I’m Paula Williams with ABCI. I wanted to take a minute to talk about why we developed our aviation sales professional course. Last week, we talked about why we think it’s imperative that the aviation industry, and aviation professionals in general, get better at storytelling and get better at sales. For the industry to survive, we think this is absolutely vital. In terms of why this course, and why we go through it the way we did, there are a lot of sales courses out there. There’s sales training anywhere you can shake a stick at. There’s videos on YouTube. There’s books. There’s entire shelves of books at Barnes and Noble about sales. Why would somebody need our course? That’s a good question. You can learn a lot of really great nuggets of strategy from anywhere. You can pick up pretty much any of those books at Barnes and Noble, and you’re going to find one or two really great tips on how to improve your sales process and things like that.
In fact, we have a book club where we study one book a month in sales, marketing, or business. We talk about that in our group, which really helps us keep up to speed and have a good time with each other. There are some things you can’t learn from a book, and there’s some things that you can’t learn from a really general course. The Dale Carnegie courses are fantastic for the mindset stuff, Dale Carnegie’s The Power of Positive Thinking guy. Those are great courses, but they won’t teach you a whole lot about the specifics of putting a deal together and constructing something that is attractive to your particular customer. There are a lot of MLM programs. A lot of those programs have a sales training component to them. Some folks have come from that kind of an environment, and they learned a lot of really great things, and can put those to use in an aviation sales environment.
They will certainly get you off your butt and get you motivated, but the personality is not really for everyone as far as that style of selling. Sandler Sales is one of our favorites. Actually I attended Sandler’s President’s Club for a long time, and they have a lot of really great material. The problem that I have with Sandler, or the reason that we don’t just refer people to Sandler, is because you ended up role playing with real estate people, and car salespeople, and other folks who are not really in the industry. You spend a lot of time doing things that I think are harmful for some of the long term sales that we do. They have the Colombo technique and things like that, that I’m not really a fan of. There are some things in other sales training programs that I think will do you more harm than good. You try a strong armed, thumbscrews closed on an aviation professional, and they’re not going to respond well.
Three reasons that I think our course is probably the best choice for anyone who’s in the aviation industry, first of all, it is by and for people in the aviation industry. All of the examples that we use, all of the people you’re going to be role playing with, are very representative of prospects in this industry. That industry knowledge, and that industry networking opportunity is invaluable. The second thing is the sales style. In this industry, we have a long cycle from first meeting somebody to actually getting them to sign the check. It is a different style of sales than a used car lot where they walk on the lot, and then they walk out with what the title of the car in their hands. This is not an impulse purchase. This is not retail. It is definitely a long sales cycle, and a lot of is business to business. Some of it is personality. If you are a Zig Ziglar type, then you might be better off in retail or some other type of sales.
I’m probably the opposite of Zig Ziglar. I like to use a letter of examples from the advanced selling podcast and book, Have to Use A lot More Mellow, and a lot more businesslike, I think, in his approach to sales. The third thing, third reason that I think our course is the best possible choice for an aviation professional is because of our role-playing. We actually set up scenarios and run through them with our students where they have an opportunity to be the salesperson, the prospect, and the referee. In each of those situations, you learn things, and you learn how to apply them differently. You get actual practice going toe to toe with somebody over Zoom, of course, practicing the skills that you’re learning. That’s the only way that you’re going to remember them.
Anyone who’s done flight training knows that there’s a muscle memory and there’s a certain amount of perishability to that skill. Being able to immediately practice what you learned with another human being is absolutely invaluable and learning how a real human is going to react to new techniques as you try them and will really help you get smoother and more comfortable with sales. So that’s three reasons why our program, I think, is the best possible choice for an aviation sales professional.
Our next course is starting on the first week of October. We’re doing our onboarding during that first week. If you’d like to join us, we’d really love to have you. It’s $279 a month, and our first certificate is three months, so you can get your aviation sales basic certificates just about the end of the year. You’ll start 2021 with your aviation sales basics certificate, assuming that you do all the work, and earn it, and make it through the course. I’m hoping to see you in class and we’ll see you soon.
