English Agent Business

Business Money
#1

My wife and I would like to start a English Agent business which
would enroll Taiwanese Students here and take care of their
preparations for a 4-6 week study program in the U.S…

At one of the ESL schools in the U.S. But … would you kindly
give us some help in ways we can attract taiwanese high school
or college students, and ways to advertise to them. How can
we give our English Agent business reputability and status.
We will be contacting schools in the u.s. who have many ESL
programs for the summer, but our problem is in enrolling
students and some ideas how to do this. How can we get taiwanese
parents to have faith and trust in our business and what we do.

Thanks

Ric

#2

List all the information about the study program first.
time?
Where?
Fee?
school?(what are about the school?rank in US?..)
what I can learn from this?
why should I choose this program?
what program you plan to offer?
…etc.
Maybe you can fix a day for making a discription of the program
for those who want to have the study program.

#3

Get people the parents and kids know and trust to sell it to them for you.

Make all the professional marketing materials, and starting knocking on buxiban doors. Offer the buxiban owners a nice commission for each sale.

#4

The program will no doubt be in the summer time?

In that case you’re probably too late to arrange anything for this year. So you have something like 10 months to make your plans for next summer.

Your post indicates that you’re not familiar with any schools in Taiwan. Usually the school admin understand that their students are a resource for agents, and are quite protective of them. Generally speaking, you need guanxi to be allowed to advertise in the schools.

So you’re stuck with advertising on buses, leaflets, or whatever else you can dream up.

And if you’re going to organise overseas trips you probably need to be a legally licensed travel agent. You could work with an established travel agent, but as they are capable of approaching language schools to negotiate commissions without your help, and are already established, then what exactly would you bring to any relationship?

#5

Yes,you are a little bit late for this summer.
In Taiwan ,there are many buxiban and agents do this job.
But there are a lot of knottiness,too.
So the detailed information and contract is necessary.
If you get parents’ trust then you get your business .
Do you think about the discount for the first group you take care of?
If you have your website , post the URL here and there.

#6

thanks for all that great advice, it seems we will build the
reputation first by hard work and a good business plan,
timing is also important. If you have any other advice
on starting an esl agent business please contact us,
thankyou. rich12@aol.com

#7

Hi Susutea,

I have been involved in the agency business off and on for four years. Our agency is called World Class Education ( www.worldclassed.com.tw )

We succeesfully organised tours of up to 54 students to go abroad for 3 week study tours.

Its a tough business and you have a lot of responsibility.

Offering commissions to teachers at the schools or the principal is one way to go.

We found that have a popular teacher at the school working with us was important. A popular teacher leading the group with us would ensure a large number of students where as an unpopular teacher wouldn’t get much interest.

You can find a lot of information about the summer study tour/language camp business in Language Travel Magazine (some articles in the back issues). Last month they ran an interesting agency survey on the Taiwan market - hothousemedia.com/ltm/ltmbac … survey.htm

They also have many articles on how agencies market themselves.

I also run a forum dedicated to the ‘study abroad’ industry at www.agentschat.com . It’s designed for agents and schools to make connections and talk about how the business works.

All the best
Steve

#8

Hi Steve

thanks for your excellent advice to our message, we will
go to the valuable links you gave us, and would appreciate any
further help that you can supply to help us become successful
overseas esl agents. thankyou

Ric