Premier Aircraft Reaches Buyers Worldwide With Controller
At Premier Aircraft, everyone from the parts team to CEO Travis Peffer follows a simple principle: “We won’t sell any airplane we wouldn’t own ourselves.” For Vice President of Aircraft Sales Jeff Owen, that means avoiding aircraft with questionable histories.
“We just choose not to deal with things that might have a cloudy history,” says Owen, an aviation industry veteran of 50-plus years. “We just don’t want to go there. We want to make sure that people get good airplanes. If the airplane isn’t good enough for us to own ourselves, then it’s certainly not good enough for anybody we want to sell it to. Somebody else can sell it to them.”
The Diamond Connection
Founded in 2003, Premier Aircraft is an authorized Diamond Aircraft dealer and service center with locations in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Fort Worth, Texas; and Norwood, Massachusetts. The company sells new and used Diamond single- and twin-engine piston aircraft, from the two-seat DA20 to the seven-seat DA62.
In 2020, Premier Aircraft was named Diamond’s exclusive dealer for 19 U.S. states across the Southeast, Central, and Northeast regions, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The company has completed more than 2,200 aircraft sales and says it has sold more Diamond aircraft than any other dealer in North America.
Owen says, “There’s no hope of anybody ever catching up with us, unless we stop tomorrow,” noting Diamond aircraft are “extraordinarily well built,” feature “extremely high production quality,” and “are more like flying artwork than airplanes.”
Premier Aircraft also sells, services, repairs, inspects, renovates, and offers parts for aircraft from Beechcraft, Cessna, Mooney, Pilatus, Piper, and other manufacturers. It also offers aircraft brokerage, financing, insurance, and transition training services.
Controller, An Indispensable Tool
Premier Aircraft supports its sales staff, which possesses more than 330 years of combined general aviation sales experience, by running full-page ads in Controller magazine. Each ad features 20 aircraft, each of which has a corresponding listing on Controller.com. The company also runs a weekly banner ad that runs along the top of the piston twin category page on Controller.com.
Owen, who has a private pilot certificate with multi-engine and instrument ratings, says Controller has positioned itself as the “de facto go-to” listing platform, and anyone looking to buy a plane will “eventually, if not right away, find their way” to Controller.
For Premier Aircraft’s sales team, Controller is an indispensable tool, as “it’s replaced the ubiquitous yellow newspaper by becoming the modern-day yellow newspaper,” says Owen. “It's always part of what we do.” Premier Aircraft also benefits from Controller’s historical listing data, call leads, web statistics, and other “backroom tools,” he says.
“I appreciate our access to that stuff because it helps us to make decisions, deploy resources, and figure out where we should be doing more or where we should be doing less,” says Owen. “If you’re doing a lot of something that doesn’t produce measurable results, the data tells you to stop doing it. Without the metrics, there’s no way of knowing.”
Saving Time & Effort With ACC
Premier Aircraft also uses Aircraft Cost Calculator, Sandhills Global’s online solution for projecting aircraft ownership and operating costs based on pre-loaded, real-world data for hundreds of airframes. ACC gives Premier Aircraft tools for generating professional reports and comparing aircraft side by side. Owen says ACC enables Premier Aircraft to offer customers a third-party perspective on calculations and keep it one step removed.
Owen also appreciates ACC for how it helps him. “I’m fully capable of doing anything and everything that ACC does, but it takes time and effort,” he says. “It is a valuable tool, provided it’s reasonably accurate, and I haven’t seen anything that says it isn’t reasonably accurate.”
Customer Commitment
Premier Aircraft counts its service and parts support as a critical component of its customer service offerings and a key differentiator from other dealers. With multiple service locations, the company is strategically positioned as a go-to source for all Diamond aircraft parts and service needs.
Owen notes the aircraft sales business remains one area of aviation with relatively little regulatory oversight, making trust especially important. Customers can rest assured that Premier Aircraft is focused on long-term relationships and not simply completing transactions.
“We don’t treat it like that. To us, the customer is everything. In fact, the customer is more important than the plane is,” says Owen. “I always tell my guys, ‘We’re not in the business to sell airplanes. We’re in the business of helping people buy them. Once we help them buy them, we’re in the business to help keep them in the business.’”
A version of this article first appeared in Sandhills Magazine. You can find current and back issues in the Sandhills Magazine Archive.
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