Essential Fuel Supplier Agreement Elements: Contract Fuel Programs

Part 4 of 4: Detailing the 10 Essential Elements of a Favorable Fuel Supplier Agreement

By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson, Principals, Aviation Business Strategies Group

Publisher’s note: Our bloggers, John Enticknap and Ron Jackson will be discussing these topics and others affecting the FBO Industry at the next NATA FBO Success Seminar, March 8-9, New Orleans.

Previously, we talked about nine of the 10 essential elements of a favorable fuel supplier agreement: Term of agreement, pricing methodology,  transportation and delivery, terminal locations, credit terms taxes, quality control/training, marketing support and credit card processing. A favorable fuel supplier agreement is one of the six intangibles that can build equity in your FBO.

For this blog post, we’ll discuss the final element of the favorable fuel supplier agreement, contract fuel programs, and provide insight and tips to help you protect your business while adding intrinsic value.

Contract Fuel Programs

When it comes to developing the contract fuel programs section of your fuel supplier agreement, keep in mind you have the ability to define the program or programs that make the most sense for your FBO. Too often, FBOs accept without question what is written in the agreement.

Here are a few tips:

1. Do your homework. Know the amount of gallons you are pumping to contract customers. Are they based customers, all transient, fractionals such as NetJets or Flight Options, FAA Part 135 operators, or something else?
2. Contract fuel suppliers do not operate for free. Before you establish your pricing, ask the question: What additional fee(s) are being added on to your already established FBO fees for a final price to the end customer? Extra fees can be substantial.
3. Determine what margin you want to receive for all your labor and cost of delivery. That means you must figure out what it costs you to pump a gallon of fuel. Use a simple formula by adding up all of your line service costs and divide that number by your total fuel pumped.
4. Are you being paid according to the contract including being paid promptly and no fees for processing?
5. If you have based customers on a contract fuel program, it might be more profitable for you to negotiate your own discount rate and, in the end, make a better margin.
6. Maintain a before and after record of non-contract fuel sales versus contract fuel sales. Are you selling more gallons at a reduced margin? If so, how much? Sometimes it’s beneficial to sell less fuel at a greater margin by reducing or eliminating contract fueling altogether. In the end, you may make a greater profit.
7. Keep your contract fuel agreements short, no longer than one year. The market is ever changing and one year contracts, to some extent, force you to reevaluate your pricing structure.

Please keep in mind that there are many factors and nuances and we will not be able to expound on all of them in the framework of a blog. Therefore, we encourage you to attend our next NATA FBO Success Seminar, March 8-9 in New Orleans, where we spend additional time discussing these important topics as well as others.

If you have a comment you'd like to share, please do so in the space provided below.

About the bloggers:

John Enticknap has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience. Ron Jackson is co-founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group and president of The Jackson Group, a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.

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When Pricing Fuel, Use Numbers to Your Advantage

“You can't do today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow.” – Anonymous

We know the pricing game all too well. Gas stations and auto dealerships have conditioned us to react to pricing of a product or service by offering a perception of a good deal.

In the FBO fuel pricing arena, we tend to play the same game.

In a previous blog post, FBO Fuel Pricing: Seeking a Silver Bullet, we discussed some pricing theory and came up with some ideas to find the silver bullet — which is the best price.

In the FBO business today, some customers call ahead for fuel prices, seek to use contract fuel suppliers and try to negotiate when they arrive on your ramp. We would like our customers to believe that our prices are well thought out and not just some arbitrary posted numbers.

Knowing how customers interpret numbers can help your FBO make stronger pricing decisions. What we would like to discuss here are some thoughts that go through people’s minds when they are looking to purchase. Consider these ideas drawn from “The Importance of Numbers,” written by Geoff Williams and published in Go magazine:

Make Your Prices Easy to Remember

If you make your prices easier to remember, comparison shoppers should think of your FBO more readily. Your potential to complete a sale increases.

The numbers 0 and 5 are remembered easily. For example, $4.70 for a gallon of fuel is easier to remember than $4.72, and $5.50 sticks better than $5.58.

