While many FBO and air charter folk may defend the alphabet groups for all the “good work” they do in Washington on our collective behalf, I have to admit the evidence is weak - especially when it comes to the world that I work in: People who charter airplanes, buy fuel and aircraft. That’s who feeds me.

Misguided Resources

Building revenue is one of the most important things for an enterprise. Alphabet groups rarely, if ever, help the typical flight department, FBO, service provider or charter company figure that out. While it is not clearly in their mandate, you have to wonder why none have bothered to help the quintessential problem: Educating the masses about just how cool Part 135 is when you need it.

In fact, as I sat in my home office, preparing my pile of stuff to take to the office office this morning, I thought why was one well meaning group spending $12.56 on direct marketing stuff (in Montreal!) to me as I dropped it into the shredder?

I wasn’t attending, speaking, etc. But what really got me was that I didn’t see anything relevant for our FBO, charter or jet owner customers. Then something really odd occured to me: I have not paid dues for years. (Yes, years.) But I keep getting STUFF. Am I that cool? No.

Then I became a wee more curious - just what was happening this year at the much lauded conference? So I opened the schedule of events (pre shredder) and confirmed my suspicion - a fairly significant waste of time and resources.

Meeting People Who Spend

What our industry does need is owner centric and passenger centric services that mesh with the Part 135 and FBO community. People who are decision makers, who don’t meet the sales team from the large competitor that will crush you… before they meet you - that is worth your time and money.

Effective marketing, sales and networking is about building trustworthy relationships, not sitting around a hotel in DC pondering how to make it out of this slump while avoiding the big question: Where will our customers come from? Why do I care so much about this business? And how can I transform my sales effort?
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If you enjoyed this post and want to read more about how Adam noodles the questions of how to find, influence and build customer bases, you can email him.

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