Here we are in March and the infamous “March Madness” NCAA basketball tournament. 64 teams battle it out over three weeks, cumulating in the big “Final Four” weekend and championship just a couple of days later. It’s always been exciting and most likely will continue to be for many years to come. I think one of the best aspects of this wonderful sporting event is that the “little guy” or smaller school has just as much chance of winning it all as the big schools like Kentucky or Kansas! Very cool – certainly motivation for any player.
As we have always seemed to do (taking an analogy or metaphor), we are equating the Pilatus market to “March Madness” of sorts. At JetSwiss we keep a separate file of all the infamous sayings ‘Brokerville’ sends out via email blasts and advertising. Get ready, they’ve been showering your email inbox for the past few weeks hot and heavy! We get a real kick out of it—never a dull moment and lots of laughs in our office. March “Broker” Madness has started.
Here are just a few classic advertising subject lines from ‘Brokerville’:
- Subject: “Market-Driven” Smart Price Reduction
- Subject: “Price reduced. Market-based pricing…” (so you were not market priced before??)
- Subject: “Next to sell” Open to all offers!
- Subject: “Eager to Sell” A great opportunity
- Subject: “Owner says it must go” and of course, “Owner says next to go, bring your offers”
- Subject: “Seller Motivated, replacement aircraft in service”
- Subject: “Highly Motivated owner, seeking compelling offer”
- Subject: “Priced to sell by years end”
- Subject: “Incentivized for quick close” (upon actual conversations, “offer must be above xxxx”)
When our industry gets a little quiet or the market is shifting, the broker games begin. With airplanes slowly coming onto the market (an increase of 6 aircraft this month, bringing the total to 38) and days on market increasing (14 of the available aircraft equating to 37% of the market have been for sale for over 100 days) brokers try to bring value to their projects via creative marketing tactics, price reductions, or dare I say incentives. These are designed to entice buyers to make an offer. See the classic advertisements listed above. Five aircraft have lowered their price in the last 30 days an aggregate total of $1,709,000 (average of $341,000 per aircraft)! This represents a 6.6% reduction in price per aircraft. Keep in mind, these numbers represent the entire worldwide market and are not derived or synonymous with Controller.com. Instead of knowing the competition, knowing the airplane inside and out, and pricing correctly from the start, “Brokerville” likes to play the game. The question to ask yourself is, what does this do for me? Is it in my best interest to have my agent essentially begging for offers to drum up activity? Or is it better for my agent to take on the competition and win the matchup? The latter is a sales strategy whereas the former is flipping a penny into the wishing well.
Let the Madness Begin!