When I was looking at the sales figures for the cruise contest, I also took a look at the recruitment figures as well. This does not look to good...well, it looks fine to me, just not too good for YTB. It seems they may have peaked and lost their edge and are on the edge of a downward spiral.
Same contest---106 Days. Top 500 recruiters get a free cruise on the Sensation with Coach. You can see the results here, but here is what I see.
Recruiting has to be way off. First of all, at my meeting, if there were four potential recruits, I would be surprised; and none of them signed up that night.
Back in October, YTB was recruiting 500 new RTAs per day as a company. I have to think it is way down based again on the top performers and the track record that close to 90% of the people in YTB do not sell anything at all.
Of their top performers, the average rep sold 33 websites over a three month period. This is 11 per month. The period yielded 18,506 websites sold over the 106 days--that is only 174 per day. Now I realize that there were other sales during this period from the bottom performers.
But, I have to imagine that recruiting is down. How can one just make that statement? Well, it is a hypothesis for the following reasons:
- Scott and Coach's video all about recruiting and how important it is (not travel)
- The fact that they can no longer use the IATAN card as a lure
- The fact that they can no longer claim to represent several major suppliers
- The fact that they can no longer offer "credentials" when you sign up
- The fact that the "credentials" will now cost $149 and that is not even for a real credential
- The fact that the stock is in the tank. Maybe selling that it is a publicly traded company is not so good an idea
- The fact that there has been a decent amount of bad press on YTB and very little good (YTB releases do not count)
- Any simple investigation will reveal that the Reps and RTAs are all over the map with accusations, statements, promises, opinions, and outright mis-truths
- The fact that a shareholder is poised to file a suit against them
- The fact that nepotism runs rampant in Wood River
- The fact that their CFO is indeed not a Certified Public Accountant
- The fact that the head of their legal team is not an attorney--she just plays one during the week
Now of course, fact does not seem to stand in the way of some Reps, RTAs and Directors (right Proud and EAB?) and it appears that it does not even deter the executives who glean numbers.
So, I will turn it over to the YTB crowd to refute my hypothesis. I am sure there will be standard answers again. I am sure all sorts of numbers will fly without substantiation, but let's discuss it!
