The fact is that if you're making enough money to seriously consider
justifying flying your teams around by private jet, you're probably making
a
killing on the software. How price-sensitive are your customers now and
are
you seen as being low-cost or producing an extremely high ROI?

To be fair there can be benefits to this too, though. Companies like to
feel
that they are doing business with winners, more so the higher up the
ladder
you go. Flying in on your own jet certainly projects that image. Every
client will be different.

-cwk.



I call BULL!

I believe you have carried your point too far. The flexibility to use a
private plane when it makes sense could not be such an extreme case.

Even coach fares that need connections could run up the bill, and if you can
do a tighter schedule by sending a team to a region to hop around for a
week, I can see it saving days in the field, hotel, car, meals, etc. Even
at over 2k an hour, it could actually work out to being within 2 times or
even closer. That may make it worth it for them. Also, it could make it
more economical to send a larger team which may have other benefits.

Let's say we take two teams of 3 to the left coast to do a total of 4
installs (two each). Instead of 6 round trip coach fares for 3,000, we take
the Jet.

Coach we have to take Sunday to Friday Night. We also get little
productivity out of the teams other than the installs and travel, because
they are whipped by the experience of commercial travel and long car drives.

Jet or Turbo Prop we may have Sunday to Thursday night and we can have our
whole crew in the office on Friday. For every single installer that doesn't
get burned out and cause turnover, we save about $40,000 each year (my best
guess, but its likely more).

Yes, meals and hotels are actually a little more because we have the flight
crew, but that likely gets well balanced with free parking. Even if the jet
is 3 times the cost of travel, you get 6 employee work days back and likely
reduce turnover.

So, what if supplementing the existing commercial travel with a Jet costs an
extra $400,000 per year. Could it not be worth it to the CEO?

BTW, the Jet ride close has long been a successful sales tool in Software.