A Private Message To Owners And Operators.
by Jay Mesinger

With times changing and transactions taking more and more dedication to complete, I have been personally on the phone more than ever. I am, of course, trying to reach you to see if your plane is for sale, ask about any transition plans, or simply introduce myself. I know that you, as business owners and “C” level professionals, are also busier and more focused on your own businesses and because I am sympathetic to your schedules and your focus, I have a question: How would you like me to communicate with you?

How would you like to interact with the aviation marketplace? I’m hoping you can share with me what would be the most effective way for my industry to communicate with you. Help us help you.

I thought I would write you to ask your thoughts about effective communication and I am sure that whether transitioning, selling outright, or just owning in these changing times, there must be valuation questions that you would like answers to as well as insight into the future. I also know I am not the only one calling and that you are probably getting more calls than ever. I am sure that most of the calls you are receiving are from very skilled aircraft professionals who are amply capable of answering these important questions that may be circulating internally in your companies.

As I look around at the methods we use, I see many opportunities to provide you with much needed accurate input. It was not that many years ago in the scheme of things that mail - and not even overnight mail - was a method we were using to send you important market information. That was, of course, easy to do for us, but hard to track its effectiveness.

Regular mail was then replaced by the opportunity to send information overnight, which began to give us some better tracking information based on at least having a signed receipt upon delivery but it still wasn’t a solid way to track effectiveness. Then came the fax machine! Wow, was that cool? We even learned to send out thousands of faxes at the same time. Imagine, never before could we as an industry communicate so quickly with so many, and I think that we as aircraft professionals really got some self import from it. We began to believe that everyone we were faxing wanted to hear from us. We were wrong and it didn’t take long for what was probably much needed legislation and regulations to fall into place, restricting people from sending out unsolicited faxes. We must apologize that it took such a heavy hand to teach us not to take advantage of this communication tool so inappropriately.

After the faxes came another tool that we’ve probably abused - emails. Not only did we add the word “email” to our vocabulary, but also the word “spam”! Sorry again.

So how about that phone? Maybe we should just pick it up and communicate the old fashioned way, making the cold call to you, the prospect. We all try to reach you that way and occasionally break the ice with a cold call but it’s a sheer numbers game and takes unbelievable confidence on the part of the caller. Given the tone in the voices of the call recipients, I am not sure you are just sitting at your desks waiting for our calls. So give us some feedback. What does work for you? How would you like us to communicate? I promise we have vital market intelligence to share. Help us help you.

A quick review of the touch points of our market intelligence would probably be fitting at this point in my letter to you. This magazine is a clear example of a way for you all to stay on top of a combination of important data. Just look at how thick or thin the magazine is in any given month. That is a quick way to weigh the inventory supply against prior periods. Additionally, flipping through the magazine will give you an understanding of the types of aircraft supply and what could be changing pricing based on changes in asking prices. Finally, many of the trade publications have excellent editorial pieces that bring light to either specific segments of our market, changing tax and regulatory information as well as “who is who” in our market and where you can find an old friend as they move around or up in the industry.

Another extremely useful tool that is available today is of course the Internet. With search engines like Google and Yahoo, simple questions can be typed in and within a few button strokes you can access many resources worldwide. What an amazing asset to us all.

So back to the original question: How would you like to hear from us? Is reading about the market informative enough? Would you like chosen individuals to email you regular updates? Do you want to reach out to us or have us reach out to you? Do you enjoy the calls that we make to inform you and ask you about your needs? Please tell us. I promise we will listen.

How can this industry maximize its effectiveness with respect to keeping our prospects and clients informed? The next time you get a call from one of us, take an extra minute to either invite us to call again or ask us not to. Take a moment to share a personal email address and let us know what specifically you might like to be kept informed about. Help us help you. We do all care, I promise.