Precise Numbers Feel Firm

Precise numbers seem less flexible to consumers than rounded numbers, according to a study by a social psychologist named Matt Wallaert. If you price your fuel at $6.00 per gallon, your price might seem flexible. If your price is $6.23, it appears to be non-negotiable.

Minds Play Tricks

Our minds play tricks, according to DePaul University professor and pricing expert Tim Smith. Auto gasoline priced at $3.699 is really $3.70 a gallon. In the Western world, our languages read left to right, so to some extent, we encode the lower numbers on the left first. In addition, we seek the best deal from a rational point of view, but we perceive emotionally that we have “saved” by not paying $3.70 a gallon.

We tend to have a mindset when it comes to prices. It is incumbent on us to break out of normal thought patterns and be original with our pricing proposals to pilots. If you know how people view numbers, you can predict their reaction to prices and, therefore, price more strategically. For example, above a certain threshold — say $5.00 per gallon — people will not react too differently to $5.25 or even $5.45 a gallon. They will not balk until you approach the next threshold, $6.00 per gallon. For maintenance services, on a higher price scale, $875 is better than $900, yet $825 will sell as well as $800.

Blogger John Enticknap presents at the 2011 Florida Aviation Trades Association (FATA) annual conference.Much can be said about numbers and their importance to your pricing theory as well as your target margin — both gross and net. By keeping in mind some of the psychological factors discussed above, you have a better chance of making the sale.

As our anonymous quote states, we must keep an open mind and study new business ideas and methods to be successful. Yes, we see many of the same business situations time and again in the FBO business, but that should not allow us to get complacent or not try new thinking.

Stay flexible, and stay informed.

Please let me know what you think, and share your ideas. Please email me at jenticknap@bellsouth.net.

FBO Success Seminar Registration

The next NATA FBO Success Seminar is scheduled for Nov. 8-10 in Atlanta. Register at nata.aero.

John Enticknap

John Enticknap founded Aviation Business Strategies Group in 2006 following a distinguished career in aviation fueling and FBO management, including as president of Mercury Air Centers. He is the author of 10 Steps to Building a Profitable FBO and developed NATA’s acclaimed FBO Success Seminar Series.

The Cost of Aviation Fuel, Part 2

FBOs Might Need a Two-Pronged Pricing Strategy

"Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes — it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm." – Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Recently, I was reading an article posted to Eye on the Economy on msnbc.com. The article was titled “As oil prices drop, Fed should get credit.” After reading the article, I decided to write Part 2 to a previous blog post titled The Cost of Aviation Fuel.

In the first post, I talked about continued increases in the cost of aviation fuel and what FBOs can do to mitigate high retail prices. We looked at a number of the reasons for the increasing cost of fuel:

• The Fed policy of a weak dollar — a weak dollar requires more dollars to buy a barrel of crude oil.
• The continued unrest in the Middle East.
• Uncertainty with the federal deficit.
• Speculators betting on the increased price of fuel.
• Lack of offshore drilling in the United States.

Since then, here is what is happening in the world markets:

1. The dollar’s value is up 3 percent so far this month after sliding 15 percent against other currencies over the past year.
2. Global growth seems to be slowing.
3. The inflation threat from easy money policies may be easing.
4. Oil stocks have remained high even with the unrest in the Middle East.
5. Inflation fears in Europe have prompted European central banks to raise interest rates.
6. China has required its banks to hold larger cash reserves to help curb inflation.

The Platts fuel index prices peaked two weeks ago. The Gulf Coast Pipeline mean was $3.3239 per gallon. Looks like the West Coast took the prize for the highest Platts prices at $3.4275.

So what happened in the last two weeks? Prices dropped more than 15 cents last week (May 10). This week, we have seen nearly an additional 8 cent drop (May 16). We now have a drop of 23 cents!  Perhaps your customers are wondering why you haven’t dropped your price.

I’ve seen posted retail prices of Jet A as high as $8.74 per gallon. Who is going to pay that for jet fuel?

