Holiday Marketing in Aviation

Transcript – Holiday Marketing in Aviation

Paula Williams: Hey, happy Wednesday, Paula Williams with ABCI. I wanted to share a couple of quick tips for aviation sales people during the holidays. Having worked with an awful lot of aviation sales people over the years, I know it can be a time that is supposed to be a lot of fun and it is supposed to be relaxing and is supposed to be a lot of things, but for some of us, it can be a little anxiety inducing and frustrating. I just wanted to share 3 things that aviation sales people can do over the holidays.

What’s going on over the holidays? We’re getting voicemails, people are out of the office, people are out of the work mode. They’re in party mode, they’re having fun with their families, they’re enjoying the holidays, which is all good stuff, but it can also be very, very frustrating for people who need to make a quota or who need to make certain numbers by the end of the year.

A couple of things that we can do with this, and if you’re an aviation salesperson, I want you to consider all three of these or maybe a combination of the three. So, number one, may sound obvious, but a lot of people never consider it. Number one is to take a break. Number two is to create a Black Friday deal. Number three is to schedule year-end strategy sessions with current or future clients.

Let’s talk about the first one, taking a break. This is not as easy as it sounds, especially for very driven aviation sales people who are coming up on an end of the year [inaudible] maybe doesn’t look as good as they had hoped. You can take a day, a week, a month, whatever it is that you can take. I really encourage you to spend this time, especially when a lot of your prospects are out of the office. It just doesn’t make any sense to be beating your head against the wall if your prospects aren’t in the office.

Whatever you can do and whether that is just taking Christmas day or the week of Christmas or the week between Christmas and New Year’s, whatever it is that you can take, I want you to commit to fully taking that off and taking care of yourself and taking care of your family and being fully present in all of those things and really turning it off. So, mark that out on your calendar right now. Burnout is a real thing, especially among salespeople and it’s because we love what we do, but every once in a while, you just have to turn it off.

Plan some downtime for yourself, whatever it is that you can manage, and don’t just half do it and keep checking your phone during Thanksgiving dinner and other kinds of things. You want to make sure that you’re really really truly unplugged for at least some of that time so that you can- unless you’re on call or whatever the situation is. If you can be fully present in not working, that’s a wonderful thing for whatever time you can manage. So, that’s thing number one.

Thing number two is to put together some kind of a Black Friday deal. Now, this is not just for retail. The retail kids have a lot of fun with this business to business people and aviation people, typically not so much, but that can work in our favor. People can be a little bit surprised and taken aback by the fact that you’re doing a Black Friday deal. Traditionally, they’re used to finding great deals in the mall, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, in all of those things. So, it’s a great way to sell off inventory and to raise cash.

There’s lots of ways to put an offer together, and we have a lot of resources on how to do an attractive offer that has a beginning and an end date and to make sure that it builds urgency in that way and takes advantage of the fact that people are in buying mode. Another thing is that there are people who do need to spend money before the end of the year because of the way their tax situation works or because of the way their budget situation works. You want to make sure that you give them an opportunity to spend that money with you.

Caveat to Black Friday situation is you do not want to teach people bad behavior. You don’t want them to wait for deals. That’s why I really recommend not discounting your product if there is any other possibility or any other way to do a deal. You can do a bundle, add two products together, add training, add installation, add setup, add something that adds value to your main product without compromising on your price because what you don’t want to do is set yourself up to make it harder to sell after your deal is over. So, you want to make sure that you’re protecting your price integrity if you do a Black Friday deal. So, that’s thing number two, Black Friday.

Thing number three, year-end strategy sessions. Now, this is a great way to sell more to your existing clients. Especially if you’re a service provider or something along those lines, if you can get on the calendar with your client either before or after the end of the year to talk about the results that they’ve had this year-end strategies for next year. A lot of people are having to report to their bosses or their boards or whomever or even just to themselves. How did we do in 2020? How do we want to do in 2021? What do we want to do differently?

If you can provide them with some charts or graphs or other things about industry data and how they’re doing and how they compare with other folks in the industry, that can be really attractive for them right about now. So, think about that. Think about a year-end strategy session, what could you do for your existing clients or for future clients to help them with their year-end planning and strategy and everything else and how can you insert yourself into that process and become a partner and be helpful in that?

Okay, so the holidays are going to happen and that is where we are. Being able to take advantage of the circumstances or the environment that we live in is a really good thing. So, I really highly recommend those three things. Number one, take a break. Number two, Black Friday deals, if you can work something out with that. Number three is year-end strategy sessions. The way that we can help you with this, and obviously, the strategy is to pick one or more of those strategies and start implementing it right now.

Get out a piece of paper and your calendar and figure out what you’re going to do. Mark out the time you’re going to mark out that you’re going to take time off. If you can put together a Black Friday deal, you still have time to do something really quickly, put an ad together. Those are things that can be done. If you’re going to do year-end strategy session, start making those calls and put a little outline together of what you can offer. So, once again, any offer, list offer presentation. Who would be the most susceptible to want this, want a year-end strategy session? What can you offer that is going to be very appealing to them, and presentation is how can you get in front of them?

You can try voicemail, you can try email. A lot of times, you’re going to get those machines, you’re going to get people when they’re out of the office, but they may be able to respond to you and/or schedule something, especially if you make it super easy for them to do that while they’re out of the office. Then habits. So, that’s strategy tribe. Let us know what you’re doing. If you run into any problems or have any questions, we can help you in the Facebook group. Habit, it’s just use the time proactively to be fully present with whatever strategy you choose. Don’t just suffer and complain, right?

Okay. All right. Of course, we have a Black Friday special as well. What we’ve done is we’ve done a bundle, which is what we’re recommending other people do as well. We’re taking our most popular aviation sales training course, which is our aviation sales basics that’s starting in January. What we want to do is get people booked early so that we can find out what kind of schedule they have, help them get ready for that, get them some materials early and things like that. If we can get them booked early, that’s good for us and good for them.

The incentive that we’re adding to that is our done with you social media bundle, where we’re working on twelve different social media posts together in a class. That includes tip sheets and worksheets and templates and a subscription to Canva Pro, which is our favorite tool for designing real simple social media posts. They look really professional. So, we’re bundling those two things together for the same price. You just register for the entire aviation sales basics, a twelve-week course, and then you get the social media project for free. So, buy one thing, get the other thing for free. I will show you our video that we put together as a promotion for this. Anyway, thanks for your attention, and we will see you next week.

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