FBO Tip of the Week: Take Time for a Midyear Checkup

By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson, Principals, Aviation Business Strategies Group

Now that we're halfway through 2015, it's time to take stock of how your FBO has performed this far and review your goals and objectives for the year.

This midyear review is an excellent opportunity to take a look at all aspects of your business and review the metrics that give you a relative benchmark of performance. 

Fuel Sales: Utilizing your dashboard and YTD budget reports, compare fuel sales for each of the first six months against the results of the first six months for 2014 and your budget forecast. Are you trending up or down or maybe staying about the same? Are you going to hit your sales targets?

Fuel Pricing: Review your posted retail pricing for each month, and complete a market survey, both on the field and in the region.

Fuel Discounts: Figure the average of what you actually sold a gallon of fuel for, taking into account all discounts including contract fuel pricing, etc. You also may want to break out these costs by category to include base customers, transient customers, contract fuel, commercial into-plane and government/DOD.

Review all your expenses: Remember to include wages/salaries, utilities, building maintenance, insurance, supplies, rent/lease, loan payments, etc. Are they in line with your YTD budget?

Recalculate what each gallon of fuel costs to pump into an aircraft.

Figure Your Fuel Margin: Compare these margins YTD with the results of 2014.

MROs: Figure your hourly productivity rate for your shop and each technician for the first six months of this year.  Compare these findings against the results of 2014. How are you trending?

Review Your Airport Lease: Now is a good time to think about negotiating a lease extension.

Review Capital Improvements: Are you on target to start or finish your capital improvement projects?

Review Safety Procedures: Now is a good time to conduct an internal audit of your safety procedures.

Insurance Review: Call your insurance agent, and get together to review your insurance story. A good insurance story can save you money.

Review Your Credit Card Transactions: Are your CSRs asking customers for the preferred card?  The one that has the lowest interest/processing rates?

Review Your Base Tenant Leases: Have the leases renewed at the same rate or is there opportunity to negotiate better terms?

Review Your Customer Service Training: Take time to observe how your employees communicate and deal with your customers.  Are your customers willing to recommend you without hesitation?

Now, tell us how you are doing. We'd like to hear from you to get a sense of how the industry is doing. Have you had more transient traffic these first six months compared to the same period in 2014? Do you have an opinion of whether there is an increase of in-flight hours compared to last year? Are fuels sales better, worse or about the same?

About the bloggers:

John Enticknap has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience. Ron Jackson is co-founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group and president of The Jackson Group, a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.