Give Your Customers Some Political Cover
An Action Plan to Get Them Flying Again!
Our industry must come out fighting on behalf of our clients. Right now, it’s easier for your clients to duck and cover (and call the airlines) than it is to expend internal political capital to make the business case for charter as an effective business tool.
This monograph gives you an action plan to help your clients make the case that charter travel is an effective business and productivity tool.
Call or Visit Your Customers
Although this is NOT a sales call, it needs to be done in person or over the phone because you need dialogue. Your goal is to find out why they aren’t flying.
You will find that customers can still afford to charter, and definitely need to, but as one client told me, “Flying privately doesn't sit well with the Board...It's become politically incorrect to use business aircraft.”
Give Them Solid Business Reasons
Your customers need from you compelling business reasons to include charter flight in the mix with airline travel and road trips. These reasons must resonate with their Boards and shareholders. Even your clients in privately-held companies need this information. They may need to justify charter expenditures when asking for a loan or trade credit.
Give them a copy of our Top 10 Business Reasons to Charter in 2009.
Do the Analysis
Offer to help your clients put together a business case for charter travel. Begin by finding out how much business travel they do as part of their job. Break it down into how many business trips they take per week, per month, and during the last year.
Tourists Won’t Get It
It’s important to count up the trips because anyone who is NOT a road warrior will process information from their own perspectives.
If someone takes two airline trips a year, they can't help but ask, "What's the big deal about standing in an airport security or check-in line?" Or, “So what if you have to kill 90 minutes each way changing planes?” They’ll think, “Would it really kill you to stay overnight this one time because your meeting ended too late for the last flight out?”
You’ve got to get everyone's attention about the number of trips for the explanations about saving time to make any sense to the listener.
Give Them Real Life Examples
Help your client prepare some practical, real world examples. Illustrate a routine use of business aircraft versus the alternative of flying commercial. I would highlight three typical business jet trips flown last year that the CEO reasonably expects to be taken again this year.
Show the number of stops, amount of work conducted at each location, explain work done aboard the jet, and add up the total productive hours for the trip.
Then prepare an analysis of those same trips but using current commercial airline schedules from your home base. Compare and contrast the total elapsed time (perhaps one day versus 2-3), productive hours, etc.
Saving a Week per Month
Recap the time your client spends on the road each week, month, and year. Do the math. Show the actual productivity and time savings. And don't forget to multiply the productivity impact on the company of anyone who travels with your client.
The key to this argument is found in overnight trips. Make the case that every overnight trip flying commercially, that could have been done same-day on charter, costs the company four wasted production hours per passenger.
Then, restate the argument in more colorful terms. Explain that every 10 airline overnight trips has the equivalent adverse impact on productivity of your top producer taking a week’s sick leave.
Summary
Our industry did too good a job over the years selling the luxury and perquisites of charter travel. Now our job is to focus on the hard-nosed business benefits. When we help our clients analyze and present the benefits, we supply them with the political cover they need to capitalize on the benefits and get back in our air.
