting, and even direct competition from vendors have made it essential that agents have every competitive advantage. To deliver this advantage, we offer exclusive sales, extensive searchable group space, intensive training, one-on-one sales support, unique marketing tools, and total pricing control. Our agents compete and succeed every day because they have the resources of truly competitive host like OutsideAgents.com.

Another important challenge for home-based agents today is to overcome isolation and stay connected. Being home-based is not like working in an office where you have fellow agents sitting next to you with whom you share insights and camaraderie. OutsideAgents.com solved this problem by rebuilding our agent center around the social network concept. So, right along side our easy to use booking and processing tools, we give you a thriving interactive community of fellow travel professionals. This community is a great place where you can talk to thousands of your peers, ask questions, share ideas, expand your professional network, and work together to build your business.

Agents also need to deal with the information overload caused by our internet driven industry and the constant barrage of information being thrown at them. We help you manage all of this information with simple tools. We give you a fully searchable knowledge base and a streaming promotions highlight ticker so you can get back to. We help you filter and leverage the information available to you so you can use it to help your clients and build your business. We make information manageable.

Finally, it’s imperative that they optimize their business processes to be as efficient as they can. Agents must run lean and stay focused on the needs of their clients. Agents just cannot afford to be inefficient managing their business. That’s why OutsideAgents.com has focused on taking the burden of tasks such as accounting, invoicing, marketing, data management, technology development, vendor relations, and client relationship management off the backs of agents. We’ve made everything easier and more efficient for the agent so they can stay focused on their client.

Given all of the challenges facing agents today, what is your take on how the Host Industry is addressing the needs of agents?

It’s very competitive out there. There are lots of great hosts in the industry that offer many great support models to agents. And, just about every host in the business says they’re the best and offer the best tools, best commissions, and best support. That’s one of the reasons that the program at OutsideAgents.com is totally free; so you can try it out and see for yourself. More importantly, though, we realize agents have to seek the personal relationships they need to help them fully leverage the benefits of the host. To address this, we’ve built a great program for agents incorporating all of the best tools that allow us to focus on working with each agent personally.

If there are lots of great hosts out there, why should agents consider OutsideAgents.com?

While I can think of dozens of great reasons to join OutsideAgents.com, I think the most important include the fact that we charge no fees, deliver world-class technology, boost your profitability, and, most importantly, give you direct access to the owners of the company.

Remember, we charge no fees. No sign up fees, no monthly fees, no annual fees, no booking fees, no required fees whatsoever. Why? Simple. We want you to spend your money on building your business. We’d rather see you spending your money on marketing, client relations, and normal business expenses than paying us. This way, your business grows faster. Our idea is that by helping you invest more of your money in your business, both of our businesses grow stronger in the long run.

Additionally, OutsideAgents.com is absolutely committed to delivering world-class technology that you can actually use! Let’s face facts; the niftiest gizmo in the world is worthless unless you can use it. So, we give you great technology and we teach you to use it! We give you PowerAgent by Revelex that fully integrates your client relationship management while giving you full direct access to almost every major vendor on earth. We do customized invoicing for you. We give you our agent community with nearly a thousand agents posting questions and answers every single day. We give you a FREE consumer website. We give you every technological advantage possible, we show you how to use it, and we don’t charge you a dime for it.

Another reason to join forces with OutsideAgents.com is that we will boost your profits. As a privately owned family business with nearly 20 years in the industry, you can rest assured that OutsideAgents.com is nimble enough to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions while remaining financially stable as we deliver top commissions.

The most important reason of all, though, to join OutsideAgents.com is our accessibility. We give you access to the people and tools to help your business grow. Are you in a competitive situation? Talk directly with a decision maker at OutsideAgents.com. Need help marketing? Talk directly with the owners of OutsideAgents.com who have a collective 30+ years experience marketing travel agencies all over America? Want help implementing new technology? Talk directly with our Chief Technology Officer. With OutsideAgents.com, you always have direct access to our top people.

You mentioned your incredible growth. What is the core driver of growth at OutsideAgents.com?

People. People drive us. We believe that, even in the technology driven world in which we live, it is in fact people that drive our lives and our business. With OutsideAgents.com, the people you work with on a daily basis will know you by name, you’ll know you can talk to the same person more than once, and you’ll know that every person with whom you interact has a personal vested interest in your success. In fact, we are so committed to the success of our agents that we give you the owners’ personal cell phone numbers! The bottom line is that we’ll know you and you’ll know us. We’ll have a relationship that gets you everything you need to be truly successful!

So, what’s the bottom line at OutsideAgents.com? What should agents do next?

Try us out. Run one booking through us. Call one of the owners with a question. Even call one of them on their personal cell phone on a Sunday afternoon. Talk to some fellow agents in our community forum. Put us to the test. Get to know us. It won’t cost you a dime and we’re absolutely confident that you’ll be utterly impressed with your experience with OutsideAgents.com.

The bottom line is you should call us at 866.208.5604. Chad and Steve, the owners of OutsideAgents.com, will be happy to speak with you personally and help you any way we can.

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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