And what’s going on with oil futures? The trend right now is good, but will it last? There are many factors in the national and world marketplace that can affect what is happening.

On a national basis, we have the debt ceiling vote coming within two weeks or so; the economy might continue to slow; demand might be down; the Middle East could get more unstable. All these issues can negatively affect the markets and drive up prices again.

It appears the oil commodities markets/speculators are backing off the high prices to be paid for futures.

Simply put, the forces that drove the market up are now down.

All this begs several questions:

• Will the fuel prices continue to drop?
• How do I react and price my fuel?
• The customers want better prices now! How do I help them while trying to keep my business profitable?

What Can You Do?

First, do not change your price! You have all that high priced fuel in storage — the same goes for the terminals and pipelines. This high-priced inventory will take a few weeks to work itself through the system. So when you purchase you next load of fuel, you will then be able to purchase at the lower price. How fast you turn over your fuel will determine how and when you pass along price reductions to your customers.

In a previous blog post, we talked about FBO Fuel Pricing: Seeking a Silver Bullet, so we won’t plow that ground twice. Suffice it to say you must maintain your margin to sustain your profitability and understand pricing theory. But the high price of fuel is making the customers very price sensitive. Change is coming!

Dual Pricing Strategy

One possible scenario is to establish a dual pricing strategy by providing an a la carte service as well as a full-service offering.

Remember when gas stations offered two levels of service, self service and full service? You would pay extra if you wanted everything under the hood plus your wipers and tire pressure checked. Otherwise, you saved by doing it yourself.

An FBO could offer two levels of service as well. For instance, you could offer full service for one price, whether retail or contract fuel. Under this pricing scenario, you continue to offer all your usual amenities for one set full-service price.

Then you could offer a discounted or a la carte “basic” service price. If the operator wanted other services, he could pay for ice, coffee, papers, lounge, transportation, baggage handling, galley and lav servicing, etc.

Our advice is to stay in touch with your fuel suppliers and what is happening in the national and world marketplace. Change will continue to happen, and you must be aware of it and react in a reasonable businesslike manner to be successful. Think seriously about an a la carte or full-service pricing methodology.

FBO Success Seminar Registration

The next NATA FBO Success Seminar is scheduled for Nov. 8-10 in Atlanta. Register at nata.aero.

John Enticknap

John Enticknap founded Aviation Business Strategies Group in 2006 following a distinguished career in aviation fueling and FBO management, including as president of Mercury Air Centers. He is the author of 10 Steps to Building a Profitable FBO and developed NATA’s acclaimed FBO Success Seminar Series.

Is Your Cost of ‘Plastic’ out of Control?

Get a Grip on Credit and Debit Card Fees!

"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic." – Peter Drucker

One of our more popular courses at our FBO Success Seminar is Maximizing Your Credit Card Transactions. We discuss in detail the credit /debit card processing system and how it affects your FBO business. Needless to say, the cost of this vital service is substantial and increasing.

Debit Card Update

First, let’s take a look at the use of debit cards. In the process of updating our seminar course materials, I’ve been researching the recently enacted regulations by the Federal Reserve to reduce debit card interchange fees. Here’s a little background information.

The new laws are still being written and are scheduled to be completed by April 21 with an implementation date of July 21. The laws change the fees from percentages to fixed fees. Some efforts in Congress may further delay the implementation or change the regulations.

Currently, debit card swipe fees average $0.44 per swipe. The new requirements reduce them to $0.07 to $0.12 per swipe. The banking and credit card industries are not in favor of the new requirements because they stand to lose some $12 billion in fees; therefore, they are lobbying Congress and others for changes.

As an example of the impact this would have on a retailer, look at The Home Depot’s operations. If the debit card fees are reduced as planned; The Home Depot will see a reduction of $35 million in debit cards costs. Obviously, the average FBO doesn’t have the volume of debit card transactions of a large box retailer, but we’re talking about potential savings over the long term and revenue to your bottom line.

