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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2209.PDF
224 FLIGHT International, 6 August 1964 Finished aircraft leave this line at Plant 2 at the rate of 4.2 per working day. The nearest Travel Air has been moved off the twin-engined line towards the exit door at right. Wing and cabin structural assembly bays are in the background BEECHCRAFT WAYS AND MEANS... All this detailed information, Beech intend to up-date every three years; and they issue it as appropriate to their dealers to help them to identify their market. With several of the middle classes covered by their current types, Beech decided that an entry in class 2 offered good sales potential and accordingly produced the Musketeer. Despite some teething troubles and delays caused by the movement of the Musketeer assembly line from Wichita to Liberal, Kansas, the 600 Musketeers so far sold have shown that the class 2 entry was a sound venture. The Musketeer had to be a new aircraft because it was not practic- able to downgrade the Bonanza or Debonair from class 4 for the purpose. Where the Bonanza was for its first few years alone in class 4, it was in due course joined by the Piper Comanche and the Cessna 200 series, but the potential is still high and increasing in this class. The potential in class 2 is, according to Beech, some $20m per year and class 3, with a price range between $15,500 and $19,000, also offers very considerable potential. Beech are only absent from classes 1, 3 and the jets. It is noteworthy that the established manufacturers in the business field, with the exception of Aero Commander, have so far steered clear of the pure jet market. Beech feeling seems to be that the investment is very considerable and the market proportionately small. There are better returns to be had in the lower classes, where company know-how and trad- itions are clearly established. Despite their stated intention to move into the single-engined field, Aero Commander have an even more exclusive interest in the big twin field than Beech. The business aircraft market has become much more stable since 1958 and 1959, because at about that time companies began to accept aircraft as company machinery on the same level as computers and accounting machines. Before that time, the industry was plagued with disastrous valleys and peaks in demand. A consider- able proportion of business aircraft owners now state that, even if they consider their aircraft to be something of a luxury, they would not immediately get rid of them in a minor or serious trade recession. Once accepted in a company, an aircraft nowadays tends to form a permanent part of its equipment. With some 20 per cent of industry dollar volume sales coming A Queen Air fuselage section being completed out of jig in Plant I from the export market, and exports growing at a healthy rate, Beech pay considerable attention to export business. Their use of South America as a combined sales and proving ground for one of the new King Air prototypes indicates the feelings in this respect. South America has considerable potential. In another facet of market research, Beech keep a permanent record of each Beech sale on four IBM punched cards, noting a good deal of information about the customer and of how and why he bought the aircraft. They thus have a complete analysed history of their sales each year. In addition, they keep IBM card indexes of 103,000 light aircraft and update the list every month. They thus know the second, third and fourth owner of every aircraft, as well as the original purchaser, and keep up to date with the 2,000 to 3,000 aircraft sales every month. This information is all available to their dealers, so that complete lists of all aircraft owned and bought in a particular sales district can be supplied and used for reference. With the American genuis for formalizing the processes which elsewhere seem to be taken for granted, Beech run regular sales schools for their dealers and are able to spell out the a, b and c of sales technique and to teach their dealers exactly how to go about the selling process. Each school session includes from 15 to 20 salesmen from all parts of the US and abroad, and Flight Inter- national's brief intrusion into a teaching session illustrated the excellence of the method and its value to each "student." The basic school lasts seven or eight days and is based on "round-table" sessions allowing extensive exchange of ideas and refinement of basic principles. Sales procedure is divided into prospecting, contacting, arousing interest, creating preference, making specific proposals and closing a sale. This involves instruction in just how to select prospective purchasers, how to write introductory letters, how to approach them in person and all the little points which will encourage a favourable response. Eight hours are spent on the complex but necessary intricasies of tax, lease and finance. Beech lay down a quite detailed routine for demonstrating an aeroplane to a potential customer—a highly sensitive activity on which all too few salesmen in continental Europe have the slightest clue. The Beech salesman is taught to follow a careful routine, starting with a normal take-off and going straight into a cruise climb. This is followed by a period of maximum-rate climb and then maximum gradient climb. Next he illustrates single-engined behaviour, if appropriate, and then the stalls. After thus gaining height and showing the more off-beat performance, he spends the remainder of the demonstration quietly losing height at low power, with minimum noise and the strongest impression of comfort and smoothness to leave with the subject. But most important of all, no manoeuvre is undertaken without the express approval of the potential customer. The main object is to make the flight pleasant and as informative as the client wants, but never to alarm him in any way. Potential clients are initially classified by Beech as light aircraft users or non-users: the non-users into those who are interested and those who are not: the users into owners and non-owners. In each of the four sub-categories, the salesman then identifies what he is selling against—car, train, airlines or rival light aircraft manu-
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