Small – Lite Aircraft are effective means of travel in the 200 to 700 mile range.  When we ignore the Business owners not yet ready to spend millions on jet equipment we leave even fewer prospects of future business when they (smaller growing organizations) are ignored.  Exposure to the “short/mid-range” travel via “Lite” aircraft serves to “prime” the pump of future national and international successes.

As an aviation service provider are you locked into a shrinking pool of viable prospect/options? Companies with annual revenue beginning as low as 5 to 10 million are at the point of feasibly with currently available “lite” aircraft.  This is the pool of prospects that will grow into the VLJ and beyond markets.

Typically this market has no experience with aviation other than airlines.   This is no bash of the airlines; they are effective at moving people.  This lack of experience however means little understanding when heavier equipment requirements develop into viable options.  In turn, the even greater financial exposure and risk translates to “no” when there are just as many “important” initiatives prospects “understand”.

Tracking results, KPI’s and time is the ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities, savings, relationships and even revenue.  Advocating for aviation resources means measuring "results" travel influences the potential outcome or goals.  In this age of instant connectivity travel easily becomes that much more relevant as the “impact” of a successful outcome magnify.  Think about you current top 5% of clients, did you “close” that business without meeting them?

The “scarcity” of data and results for small aviation leave prospects without the information they need to make the “informed” decisions to use aviation to accomplish business.  Bringing to light the value it provides opens up the “potential” well before the typical users are ready for heavy iron.  Is this case I’m talking about 12.5 and up as “heavy”. 

The growth strategy for America means hundreds to thousands of new ventures will be required to generate the job creation needed to finally bring this country out from under the financial medicine ball sitting on our shoulders for the past 5 years.  No doubt this will happen, the question remains however, will the aviation community have a pool of “farm” league companies ready to move into the majors when that happens?

Mike Flannelly
Aviation Consultant
http://www.AviationConsultant.com