I have found it to be the bane of my (travel agent) existence since I started.  Personally, I didn't get into the travel industry to work in marketing, outreach, and advertising.  I have little experience with any of those things and it felt like hitting a brick wall out of the gates.  Where does one acquire client leads? How much is too much to pay for client leads?  How do you win them over so they work with you instead of another agent? Those four words, “finding new client leads,” make me cringe.

I started out like many home-based agents; joining a host agency to start networking.  The host agency was (and still is) a great resource to get answers to a lot of questions, but…

It has been said that all things being equal, people will do business with people they like. This became crystal clear to me some years ago when I was selling meeting services for a large company in the Midwest. We had scheduled a meeting with the Ricoh Corporation, the Japanese copier firm. Upon entering the meeting room we spotted a cake adorned with colorful balloons, which immediately brought us to the assumption that there was a birthday celebration in the works.

As it turned out, their current supplier had just earned an award for creative excellence. This is known in the business as “bad timing.” Our competition was taking bows and patting themselves on the back while we were…

Kelly Bergin served as vice president of business development for OASIS from 2009 through 2014 after spending over 25 years in the travel industry. She was recently promoted to President, responsible for helping new sellers of travel launch their careers and aiding established agents in growing their business as successful entrepreneurs.

The travel industry veteran owned her own leisure travel agency in Salt Lake City for seven years and previously worked as a business development manager for both Princess Cruises and Funjet Vacations prior to that.

Travel Research Online (TRO): You’ve always had your hand in the travel agency universe in one way or another during your career. Tell us how you became involved with OASIS.

Kelly Bergin (KB): In the beginning of 2009 I had just left a job with a real estate company and knew I wanted to re-enter the travel industry. As they say, once in travel, always in travel…

Follow along with me and give me your thoughts in a comment. How much does your knowledge and the product impact your success? I am not suggesting that we do not need either of them; but I do wonder, with all the information available from other sources, how large a role those pieces play in a travel decision for a consumer.

This past weekend there was a citywide “burger battle” to determine the best burger in town. It was whittled down to 8 contestants, each of which had a decent burger. The playing field was leveled-they needed to use the same beef, the same grill, and they needed to use Budweiser (ok, so they sponsored it) in the recipe in some form…