Exceeding Expectations
People often have a litany of questions when I tell them what I do. The simple answer is that I work in a family business as an aircraft broker and we help people buy and sell corporate jets on an exclusive basis worldwide. In today’s economic environment most people immediately question if anyone is buying or selling. I am proud to say that it is nice to be able to tell people that buyers are starting to come back into the market. For some, the conversation ends there and we move on, but many people I meet often ask more questions and they are curious what I like about my work.
Buying and selling corporate jets is how we earn a living. It is how our success is measured. It is not, in and of itself, why I jump out of bed in the morning. I jump out of bed excited about buying and selling corporate jets because each day is a new opportunity to exceed expectations. To deliver on a promise that I/we make each time we talk to a new prospective client or present a proposal. The first sale that we make is not the sale or acquisition of an aircraft, but the sale of our service. I do not know that I would enjoy selling widgets, but selling our service is an entirely different matter. When I make the sale of our service, we are the product. We can affect our deliverable every day.
The biggest testament to our work is that year after year over 80% of our business is from repeat and referral clients. The rest is new business that we find through our marketing, speaking engagements, reputation and cold calls. Every day that I go to work I have an opportunity to meet, exceed or fall short of expectations. Every day I work to exceed them. There is nothing more gratifying than when a client tells us that we have exceeded their expectations and they are happy that they made the decision to hire us. It is that opportunity and that ability to directly affect our deliverable and fulfill a promise made that I jump out of bed for. Meeting this challenge is rarely easy. It is a constant pursuit and one in which we can never let our guard down. We are available to our clients twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and that occasionally impacts my personal world. But, I grew up around this business watching my father and today, I would not trade any of it. Call me hokey, but I love what I do.