Simple Times

February,1992 and the ARELS/FELCO roadshow had a go at Turkey and Greece - in a large coach. That's us above - the school delegates with Corinne Sharpe, the BTA representative and organiser. I'm the pale one in the middle with the big forehead and receding hair. I found this photo in a bin-liner in my attic this morning, while trying to have a spring clean. It got me thinking.

In those days, you went 'on tour' for two or three weeks with your competitors and generally drank and ate too much in the evenings, while spending the daylight hours in neon-lit halls in towns and cities, trying to sell your English courses, while nursing hangovers.

It was usually a great way to give out stacks of glossy brochures, talk too much about how beautiful Ramsgate or Paignton were and then return home with not so many bookings, but a few good job offers from your competitors.

Those were simple times. Times before the tentacles of the internet had started exerting its stranglehold over all marketing activities. In those days, you did a lot of street-pounding and shaking of hands. Face-to-face meetings were the order of the day and then the follow-up fax when you got home.

I'm not saying it was a better time, because it wasn't. Marketing money disappeared fast (mostly on hotels, airfares and expenses) and planning for the annual campaign generally consisted of sitting in smoke-filled rooms and chatting about having a 'serious go' at Colombia or Taiwan this year, because 'we haven't been there for a few years'. Statistics were secondary and always badly drawn up. They meant precious little in the grand scheme of things. What did matter was the experience and knowledge of the marketing and sales person. If he or she reckoned that Argentina or Turkey were the ones to go for, then that was enough. It was in the plan. As for the budget, well generally there wasn't one in those days. You just asked the marketing director if you could go to Milan and Rome for two weeks and he or she would um and ah for a few seconds and then say: "go and have a good time." Simple times.

Today, it's a well-oiled machine and schools are like real companies with budgets, spreadsheets and with everything tied to financial targets. You can do a marketing trip from your desk; contact a thousand agents with a mailshot at the click of a button and can monitor sales success rates from individual cities all over the world on an hourly basis, if you want.

Another difference is the growing trend for 'in-country' sales people. Sure, a few of us still hop on planes for workshops and fairs, but the number has dwindled, as small sales offices have opened, not just in the main student areas, but now pretty much everywhere. Why? Because it's cheaper, easy to monitor with the internet, and has instant access to the student population should face-to-face meetings be needed. These offices even get on with the local agencies, who would have hated such a move back in the old days.

The age of the tour bus through Turkey and Greece is most definitely over.

So, you would think that business would be far better now and that language schools must be really coining it in this new age. After all, we are better connected, have offices everywhere with agents who speak the local languages and have much better resources.

Schools must be packing them in and making obscene amounts of money, like never before. Right?