small acft demo / sales job ?

[767..street]

Anyone work in the past demonstrating and or working for sales of small aircraft ? I may have an opportunity to do this with a fairly new company & new small piston acrft.
What was it like ?
Pay ? salary + fee per plane or what ?

Thanks !

 

[loosecannon]

I worked for a Beechcraft dealer last year (after getting furloughed). I made $35K base salary + a small piece of any deal I helped close. In addition to demoing the a/c I picked up new a/c from the factory and trained customers after the purchase (whether for insurance or high perf check out, no ratings). It wasn't bad, but I jumped on the first King Air job that came along, mostly for the money. I have to admit that flying a C90B or Baron with 4 hours on it was pretty cool. I also made a lot of contacts in the corporate world (I knew where all the new airplanes were going & who needed a pilot).
Hope that answers your question.
dc

 

[Iceman21]

I would love to get into something like this.

Are these types of jobs "who you know" jobs?

Thanks

 

[loosecannon]

That's how mine worked out. A friend of a friend was a salesman for the company and brought me in part time (day rate). They liked me and made it a salaried position. It helped that I had a fair amount of time in most Beech products. They also liked that I had current instructor certificates (for the check outs). The only stumbling block I see right now is that most sales departments are hurting right now and don't have a lot of cash to throw around. I think I was pretty lucky. These guys are the number 1 Beech dealer in the country (7 years running). I left on good terms and still do some day rate work for them. They haven't replaced me and I think they are going to try to get by with using local CFI's for the small stuff & me for the King Airs. Your best bet is to find out who their best sales person is and suck up to him/her (hey, it worked for me).