January
and February are busy months for trade shows and conventions. This article
points out practical, cost-effective ways to use chartered business aircraft in
conjunction with trade shows, vendor display booths, and industry conventions.
Customers and Prospects
Throughout
2013, your reference accounts offered their time to talk to your prospects, and
perhaps gave on-site tours or demos of your product at their facilities. You
can repay them by offering a ride to and from the trade show in your chartered
plane.
Ask
yourself if there are any hot prospects, located on your way to the show, which
might be impressed by a ride in the company plane. We aren’t suggesting that a
trip in your business aircraft would close the deal; but it would certainly get
you concentrated attention.
You
might have key accounts that are at-risk from the attention your competitors
will lavish on these customers during the event. One way to protect your
relationship is to offer your at-risk accounts a lift to and from the trade
show on your chartered company plane.
Imagine
a trip where an at-risk account, a reference account, and a hot prospect were
sitting together with you and your top sales person discussing your products
and services. The reference account can answer the prospect’s questions and
give first-hand information about the benefits of using your products. The
at-risk account listens to all this and is reinforced in his current usage of
your products and services. You and your sales manager would keep the conversations
moving in the right direction.
Logistics and Security
If
you have a booth or display at a trade show, you need to ship the booth, all
the collateral, along with computers, monitors, and scale models to set-up
inside the booth. You might have samples of the product itself, or prototypes
of a new one coming out soon. Getting all this stuff to the vendor hall, with
nothing lost, broken, or tampered with, can be a major headache. Why not
charter a King Air 200? These
turbo-props have enormous on-board storage capacity…almost like a flying
walk-in closet. Everything you need for the trade show can be stowed aboard.
Your Sales Team
Since
the King Air is carrying all your materials anyway, you might as well fill the
seats with the sales team that will be working the show. During the outbound
flight, they can be reviewing their “at-show” strategies and getting a final
sales briefing on target accounts. On the way back, the team can debrief on
contacts and leads developed during the show; and discuss the “post-show” sales
strategy.
Leverage Your Time
The
scenarios we just described all have one thing in common…they leverage your
time. They suggest ways to turn commercial travel into productive sales time.
Give us a call so we can help you save time on your shows and conventions as
you plan the first quarter.
(c) 2008-2014 AirPSG, LLC. Used with Permission.
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