Global Aviator February 2018 / Vol. 10 / No. 2 25
PIPER NAVAJO
oil line we had a deal! He bought the
thing outright there and then. I was not
ecstatic with this first sale, only thinking
about the stupid mistakes I made.
Once a week I gave a radio
telephony course for the R/T licence,
for VFR and IFR operations. After some
weeks I regularly started taking a few
students to Schiphol Airport for a touch-
and-go, for them to experience speaking
to the control tower. They were excited
because Schiphol was the biggest and
busiest airport in The Netherlands.
When an actual controller reported
back to them, they were all speechless,
which of course is the last thing to be.
Anyhow, one of the students wanted
to buy an aircraft knowing I was ‘in
the business’ and who better to buy
an aircraft from than from your own
R/T instructor? We had another more
saleable trade-in and by now, after
one success, I started to feel quite
confident. In my sales training with
IBM I learned an important lesson.
Don’t sell the product, sell the need.
Once the need is established, the rest
is child play. Note, we don’t talk about
‘want’ but ‘need’! So I talked to the client
over a couple of beers, established his
need and as it happened, we had the
matching aircraft, a SIAI-Marchetti S25.
This aircraft, G-AVEG, would be
able to do all the things this man needed
(or wanted) and a demonstration
trip was organised. He wanted to fly
from Antwerp to Elstree in the UKand back the next day. We did this
and the sale was accomplished!
A corporate pilot who flew a
Partenavia P68B (PH-DKI) for a
Rotterdam-based company once a
week to Ireland, contacted me. The
Partenavia was really slow. Against
the prevailing north-western winds
en-route to Dublin, the ground speed
was a mere 95Kts. Our company was
the agent for Ted Smith Aerostar which
was acquired by Piper Aircraft in 1978
and the pilot wanted to talk about this
very fast aircraft, the 601P pressurised
version easily cruising 250Kts.
He was convinced that I had to
sell this aircraft to his boss. Since we
did not have a 601P or any Aerostar
for that matter, I chartered a Scottish
company to come to Rotterdam, fly the
boss to Dublin and back the next day.
This trip was a success and the deal
was completed under one condition:
We had to trade in the 6 months old
Partenavia P68B. My boss wanted me to
assure him that I would be able to sell
the Partenavia on short order. I assured
him not to worry, but trust in me. So we
went ahead, the Aerostar was bought
and the pilot ferried it himself from
California – through the Azores – to
Holland. Two years later the pilot joined
KLM, but the Aerostar (PH-HAC) stayed
with the company for many years.
Three aircraft sold in the first
three months!
Now ... how to sell the P68B, a verynice little twin engine aircraft, built in
Italy and looking very smart indeed.
I came to the conclusion that a flying
school was the obvious choice. I wrote
to about twenty of them in Holland,
Belgium, England and Germany and
finally a school in Denmark showed
interest. My boss did not allow me to
fly up-and-down to Denmark without
the flight school paying at least for the
fuel. They did, I went, and success! They
loved it, all aspects of it, the little twin
would be good for their business. A
week after payment had been received,
I delivered it to Aarhus airfield.
On that same little airfield Seppe,
the home of my first aircraft sale, were
two wealthy businessmen who did
not like each other at all. One started
with a new Fuji single engine aircraft.
The other business man wanted to do
better and bought a new Piper Arrow.
When that aircraft arrived after two
months, the owner of the Fuji bought
a Cessna 210, which taught the other
guy a lesson in WHO was boss.
Now the ball was rolling, the
Arrow owner traded it in for a
brand-new Piper Seneca, which duly
arrived some weeks later. The new
‘leader’ in this idiotic game only had
to wait for the next ‘move’ by the
opposition and sure enough a Piper
Navajo PA31 appeared on the scene.
The whole community at this
small grass airfield followed the
comings and goings of those aircraft