A Look at Credit Card Fees

Regarding credit card fees, each transaction fee in the FBO business varies greatly. The fee can be zero for your branded oil company card to a high of four percent of the transaction. During the classes we teach at the FBO Success Seminar, we provide a detailed analysis of fees, but for now, here’s a look at an example of an average transaction:

First of all, the current national average cost of Jet A is $5.38 per gallon. Based on the Platts index, this average is an increase of more than 92 cents per gallon in only the last six months. For the FBO operator, this adds up to an increased credit card transaction charge of just over $0.02 per gallon or a total of $0.11836 per gallon, assuming the average fee is 2.2 percent. Under this scenario, a 500 gallon sale would result in credit card fees totaling $59.18, which includes an increase of $10.02 in extra charges resulting from the rise in fuel costs over the past six months.

We would venture to say that credit card fees are a bigger portion of your costs than you imagined!

If you are selling 1.5 million gallons a year at $5.38 per gallon, your annual credit fees will be $177,540. In this scenario, your credit card fees have gone up approximately $30,360 per year, based on recent fuel price increases.

Bottom Line

Here is the bottom line: The credit card processors are profiting during this crazy volatile spike in fuel prices, and the FBO is not! So what do we do?

The first step is to look at your processing fee costs and where the fees are being generated. Start by analyzing your sales and payment history:

• Retail sales and payment by what credit card or debit card?
• Factor out no-fee cards such as oil company cards.
• Factor out contract fuel sales. (By the way, are you getting paid promptly by the contract supplier?)
• Take a look at based customers vs. transient customer sales and payments.

Once you have completed your research, look at changing customer buying/payment habits, — not an easy task!

• You should want all your base customers paying with a no-fee oil company card. If they don’t, figure out an incentive to make this happen.
• For your transient customers, you should train your CSRs to ask for no-fee cards for payment.
• Make sure your contract fuel suppliers are paying you quickly and within contract terms. If they are late paying or otherwise, you need to rethink your contract fuel supplier relationships.

As your business changes with all the turbulence in today’s marketplace, you need to analyze all of your cost structure. Credit card fees are sometimes a cost we think we cannot manage. Not true!

With the tools and ideas we have presented here, these costs can be reduced. As Peter Drucker indicates in his quote, new thinking is most important in business, not only for this issue, but for all your business management concerns.

Let us know your thoughts on this issue or any of our FBO Connection blogs. Please contact me at jenticknap@bellsouth.net.

John Enticknap

John Enticknap founded Aviation Business Strategies Group in 2006 following a distinguished career in aviation fueling and FBO management, including as president of Mercury Air Centers. He is the author of 10 Steps to Building a Profitable FBO and developed NATA’s acclaimed FBO Success Seminar Series.

FBO Fuel Pricing: Seeking a Silver Bullet

Ever since the Lone Ranger first loaded his trusty six-shooter with silver bullets, I’ve been intrigued with the idea of formulating a single straightforward solution for pricing fuel at FBO operations I’ve managed over the years.

This search for the silver bullet is a subject we discuss at our FBO Success Seminars, and FBO managers in attendance often voice their concerns about how to effectively price fuel. On one hand, they’re concerned about the bottom line. On the other hand, they don’t want to price themselves out of the market and lose valuable customers in the process.

Indeed, it’s a two-edge sword. The trick is to maximize both cutting edges. Let me explain.

Maximize Your Customer Value Proposition

FBO managers are no different than any other business manager that sells a service or product. The same rules apply. Every FBO sells fuel — both Jet A and 100LL are the same specifications from all the manufacturers — so trying to differentiate your business on product is almost impossible. Same goes for quality control: Either it’s done well, or you’re going to be out of business.

What you need to look at is maximizing your Customer Value Proposition (CVP) — the facilities, the delivery (customer service) and the selling price. We’ll discuss the delivery aspect in future blogs. For now, let’s concentrate on the one factor many managers forget, or do not consider enough, and that’s the pricing equation, which requires putting some effort into research and calculations.

