Travel specialists, Experience Travel Group, who design bespoke holidays to Asia, share how their business performance shifted with the introduction of fresh insights transforming it’s sales strategy.
“My MD made me do it!” proclaimed Nick Clark, Sales Director at Experience Travel Group (ETG), when asked what motivated him to join Company Shortcuts’ 6 month Business Accelerator Leadership Programme back in 2014.
It’s a familiar cry.
How many courses has your business superior sent you on in the past? And how many have delivered the immediately actionable steps you need to take to make sure your business gets on the fast track to sales growth?
Explaining more about his experience Nick said: “During the programme the main thing we did as a company was get really clear on our strategic direction.
“In support of this we made four key changes to our business operation to enhance our team, our communications and our processes. The Company Shortcuts approach provides a laser focus on areas such as recruitment, USP definition, culture and engagement, as well as the vital sales steps.”

With high calibre people, a crystal clear USP, staff who were ‘on the bus’ and complete clarity of the sales processes, Experience Travel Group (ETG) are starting to see a shift in their company performance.
But that’s not the only thing.
For ETG, one of the spin-off benefits of nailing the different steps in the sales journey lay in the influence they gained over their suppliers.
Taking up the story Nick said: “We had acquired a reservation system which also claimed to provide CRM functionality.
“As it turned out the CRM piece left a lot to be desired. But now we have a clear idea of what our sales processes are we have become much better able to specify our exact CRM requirements. This is saving a huge amount of time and expense in trying to identify the right system for our needs.”
From a personal perspective, Nick appreciates how the Company Shortcuts’Business Accelerator Leadership Programme has put him in touch with a community of like-minded professionals who are both ambitious and passionate about their product or service.
Commenting on the power of the Alumni Group Nick said: “It’s really useful to meet up with other sales directors and talk about what we’ve learned and how we’re putting it into practice. Every opportunity to do that reinforces our investment decision.”
When we started BAPS, sales were growing well but we had no structure in place to make that growth truly scalable. Through BAPS, we were able to define what it is that we do, why we do it and how, as a team, we could communicate that. This allowed us to build a clearly structured team across the company and meant everyone was pulling in the right direction and communicating our message clearly… The course helped Matt and I step back from the nitty gritty of sales targets to help grow the team in a way that made it more sustainable. The support since the course has also been invaluable and allows us to constantly reassess where we are and to ensure that we remain on the right track.
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The journey has just begun for ETG – but 12 months down the line Nick is confident that they are set on the right course for sales growth.
And yes, Nick is happy to admit his MD was spot on.
If you’d like to find out more about this Business Accelerator Leadership Programme, please get in touch with us on leadership@companyshortcuts.com