The salesforce of Small Travel Company (STC) is selling cultural immersion programs to U.S. college students that allow them to spend 3 months in Europe.
STC advertises in various college newspapers, as well as via social media. Potential customers fill out an online application form expressing their interest in more information about this experience. The form also includes their phone number for follow-up discussion, which sometimes, but not always, leads to the customer purchasing the package (more details below).
On 60 consecutive days in the winter, STC’s employees work hard to sell these programs to elite university students. The goal of the company is to sell, on average, two packages per day, leading to a total of 120 sold packages. The sales process works in four steps:
One salesperson reaches out to the potential customer by phone in order to put together a full profile of the customer, including skills and location preferences (Germany, Italy, France, etc.). The call takes on average 20 minutes. After the call, each profile is forwarded to a language teacher.
The language teacher looks at the student’s profile and also organizes a quick follow-up call. This takes, on average, 40 minutes per profile. The teacher rejects 60% of the profiles as the student would not have the language skills to benefit from an STC trip. From the remaining 40% of the profiles, half tell the teacher that they are no longer interested in participating. The teacher then forwards the remaining profiles to the STC accountant.
STC’s accountant then contacts the student to make a 10% down payment. This takes about 20 minutes per customer.
Finally, the teacher’s assistant contacts the customer to confirm the trip and start working on a travel schedule. At this point, an average of one-third of the students decide that they will not participate in the trip (in which case, STC and the student agree to give the 10% down payment to a charitable cause). This takes on average 50 minutes per student.
All employees work 8 hours per day.
Which resource is the bottleneck?
The teacher’s assistant
The language teacher
The salesperson
The accountant