1. Who wants to commute? When your job is selling charter flights, all you need is a laptop in your briefcase and a smartphone in your pocket. We live in the flexible world of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms. With Wi-Fi and the right mobile apps, including our own Avinode products, brokers and operators can prepare quotes and secure bookings from anywhere 24/7, even flying at 35,000 feet. When the internet doesn’t care where you are, why should you?
   
2. Keeping close (even when remote). Personalized services are vital in private aviation. Clients don’t want to explain their preferences to brokers and operators repeatedly, talking to a different person every time they fly. They want to build relationships with familiar contacts who seem to magically know what to do, arranging everything from inflight meals to favorite hotels. Working remotely, a sales team member can continue to be a client’s regular point of contact 24/7. But, if someone is simply unavailable, clever online platforms mean you can easily…
   
3. Share the workload. If you’re suddenly called away from work and out of contact, one of your colleagues anywhere can instantly pick up your task. That attractive quote you were preparing through TripManager will still be completed and delivered without delay.
   
4. Central management, remote operations. Online business products such as Office 365 (file sharing), TSheets (time tracking) and Slack (team collaboration) allow remote cooperation and monitoring of activities from anywhere. (By the way, we love the fact Slack stands for ‘Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge’. What a great name!)
   
5. Go where you are needed. Strong personal relationships are key to building and maintaining customer loyalty in bizav. When you can work productively from anywhere, traveling to spend time face-to-face with your clients can make more long-term sense than sitting in the company office.
   
6. Traveling light. With smartphone apps able to do almost everything today, you don’t even need the hassle of carrying your laptop around if you want to work remotely. Equally, if you realize you’ve forgotten your smartphone – a nightmare, we know – you can always use your laptop for video calls, through services such as Skype.
   

Given business aviation is a location-fluid industry by its nature, the new ease of this work-from-anywhere style of business is a welcome trend — and one rich with opportunities too. We are seeing many of the larger business aviation companies are growing via acquisition, meaning they are absorbing new staff spread out across multiple time zones. Remote capabilities mean these businesses can grow, retain valuable talent and slim operating costs all at once. 

And for the so-called “bedroom brokers,” being a self-starter in business aviation industry has never been smoother. With the right attitude and a little research into the right online platforms, it’s possible to provide professional and polished customer service right from the get-go. Then your hub of operations will be wherever you choose to go.