So let’s do the math. There are generally four types of pricing:

• Cost-Plus pricing
• Demand pricing
• Competitive pricing
• Mark-up pricing

Before we decide which type of pricing methodology we use, we need to determine our costs. We need to know what it costs to get the fuel truck with clean fuel to an aircraft on our ramp with a trained line service technician. (Let’s not get into a discussion here on fixed and variable costs. That’s another blog.)

Next, let’s look at our fuel cost from our supplier, including mark-ups over Platts (or rack price), plus transportation, plus fed taxes, plus flowage fees, plus state fees (not sales tax) and any other local fees. In today’s marketplace, that number is greater than $3 per gallon for Jet A.

Now we need to look at your cost of labor and overhead and covert the number to a per gallon rate.

After that exercise, let’s say we have our fuel cost at $3.10 and our cost of labor and overhead of $0.55 per gallon. So our cost is $3.65/gallon. (This example is for Jet A.)

But before we start talking about which pricing method to use, we need to do some research on your FBO marketplace. If we look at various publications and web sites, like acufuel.com, we can determine local and national fuel selling prices.

One current survey for national and regional pricing shows the following:

• Average high selling price: $6.66/gal. (range of over $7 to just under $6)
• Average low selling price: $3.64/gal. (range of over $5.40 to a low of $3.16)

This translates to a national average selling price of $5.05. In addition, find out what the local posted fuel pricing is at your competitor FBO and within a 50-mile radius of your base.

The other research question you need to tackle is: What are the contract fuel selling prices in your local area? Once you have this data, then we can look how we put a retail price on the fuel.

Maximize Your Profit Position

One of the most important tasks we must keep in mind is maximizing our profit position.  Profit is our friend. Profit is our goal.

In order to maximize our profit position, we rely on a standardized fuel pricing method. We think it is fair to say most FBOs use either cost-plus pricing or mark-up pricing. Cost-plus means you want to make a certain “plus” above your cost. For example, your cost is $3.65, and you want to make $1.00 per gallon. Selling price would be $4.65; a profit of 21.5 percent on sales.

Mark-up pricing, on the other hand, says you want to make $0.90 per gallon. Your selling price would be $4.55 or just short of a 25 percent mark-up on cost.

Both of these methods are common in the manufacturing business arena. The difference in these two methods lies in the difference in margin and mark-up. This can be a lengthy discussion, but suffice it to say, a thorough understanding of your costs of operation to include labor, facilities, other income, overhead, etc. affects what margin you use to show a profit, which in turn, allows you to calculate what mark-up percentage you must use to get to the intended profit level.

Demand Pricing

We might suggest a demand pricing method. Service industries use this pricing methodology consisting of:

1. Labor & Material
2. Overhead and
3. Profit.

You start by knowing what goal you have for gallon sales for the month. Establish your competitive average sale price within the range of the market of, say, 50-100 miles. Look at your fuel sales, each day, each week, and adjust your pricing on a daily, monthly or discount-per-individual-sale basis to meet your goals at the end of the month. Keep in mind, of course, what your financial break-even point is so you don’t end up selling for below cost. Demand pricing models are very complex and are used by firms such as airlines, cruise lines, freight carriers and others who sell perishable services.

Competitive Pricing

Competitive pricing comes into play with the contract fuel market. This trend has accelerated in the last couple of years. It has led to decreased margins on fuel sales. Has it increased your fuel sales to make up for the lost margin? That is always the claim from the contract fuel suppliers, which now include the major retail suppliers — a building dilemma for the FBO. At the FBO Success Seminars, we have a complete class on this important issue.

What’s Your Silver Bullet?

In the end, the Lone Ranger always prevailed and got his man. He did his homework, scouted the trail and, of course, he had his trusty six-shooter loaded with silver bullets.

For the FBO owner and manager, the silver bullet is knowledge. Know your customers, and know your business. It’s a thorough and detailed understanding of your FBO cost structure.

John Enticknap

John Enticknap founded Aviation Business Strategies Group in 2006 following a distinguished career in aviation fueling and FBO management, including as president of Mercury Air Centers. He is the author of 10 Steps to Building a Profitable FBO and developed NATA’s acclaimed FBO Success Seminar Series.