New Agency Recognition
by Melody Fee

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MY most frustrating circumstance that I had to deal with back in the early 1990s when I started selling travel was the AMOUNT OF TIME I had to spend establishing NEW AGENCY ACCOUNTS with travel industry suppliers that I wanted to work with! Time is our most valuable commodity. Having to wait many days to set up a new account with suppliers is something that is just “par for the course” and, in some cases, there is just NOTHING you can do to prevent the “waiting period.” But, at other times, you have to really pay attention to detail to make sure you have done all that was expected of you to get the job done.

Usually, the program works something like this, as we all know:

• First, you contact the travel supplier by phone (possibly) to ask what you need to fax over to the main sales office, so that you can establish a new account with them to sell their product.
  
  
• Next, you follow those instructions, which usually includes faxing a COVER letter on your own business stationery, along with a copy of your CLIA or TRUE certificate or your IATA endorsement. (This does not mean to fax over your CLIA card or your OSSN membership card, nor your IATA card.) It means to fax over your CERTIFICATES of one kind or another.
  
  
• In many instances, you also are required to fax over a W-9 form for the supplier also to file.
  
  
• I always suggest that the agency then contact the suppliers to MAKE SURE they have received your information successfully.

In some cases, this may be all you need to do! But, oh, in most cases, that would be just too easy!

As you are well aware, many travel suppliers now have their “New Agency Sign Up” page located on their websites. You usually have to do a bit of serious searching to find the right link on the supplier website, so that you can get to that very important page. To help you find those links, OSSN and TRUE have devised a special area in the CheckATrueCode.com site which is located by going to the following link: http://www.checkatruecode.com/truecode_tour_operators.asp.

But, even when you print out the forms and fax them to the right place, it just is NOT a guarantee that you will end up in that supplier database any time soon. YOU MUST follow up to see if the information is getting processed. I have personally had to deal with several suppliers taking more than TWO weeks to get a new account established for OSSN agency members recently. All of the required information was in house, but two different offices (within the same company) just did not communicate with each other. All the while, the new agent sat aggravated because, every day, she could NOT try to sell this product and make money for both the supplier and herself!

As I have mentioned, this link to new agency account supplier website pages is now located by going to www.checkatruecode.com and then clicking on the SUPPORTING SUPPLIERS section. At that time, you can click on Tour Operators, Cruise Lines, Rental Cars, Amusements, etc. This is when you will be asked to put in your OSSN USERNAME and PASSWORD. Then, as you see the various suppliers on these pages, you'll also see the column for NEW AGENCY SIGN UP Links.

We hope to assist you by breaking down some of the communication barriers between suppliers and OSSN agency members who find it so challenging to get this task accomplished sometimes!

And, of course, we all know that from one company to the next, EACH one will have a different system of setting up those initial accounts. Let’s take a brief look at the sign up for the OSSN TRUE hotel partners, for example. You are going to find that many of them will have you go all the way through the process of actually “making a booking” for your client before you FINALLY get to a screen that asks you to place your “Travel Agent Number” in a specific box. And, if they are one of the many great hotel chains that have already downloaded the TRUE code database, then they will immediately recognize your booking and allow you to complete the process for your client. But, as a new agency, it is so very often a series of TRIAL AND ERROR steps!

OSSN’s goal in the months ahead is to try to bring more supplier training to all of our members. We want agents to know more about our allied supplier members, including just what they have to do to get started selling their products. We want tour operators, cruise lines, and hotels alike to start considering placing PowerPoint presentations in the supplier area of www.checkatruecode.com to instruct agents how to use their websites, how to establish those initial accounts, how to take advantage of special rewards for using these “branded websites” that suppliers have established, and more!

If you are having special challenges as a new agent, we would love to hear from you. We hope that we can make these processes of setting up a new business or expanding your existing business less stressful for you! And, we sure hope that all of our OSSN Allied Supplier Members will take a good look at the way they process NEW AGENCY ACCOUNT Information and make sure they are really making it E.T.D.B.W. - that means Easy To Do Business With! (I just love that saying! Thank you, Celebrity Cruises, for coming up with it for OSSN to borrow!)

Melody Fee serves as vice president of the Outside Sales Support Network (OSSN). You may reach her at melodyfee@ossn.com.

(Credit: OSSN; stock image)