Dealer Focus
Pippen York Flying Machine Company - Sunrise Beach Texas (2KL)
The Pippen York Family
How can a small avionics shop on a grass strip in the middle of Texas be one of S-TEC's Top Ten Dealers for as many years as we've been giving out the award?
The skeptics might say "They sell strictly by lowballing the price" or "They give the boxes away just to sell labor". You've heard it all before. Maybe your competitors say the same thing about you when you land a deal they were working on also.
However, we found something quite different when we visited Bill Pippen at his hangar in Sunrise Beach, Texas. We found that his formula includes keeping overhead low, working long hours and spending a significant effort on the promotion of sales.
Does this sound a little like Business 101? Let's take a closer look. Bill and Greg York, the other name on the letterhead of Pippen York Flying Machine Co., operate a thriving avionics and autopilot business out of a hangar on a 2650 foot grass and gravel strip about 50 miles Northwest of Austin. Bill does the selling - Greg does the installations - and both bend over backwards to service their customers.
Bill says the key is loving what you do and he gave us several examples that clearly demonstrate that he practices what he preaches. We talked to Bill on a Friday. In the previous four days he had landed at midnight twice after working late on the road.
On the day before our visit Bill left the hangar at 3:30PM to fly to a private strip where he worked on 4 aircraft that evening. These included working on a Cessna 210 and a Cessna 310 for a gentleman who has never bought anything from Bill. He needed an altimeter/static system certification in one aircraft and his altitude alerter "tweeked" in the other. Bill smiled when he said the next time he needs a new avionics system "he'll call".
Several days before that Bill hosted an evening GPS Seminar at another airport not served by an avionics shop. The seminar was conducted by the Field Sales Manager of one of the GPS manufacturers Bill and Greg represent. The seminar focused on the manufacturers' GPS product line and Bill reports that this type of seminar generates a lot of GPS sales. Bill also commented that these seminars lead to the sale of other products and services Bill and Greg can provide as well. He would like to do one of these seminars a week but often has to settle for several a month due to scheduling conflicts.
And seminars for users is not the only promotion technique they use. They target the high performance single engine market as one where there is need for the new avionics products coming on the market, and one in which the aircraft owners generally have substantial disposable incomes. Cessna 210's, Bonanza's and Mooney's get the attention at Pippen York. Several times a year they send a very straightforward post card direct mail piece to aircraft owners in the states of Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. It simply lists their product lines, asks for a call for a quote and provides a tear off business card for the aircraft owner to keep handy. They buy their labels from one of the data services in Oklahoma City. Not rocket science - just good, down to earth sales promotion.
And there is another smart thing in the Pippen York bag of tricks. They have a contract with a local agricultural aircraft manufacturer to do all their avionics work. As the spray planes have become more sophisticated they are getting bigger and better panels as well. Bill says he can't get rich on these but doing 8 to 10 sizable installations a year pays a lot of the bills.
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