Diamond agents (The Travel Franchise)

Our highest achieving agents are awarded Diamond status when they make £500,000 commission. Double diamond Mark and Isobel McCardie share their success story and their lifestyle - living in the Canary Islands during the winter months and exploring the world, booking holidays while they travel.

Q. Did you ever think you’d achieve £10 million in holiday bookings?

It’s a bit surreal to be honest because I remember our initial 5-day training and seeing blogs about franchisees that had become travel consultants and done amazing sales and now that’s us. We're very proud of what we've done, but it's been extremely hard work. A lot of people ask: “What's the secret?” And the answer is: Not much sleep! But it's been a good journey so far.

Q. You have 1,800 clients now but how did you find your clients early on?

In the beginning we went down the friends and family route and it started to build momentum. You're not going to go from zero to 500 customers overnight, but if you have the right kind of practice and procedures in place, it grows over time. There’s no quick fix, but it’s important to gain good quality customers so that the repeat and referral business keeps coming in rather than clients that aren't necessarily the right fit for you.

Q. In what ways did The Travel Franchise’s consumer-facing company, Not Just Travel (NJT), help you along the way?

If you join as an Elite you get invited to two overseas mentorship retreats, the first of which is the Millionaires Retreat, held in a short-haul location. During the day there are workshops on how to skyrocket your business. The main takeaway for us was to get on the phone to potential clients and not quote without a conversation. Because firstly it builds rapport and secondly you can weed out if somebody's just very price focused and they're simply asking 10 different people to find the cheapest quote. From that point on, it’s then about really servicing and nurturing clients.

Q. Any easy (and profitable) stand-out bookings?

I had a flight-only enquiry once. It was business class flights to America for a whisky company and turned out to be just under a hundred grand. If we could have four or five of them a year, we'd be quite happy. We just booked it via Gold Medal and that was it. Very, very easy to organise! We’ve won various initiatives like the loan of a free car and I also remember winning the Money-Back Challenge - we were in Sandals in the Caribbean when we won so that was rather nice!

Q. Do you specialise in an area and why?

Our audience is very family focused. It sounds a bit cheesy, but we get lots of emails and photos of families on holiday having a fantastic time. There’s not many jobs where you get the satisfaction of creating something for a family that really makes them happy and they've saved up for a year to make it happen.

Q. How have you managed to scale up the business?

There's now four of us working in the business: Isobel and I, plus a concierge manager and a Florida expert. The five-year plan is to continue to grow, take on some more agents and build luxury and cruise.

Q. Do you travel much?

One of the main reasons for setting up the business and starting it was to travel. It’s effectively your research: the more places you go and the more things you experience, the easier it is to sell. All travel is basically research if you've got your own travel business.

Q. Is it really a flexible career and do you book holidays while you travel overseas?

It’s hard work, but you can work from wherever you want. We work from the Canary Islands in winter and if we are on a ‘fam’ trip we do some work but get the balance right - there's no point in going somewhere and being stuck in a hotel room for a week.

And are you impressed with the growth of the The Travel Franchise and Not Just Travel?

Absolutely. Everything's just becoming more elevated. We had a business development manager when we started, but now the calibre is so much higher and everything like the marketing materials are more polished. NJT has some great people now in key positions so it can only really go from strength to strength.

So do you see a future for travel agents and is AI a future challenge?

No, because this job is all about personal service. AI can only do so much. It can help make you more efficient and effective in terms of marketing and admin tasks, but at the end of the day, people still want to buy from people - not machines. I honestly don’t think that will ever change.

So do you think people new to travel can make good consultants?

Absolutely. But you have to be a people person - it's all about communication - and obviously have a passion for travel but in terms of the travel knowledge, you'll just build that up over time.