In New Prog, HBAs Mentor HBAs Published on: April 21, 2007 By Marilyn Green America's Vacation Center (AVC) recently launched My AVC Mentor, a 90-day program designed to enrich agents' businesses through mentoring and coaching from other experienced AVC affiliates. A spokesperson for AVC reported that the mentoring relationships "have generated tremendous success for the agents, their mentors and the company." Those seeking a mentor are qualified like clients and paired with agents who have the expertise they need. Mentors receive a percentage of their protégées' sales to compensate them for their time and care. Individual Styles Steve Hirshan, the program coordinator and himself a mentor, said the mentoring relationships have taken on individual styles that suit both parties. He said protégées have experienced substantial increases in closings after six weeks to two months in the program. Alishah Kier of Charlotte, NC is among the program's mentors, whose current protégée is Jomaque Cannon of Fargo, ND. Cannon had been with AVC for two months when the mentor program debuted and she was not getting the results she wanted. "I knew I needed more help than the training to achieve my goals," she said. "In travel, it really pays to know someone who knows more than you do." Two and a half months later, Cannon found that her two or three closings a week had turned into seven to 10 and she has 600 more potential clients than when she began the program. She has already decided that she needs more than three months with Kier. "Alishah has so much to offer me. It will take six months to learn it all," she said. She noted that she wants to learn more about Kier's extensive inside knowledge of group sales. Encouraged by Kier to consider fundraising cruises, she approached the Roger Maris Cancer Center in Fargo, ND about a group charity cruise and they were immediately enthusiastic. A Ready Client Cannon found herself in the enviable situation of having a client who was ready to go before she had the expertise to handle it. "We gave the organization things to do to clear the way for the cruise while I get the group training I need," she said. Kier said, "I'm so excited that she took the bull by the horns herself and contacted them. She put away excuses and realized that a tremendous amount of work has to be done to achieve the kind of business she wants." Hirshan noted that many agents leave brick and mortar positions to become Home Based in order to be their own bosses and enjoy flexibility in their lives — one AVC agent reported making a Seaboorn sale while riding horseback with her daughter. The downside is that there are no longer people in the office which whom to discuss problems. His strategy is to follow the college model and have designated office hours when he is available to his protégées, "Having some involvement automatically generates improvement because you know someone knows and cares what you do," he said. Kier takes a different style: her protégées can reach her at virtually any time. She begins the mentoring program with a series of questionnaires, asking about their knowledge of various aspects of the business and what they want to learn about. She often sends her five protégées E-mails at 4 in the morning, when she now gets up because of the needs of the protégées on top of her own business. She works out daily, and works with her protégées who want to achieve weight loss or stop smoking. "There has to be balance," she stated. "If you have goals to be accomplished, you need success in these areas, too, to give you confidence. When you feel great, you project that with your client." Hirshan says many people who choose to be mentored are experienced agents who realize that they need more technical expertise. He described the typical brick and mortar office with stickies, posters, a desk covered with papers. "Now you don't need a single sheet of paper," he tells them. "Twenty years ago, you had to know everything about every cruise line. Now it's impossible, but you have technology that can find everything in a moment. You don't have to know everything; you just have to know where to find everything." Cannon spends a great deal of time with her proteg&eacuate;s in role-playing. First, she telephoned them at various times with different needs, then she struck pay dirt when she reversed the roles. "We really saw improvement when they started calling me as clients with special needs and difficulties and I was able to model how to handle these things," she said. A Full-Time Job Hirshan said for some people the coaching aspect becomes almost a full-time job and there is flexibility to allow this, as it makes sense for the company to have five or six agents trained in very successful techniques rather than just one perfecting these for her or himself. And the newly coached agents are more than willing to become mentors in their turn. "I was the go-to person in my agency," Cannon said. "I would love to share this information with other people later. "What we're doing here is speeding up the learning curve." Hirshan commented. For more information about joining America's Vacation Center, visit www.JoinAVC.com.