I’m interviewing for two regional roles in Q1, and the strongest candidates are coming with avionics fluency and Part 27 familiarity as H125 and Bell 505 now account for roughly 70% of our inquiries, while VIP light twins (AW109/EC135) are bottlenecked with 18–24 month backlogs… If you’re hiring, are you rebalancing base vs. commission toward consultative spec’ing — DOC, payload, and IFR capability — since those specs, not max speed, are deciding deals in this cycle?
We shifted to a 65/35 base/commission and added a small SPIFF when a spec sheet clears ops with no DOC/payload/IFR changes. > — DOC, payload, and IFR capability — since those specs, not max speed, are deciding deals in this cycle? Exactly, and we still tie commission to gross margin so reps don’t overspec H125/505 configs — does anyone bonus for accurate DOC forecasts at 90 days?
I started pairing our reps with the avionics lead on the very first discovery call and added a small kicker if the ‘spec freeze’ date is met with no config changes — cut rework on H125/505 deals noticeably. Caveat: it gets messy when supply chain forces a swap, so we carve out vendor-driven changes from the bonus.