Trade Shows and Conventions...Here’s Where Business Aviation Can Really Pay Off

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.

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