Reeling in Customers: Either Fish, or Cut Bait

I have returned from a much needed vacation to the Canadian outback where I enjoyed a week of fishing with no phone, TV or newspaper.

Every year, I travel to the far western reaches of Ontario for our annual fish camp outing that has been a part of my family tradition since 1961, when my father first went with his buddies to the same waters we fish today. I started going with my dad in 1984, and now his 16-year-old great-grandson, my grand nephew, is representing the fourth generation to wet a line in these great Northern waters.

On this most recent outing, I started to think about writing a blog post based on the similarities between fishing for dinner and casting a net for new FBO customers.

Planning the Trip

As many times as I have gone on this fishing trip, there is still a fair amount of planning to do. Same goes for developing a sound marketing plan to increase your FBO business.

Blogger Ron Jackson and 16-year-old grand nephew Chas holding a 20-inch Walleye on a Canadian fishing trip.As author Stephen Covey says in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you have to begin with the end in mind. Because I’ve been on this trip before and have had success in hauling in some nice fish, I can visualize my goal: A 29-inch, 10-pound Walleye!

Same goes for the FBO business. You know the type of valued customer you want to attract, so you should visualize reaching your goal, whether it’s five more new customers or 50. And you should be updating these goals annually.

Research shows that a business can lose up to 30 percent of its customer base annually due to attrition or churn in the marketplace. Factors include companies downsizing and selling their aircraft; companies going out of business; mergers and acquisitions; new flight destinations; and the worst case scenario, defection — losing a valued customer to a competing FBO.

New customers are paramount to keeping a healthy balance sheet.

Fish or Cut Bait

You have set your goals, you have written your business and marketing plan, and you have followed your map to your destination. Now you have to ask yourself, “Are you going to fish or cut bait?”

Sometimes we can take planning and strategizing too far. We can call too many meetings and second-guess our way to being highly ineffective. As one of my bosses at a Fortune 500 company years ago said, “If you don’t get started, you’ll never finish.”

And so it is with catching fish or a new customer. If you don’t get your pole in the water, nothing will happen.

Years ago, I read a book titled Bunkhouse Logic by Ben Stein. The premise was about the same. You can’t win at anything unless you first get started. You’ve got to start the cattle drive and you’ve got to finish the cattle drive, point A to point B. Also, if you want to win at poker, you first have to get yourself to the table. In other words, you have to get your feet wet and sometimes force yourself to get started.

Using the Right Bait

Catching a good customer on your terms is a far better scenario than catching a customer on his or her terms. Remember the blog I wrote titled Building Long-Term Profitable Customer Relationships, Part 2: Do You Feel Lucky?

In this post, we discussed the danger of attracting the wrong customer by subjectively lowering the price of fuel. Remember, you have to use the right bait in attracting the right profitable customers if you want to keep them for the long-term.

You have to give them a reason for choosing your FBO by providing them with a sense of delivering a real customer value proposition (CVP). For instance, done properly, the CVP can be the right combination of clean and attractive facilities, fair fuel prices and a knock your socks off customer service experience.

Now that is baiting your hook with something more than corn from a can. 

Keeping Your Fish Healthy and Happy

When a person goes to a fish camp in Canada, he is there for primarily one reason: catching fish. So the fisherman is up at the crack of dawn and fishes all morning and then from late afternoon until sunset, which is usually after 9:30 p.m. this far North.

Therefore, having a live well in the boat is a great asset so the fish stay fresh.

So it is with attracting new customers to your facility and keeping them. You have to figure out a way to keep them happy and satisfied while they are in your facility.

In my post Building Long-term Customer Relationships, Part 3: Don’t Forget the Cheese! I talk about delivering a memorable customer service experience that will keep your customers coming back for more. Here is a recap:

The use of Cheese in our proprietary customer service training course serves as a key reminder to CSRs, as well as other employees, to practice exceptional customer service. A few fundamentals of great customer service are:

• Smile. Remember to say, “Cheese,” to yourself, as if someone were taking your photo. Even when answering the phone, put on a smile, and the customer on the other end will sense they are talking to a happy person.
• Add a little extra when delivering customer service. Cheese represents the added touch, the little extra that puts a smile on the customer’s face and makes them keep coming back.
• Remember a customer’s name. In the FBO environment, adding cheese can be as simple as remembering a customer’s name. Most people react positively to being called by their name and are impressed when you remember. Are you the restaurant owner?
• Go the extra mile. Going the extra mile could be something as simple as showing the customer where the pilot lounge is located instead of pointing in the general direction.

If you’ve had success in casting your net for customers, I’d like to hear from you. Please email me at Ron@thejacksongroup.biz.

Ron Jackson

Ron Jackson is co-founder of ABSG and president of The Jackson Group, a public relations agency specializing in aviation and FBO marketing. He has held management positions with Cessna Aircraft and Bozell Advertising and is the author of Mission Marketing: Creating Brand Value and co-author of Don’t Forget the Cheese!, the Ultimate FBO Customer Service Experience.