Two years ago, when we released our new toolset for charter sales, we were aware that there was still a long way to go before we could call it a complete solution for aircraft operators. We are good listeners though, and by listening to our community and partners it has been possible to enhance Leon Sales with features that perfectly mesh with the modern workflow of managing quotations and selling charter flights.
As listing all changes we have developed over that time escapes the scope of this article, we will focus on game breaking ones, those that improve dealing with RFQs exponentially and affect the existing workflow to a greater degree.
Streamlining your sales channels
Flexibility is indeed one of the defining qualities of great charter sales. No matter how precise your price calculation is, or how fast the response rate may be, your singular offer may fall short due to a number of reasons. Clients simply love having a choice. In Leon, you can show them all the possible options by sending multiple quotes at the same time, with alternative aircraft or itinerary, all in one, fully customisable email.
To further improve the decision making when creating a quote, you should have as much data of previous quotations as possible. Luckily, Leon will provide you with full insight on a conversion rate with a given requester, as well as some useful statistics and historical data regarding a route current quotation is referring to. For keeping a coherent offer, we do not have to mention how essential it may be to have a quick glance at other similar pricings, for both the same requester and other requesters on the same route.
A screen showing conversion data for the current requester, alongside with historical data for the given route.
Organising business markets by sales regions has also become easier with the functionality of assigning possible leads to different bases (if an operator has more than one). A particular base can be designated to deal with a given client automatically, or they may be alternated per request, depending on current needs of an operator.
Fine-tuning the pricing
Getting your pricing right is definitely one of the biggest challenges sales teams have to face in almost every business. In case of charters, you have to take into account dynamics of airport fees, empty legs, country taxes, fuel burn, flight time optimisation and probably tens of other equally important factors. Even though there is no perfect solution for all of the above, we still feel pretty confident about the efficiency our pricing toolset brings to the table.
Depending on preferences, two distinct quoting methods can be used - price based, or costs & margin. With costs & margin, the method usually provides a much more transparent overview of a selling budget, allowing efficient cost control and helping in planning of future expenses. This improves the process of tracking the sources of competitive advantage, especially in those “make or buy” decisions, where getting a subcharter from the market may happen to be more effective in some cases. In Leon, different pricing setups can be created and stored for each client, or per aircraft, boosting the pricing efficiency even more.
As we aim to reflect the workflow of the sales department as accurately as possible, there is more to the pricing enhancements. Apart from five available passenger tax calculations for the UK, Germany, Austria, Italy and Sweden, it is possible to set a default VAT tax per each country. New pricing method also provides a quick glance on margin data from within a quote, cost data per hour of flight time or block time and allows the inclusion of third party commission for brokers into the calculation.
Recalculating the quote is as easy as it is non-disruptive and may be done based on a modified itinerary, changed airport fees, or by using separate pricing created for another client. Other recent features that straightaway provide assistance include four different methods of calculating the flight time, on which we already have a dedicated article right here.
Untapping the power of subcharters
Using only your own fleet to meet the expectations of the client base does not always help in pulling off a deal. This is where subcharters come to rescue and there are distinct ways of handling them in Leon. They can be added manually, which requires filling in all the relevant data, such as basic aircraft information, available amenities, or cancellation policy. Such data can be stored and utilised again for the purpose of future requests. However, with the Avinode integration enabled, you can also use the ‘Find Subcharter’ option to look for adequate subcharters directly within the Avinode marketplace. In that case, the data will be automatically populated using the Avinode feed as soon as the third party operator confirms the request.
Similarly to the pricing of the managed fleet, it is possible to set pricing data for subcharters, including operator’s price, margin and third party commission. Any further communication between the sales team and the external provider can be done directly in Leon.
Other tools for the productivity upgrade
As you can see, it is quite hard to bring up all the features Leon Sales is brimming with right now, without making it a long, boring list. Between advanced invoicing with recharge invoices and credit notes, paperless agreement signing with DocuSign, cloning requests for faster workflow, or an option to request aircraft owner’s approval to perform the trip, working with the latest instalment of Leon should become a treat for any charter sales professional.
This is not the first time we are writing about Leon Sales. Should you be interested in its earlier features and developments, the related articles can be found on our blog: How to boost your sales with Leon, Enhanced Leon Sales.
Not yet a member of the Leon community? Contact our Sales team to ask for a demo and find out more or jump straight into the 30-day free trial.
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