What is an interaction log?
We’re all used to taking meeting notes, typically capturing them in a Word document, attaching or pasting them in an email to share with others, and saving the file in a folder related to a given customer.
But meetings aren’t the only way we interact with customers. In fact, meetings may be one of the least frequent ways we interact, especially in the current environment. It’s more common to have a telephone call rather than an in-person or online meeting, and the highest likelihood of all is that we’re chatting by email, with the conversation building up on a long thread or even under multiple subject lines. Or with multiple deals discussed in a single email.
The LeaseWorks concept of an interaction log includes all these formats, and also one more idea from which the profound power is born.
The true power of interaction logs comes in creating relationships to your centralized fleet, customer, and contract information.
Why is it important?
Centralized data organized by key relationships allow the information to be easily found no matter who’s looking for it, why or when they’re trying to find it, and in what context—a specific deal, a particular airline, or an asset type.
Consider the following scenario
Doug and Martin are marketing reps at the same lessor—Aircraft4Less Leasing. Each receives an email from an airline contact
About the Author
Angela Balzano is the product manager for the LeaseWorks AerisMATCH product, which lets aviation lessors manage placement and trading deals more easily. She can be reached at angela.balzano@lease-works.com.
Doug
Remarketing Rep
Martin
Remarketing Rep
What happens next?
Doug uses his LeaseWorks-Outlook integration to create two potential deals for Altaria:
- an aircraft lease for next year for which he’s going to pitch MSN9123 and MSN9456
- an engine lease deals for two CFM56-7B26s.
He doesn’t see any available in the portfolio, so he’s asking corporate
The integration window instantly recognizes that the email is from a contact in LeaseWorks, and also knows what operator Jim works for. The email is saved as an interaction log, and it’s also automatically tagged against the deals for Doug, Jim Petri, Altaria Airways, MSN9123, and MSN9456.
Martin creates a deal too.
- an aircraft lease for next year. MSN9456 seems to be the best fit for Sage.
Like Doug’s deals, this one instantly has association with the relevant contacts, operators and assets.
Sounds pretty simple, right? Now let’s look at the ripple effect
New deals are instantly included in weekly meeting reports
Bill
Remarketing Manager
Bill is the remarketing manager for Aircraft4Less Leasing. He uses the LeaseWorks deal report to run the weekly marketing meeting. Since Doug and Martin have entered their requests into LeaseWorks, Bill’s admin, Chelsea, doesn’t need to waste time reminding marketing reps to update any spreadsheets or send emails. The three new deals will automatically show up on this week’s report.
The report is sorted by Lease expiration dates then, Type-Variant and then MSN. Bill will instantly notice that two of his team are looking to place MSN9456 when it comes off lease next year. That’s great! Multiple prospects. If he wants more action, he can encourage his team to turf up even more deals for this asset.
Doug and Martin will see this too. They’ll both be able to make better decisions about how to manage their respective deals. Find another option in case MSN9456 goes to the other deal? Make sure their prospect know there’s some competition for this aircraft… perhaps getting them to commit a little sooner? Both?
Chelsea
Remarketing Admin
New deals are instantly included in weekly meeting reports
Tanisha
Business Analyst (Finance)
Tanisha works in finance. Because the airline industry has been a bit disrupted, her boss has asked her to evaluate the deal pipeline to determine what Aircraft4Less should expect with regard to airlines paying cash for security deposits and maintenance reserves.
Tanisha runs a quick report on all the remarketing deals, pulling data from the fields for Security Deposit Amount, Security Deposit Payment Type, Monthly Maintenance Reserve Amount, and Maintenance Reserve Type (Cash, LOC, Either). She subtotals in the right places, and now Finance has a pretty good understanding of the future landscape.
Remarketing deal data can help the trading team, and vice versa
Richard is the trading manager. He’s got a couple of purchase deals in front of him but probably only has sufficient resources to execute one of them. The first deal is for two A320s currently operating in the middle east. The second is for three B737s being retired from a low-cost carrier in the United States. He has a look at the deal pipeline report to see where demand is running the strongest before he decides which to focus on.
The power is exponential
You can see all the valuable insight that came out of just two interaction logs. When it’s multiplied over all of a lessor’s deal team members, you can imagine the possibilities
Richard
Trading Manager
About the Author
Angela Balzano is the product manager for the LeaseWorks AerisMATCH product, which lets aviation lessors manage placement and trading deals more easily. She can be reached at angela.balzano@lease-works.com.