p38-39 knowledge feature nov28 v2 24/11/08 15:49 Page 38
knowledge agency skills
ttglive.com
Agent Swap
Duo swap shops and
TONY MANN. Lindsay had some really good ideas for
Forget Wife Swap. Two local Advantage
Director, Idle Travel, Idle, Bradford marketing in her local community, such as
Idle Travel will celebrate its 25th birthday holding a competition for schoolchildren to
members agreed to learn from each
next year. It started out as a high street design Christmas cards, and we’ll look to other’s businesses in their own Agent
agency in the village of Idle, before moving in see how we could do something similar.
Swap exchange. Robin Searle reports
to a Morrisons supermarket development We looked at our costs, and compared
22 years ago. It has one outlet and does not how much we spend on everything in the
operate on the web. It sells a range of product, shop, from printing, marketing and the web
including long-haul, short-haul packages and right down to which computers are on at
cruise, and also offers foreign currency and is what time.
FSA-accredited to sell travel insurance. I was really impressed by the Advantage
branding that Lindsay has on stationery
Tony: I’m a fan of reality television and I and brochures and in her shop, and I’ve
had the idea for Agent Swap when I was already saved money by switching my own
watching Wife Swap. I took it to Advantage stationery to the branded versions.
and they said they would help me get it off Lindsay specialises in cruise, so she was
the ground. able to give us some ideas for developing our
When we first set up our agency, we had cruise sales, and we were able to give her
no travel experience at all. advice on currency and insurance sales.
Over the years we’ve looked at other We even looked at how we do our admin,
agency businesses without actually going in as we tend to pool it for one person to file
and seeing how they work. whereas Lindsay’s staff retain ownership of
the customer right through the process.
Lessons
We found that we were much more The future
similar than I expected, and that was very My staff said it was a good experience and
reassuring, but there were still areas where they would be interested in visiting
we could learn from each other. another agency in the future.
Lindsay’s agency has the same back-office Some people have asked if I’m
system as ours, so we were able to compare worried that my staff might get the
how we used it to improve marketing.
Tony chats to one of Lindsay’s customers
38 28.11.2008
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