Approach
We examine the path
between capability
and revenue.
Aviation companies rarely have a single broken thing. They have a sequence, and one or two points on it that quietly cost them work every month. The job is to find those points, prove them, and fix them in the right order.
Understand. Diagnose. Design. Build. Measure.
The MethodDiagnostic thinking
Most sales advice given to aviation businesses is generic advice with aviation words applied to it. It recommends more content, more leads, more visibility, more software. That advice is not wrong so much as unaimed, and unaimed effort is expensive for a business with a small sales team and a full shop floor.
We start from the opposite direction. What does this company do that is genuinely difficult to replace. Who needs that, and how do they go looking for it. What happens when they arrive. What happens to their request. What happens to the quote. What happens after the first order. At each point there is a specific question with an evidenced answer, and the answers tell you where the money is going.
What we will not do
We will not recommend a rebuild of something that is working. We will not sell a CRM to a company whose problem is positioning. We will not produce a strategy document and leave. And we will not present results we cannot evidence, from work we did not do.
If the honest answer is that the sales system is in reasonable shape and the constraint is elsewhere, that is the answer you will get.
We will show you how
customers find you, and
where you lose them.
There is a path between a buyer's first search and a repeat order. The work you are missing is coming off it at one specific point. Pick a stage and we will show you where.
Stage 01
Discovery
What can break
- You do not come up in search for the work you actually perform
- No SEO behind the part numbers, platforms and capability terms buyers type
- No page exists for work the shop performs every week, so nothing can rank
- Referral traffic lands on a homepage instead of the capability it came for
- Directory listings and profiles carry outdated or conflicting information
Business consequence
The buyer builds a shortlist and the company is not on it.
What we examine
Whether a buyer with a live requirement can find the company at the moment the requirement exists, using the words they would actually type.
Stage 02
Credibility
What can break
- A website that looks older than the operation behind it
- Approvals and certificates that are difficult to locate or verify
- No evidence of the platforms and systems the company specializes in
- Copy that could describe any repair station in the country
- No signal of who runs the business or how long it has done this work
Business consequence
A qualified buyer discounts the company before making contact.
What we examine
How much confidence a buyer can build in ninety seconds, and what the market is currently using to judge the company.
Stage 03
Capability
What can break
- Capability lists buried inside downloadable PDFs
- No part number search
- Capability organized by internal department rather than buyer requirement
- Certification information disconnected from the capability it authorizes
- No way to confirm whether the company supports a specific requirement
Business consequence
The buyer leaves before sending the RFQ.
What we examine
How quickly a qualified buyer moves from requirement to confidence to action.
Stage 04
RFQ
What can break
- One generic contact form for every kind of inquiry
- No path for a multi line removal list or a complete RFQ package
- No way to attach a teardown report, specification or photograph
- AOG and routine inquiries handled through the same slow channel
- Requests arriving in a personal inbox with no record
Business consequence
Demand the company already earned never becomes a quotable opportunity.
What we examine
Whether the request path matches how each type of buyer actually submits work, and whether every request is captured.
Stage 05
Quote
What can break
- Turnaround slower than the buyer's decision window
- No record of what was quoted, at what price, against what alternative
- Quotes that answer price but not turn time, capability or approval
- No prioritization between a first time inquiry and a recurring account
- Quote volume that nobody measures
Business consequence
The company competes on price because nothing else was communicated.
What we examine
Quote turnaround, quote content, quote ownership, and what the quote record makes possible later.
Stage 06
Follow-Up
What can break
- Quotes sent and never revisited
- Follow up that depends on one person remembering
- No defined interval, owner or sequence
- No distinction between a stalled quote and a lost one
- No reason for the second contact beyond asking for a decision
Business consequence
Won work is left uncollected in the quote log.
What we examine
What happens on day three, day ten and day thirty after a quote leaves the building.
Stage 07
Close
What can break
- Approval, terms or documentation friction at the decision point
- No clarity on who inside the customer authorizes the order
- Purchase order handoff that loses information already captured at RFQ
- No understanding of why quotes are lost
- Decisions surrendered to price because value was never established
Business consequence
The company wins the technical argument and loses the order.
What we examine
Where opportunities stall at the end, who decides, and what the loss reasons reveal about position and price.
Stage 08
Repeat
What can break
- No account tiering between a one time buyer and a recurring customer
- No visibility into a customer's other platforms, stations or affiliates
- A first order treated as a transaction rather than an opening
- No trigger when a recurring customer stops sending work
- Customer value measured by invoice rather than by potential
Business consequence
The company keeps buying new customers instead of growing the ones it earned.
What we examine
Which accounts deserve deliberate sales effort, and what the company does with a customer after the first order ships.
How we work with you.
Five stages, in this order. The last two are where most consultants have already gone home.
Understand
Before recommending anything, we learn how the business actually earns. What it sells, who buys it, what it is genuinely better at, how work arrives, how it is quoted, and where it is won or lost.
Diagnose
We map the sales path from the buyer's first search to the repeat order, and identify where credibility, opportunities and revenue are being lost. The diagnosis is specific and evidenced, not a list of best practices.
Design
We determine the right sales solution for this business, at this size, with these people. Sometimes that is a website. Often the higher value work is upstream or downstream of it.
Build
We implement. Strategy that ends at a document does not change revenue. What gets built depends on the diagnosis, and it has to work on a Tuesday when the shop is busy.
Measure
We define the small number of figures this company needs, put in place the means to produce them, and then judge the work against them.
Strategy is useless if nothing changes after the meeting.
How we work.
Diagnose before prescribing.
A firm that sells one thing will find that one thing wrong with every company it meets. We look at the whole sales path first, and we are willing to conclude that the website is not the problem.
Assume the operation is strong.
In aviation the technical work is usually the part that already holds. The failure is almost always in front of it or behind it, in how the market finds the company and what happens to demand once it arrives.
Prioritize by sales value.
Not every capability deserves equal prominence, not every lead deserves equal effort, and not every improvement is worth its cost. We rank the work by what it is likely to produce.
Build for a busy Tuesday.
Systems that only work when the shop is quiet do not work. Everything we build has to survive a bad week, a short handed month and the departure of the person who liked it most.
Measure, or it did not happen.
We define the small number of figures a business actually needs before we build, so the work can be judged against something other than opinion.
Strategy and execution are one engagement.
A recommendation that nobody implements has no sales value. We stay through the build and the measurement, because that is where the return is.
Find out what you are leaving on the table.
We go through your company the way a customer would: search for you, judge you, work out what you can do, and try to send you the job. Then we tell you where it breaks.
What the review covers
- 01How a buyer with a live requirement finds you
- 02What the market currently uses to judge your credibility
- 03How quickly capability can be verified
- 04How requests arrive, and whether they all arrive
- 05What happens to a quote after it is sent
- 06What your sales numbers can and cannot tell you