I spoke with a travel agency owner a few days ago who indicated to me that to grow his agency he needed to hire some new people. While my first reaction was, “Wow, that’s great!” I decided to put on my “consultant’s hat” and ask four key questions.

 First, what is the current productivity of each of your current staff? Second, what types of products are they generally selling? Third, how does the staff currently handle “tire kickers”? Fourth, do they feel and act as if the have “a job” or do they view their work as an “avocation”?

I firmly believe every agent in the country has the potential to handle $125,000 in commissions and service fee revenues each year.

After hearing the answers, I told this agency owner that his current staff could easily handle another million or two in sales without the need to hire anyone else. Here’s why: First, with technology as an aid to speed up the actual booking process, along with some good sales and time management skills, I firmly believe every agent in the country has the potential to handle $125,000 in commissions and service fee revenues each year. To me, unless an owner isn’t doing any marketing to make the phone ring (a very valid reason why an agent might not hit $125,000), it’s harder for an agent not to reach my target than it is to actually hit it.

Every day, in agencies all over the country, the phone rings with prospects who simply want an agent to check options or price trips for them. I call these prospects “triflers,” and when I do any agency training at all the first thing I do is teach agents how to identify and politely “dismiss” these people.

By simply learning how to determine a prospect’s degree of commitment and readiness to book a vacation, an agent can easily gain back an hour a day that is now being wasted. If you do the math, one hour a day translates into 45 days a year! How many more bookings could an agent generate if he or she had an extra 45 days in which to do it?

The biggest opportunity…is to focus on marketing and selling higher yield, more complex and more profitable business.

Third, the biggest opportunity (and a mandate from me for all of my clients) is to focus on marketing and selling higher yield, more complex and more profitable business. It’s getting harder and harder every day to make money selling “mass market” products because they are being shopped for price. Every agency needs to put together a strategy to focus on premium and luxury cruises and tours, as well as create their own unique products that can’t easily be replicated or shopped all over the Internet.

Finally, and not insignificantly, there’s the often-overlooked issue of employee “engagement.” Statistics show that a staggering 70 percent of all workers in Australia are not fully engaged in their work. The cost of this disengagement to every organization is huge. If a typical employee in your organization is just 15 percent disengaged, look at last year’s commission revenue for that agent and do the math. You’ll be able to quantify what this disengagement is costing you.

Your bottom line has the potential to be much, much better than it is – and that’s even if you don’t hire any new people.