Most of you will have heard of vertical and horizontal marketing, so what is parallel marketing. Very simply, it is working your market vertically and horizontally at the same time. The good news is that this can be done within the context of Aviation and needs to be done within the sales optimisation of aviation consigned material. But how many consignees are doing it – not enough? And how many are being driven and supported by consignors in the doing of it – not enough?
So how many ways can we look at selling this material?
- Short, Medium, & Long-Term Strategy
- Tier Level
- Consignee Programs
- Geographic Spread
- Transaction Type
- Aviation Players
Are just some. Pivoting these approaches towards the current market realities is a necessary step to opening up more possibilities and opportunities. Sounds like a lot of work – time and resources? The better consignee partners will have the resources in place that can manage this. You will have identified this earlier as per the article on Mirror Partnering. Very often what is missing is the support and drive of the consignor, primarily due to lack of resources. With the increase in consignments being set up, an environment driven by “Who shouts Loudest”, or “Who is Biggest”, or “Who has most Leverage” is evolving – this is especially relevant where a structured, systematic, process driven approach is not in play.
- Short, Medium, Long Term Strategy – Within the article on Minimal Model Validation a plan recognising this changed market was initiated, identifying the short (1 year), medium (2-4 year), and long (3-5 year) sales targets. The development of all of these begins immediately, what customers are targets, what needs to be done to get the relationship to a point where sales are an expectation? All term strategies require parallel actions to optimise.
- Tier Level – Who recognizes the cream here? Tier 1 and 2 forms the foundation of your expectation, perhaps with a % of Tier 3. There should be no Tier 4 material in your target numbers – but that should not change any approach to getting the most value possible from your Tier 3 and Tier 4 material – so what is the plan? Read on…
- Consignee Customer Programs – With existing ones falling into short to long term, and potential new ones falling into medium to long term. What material and condition will be required to support these? What needs to be done to increase the probability that your material will be used? What investment is required to optimise the sale of your material and who will fund that investment?
- Geographic Spread – What is in place, was is needed to optimise sales geographically in terms of agents, distributors, partners, directs sales?
- Transaction Type – While direct sale has been the preferred transaction type and remains so, within the prevailing market more contexts are opening, exchanges have been around a while, leases and loans are becoming more popular. GECAS recent appointment of a AVP of component leasing is an example of the move to other value contexts.
- Aviation Players – What are the entities that the consignee is targeting, the normal MRO’s, airlines and material integrators remain the primary targets. However, if you are not including component repair shops and developing an opportunity to sell material into your own leased aircraft you are not optimising your consignment.
So is there a danger that consignors might get in too deep, not letting the consignees get on with the job, disrupting the status quo if you like. That all depends on whether you believe your consignee partner is set up to optimise your consignment. With due diligence completed through Mirror Partnering, Minimal Model Validation, and Contracting Terms to Optimise Performance, you have put your consignment in a good place.
And perhaps you can leave it at that. A lot of Consignment companies do a good job, keeping up with market changes, out of the box thinking, and driving all aspect of Parallel Marketing. The primary question to consider for leasing companies now is “Do I have the resources to drive and support the consignee in getting the best from my asset consignment?” This is a crucial part of the process which we will go into in more depth within the next article on Bespoke Performance Analysis & Management.
If you have comments or questions, I would love to hear from you. DM me on LinkedIn or bring your thoughts to me here. Please, share this piece with your network, and if you want to access prior editions, visit the SellUe blog page.