Virgin’s Branson Offers Travel Sellers Insight to Success

In difficult times, it is especially important to invest and “create companies that people want to deal with,” Sir Richard Branson told nearly 6,000 delegates at the National Business Travel Association Conference in Houston.

Answering questions from award-winning journalist Alexis Glick and in his blog at the Virgin Atlantic Web site, Branson shared insights that can be applied by travel sellers large and small.

Be the Best

Branson said that the airline industry was “ideal for us to go into because we could be miles better than anyone else.”

“Generally speaking, the people running airlines have not got it right,” he noted.

Excellent service and amenities are important, said Branson. When we started 26 years ago, there were 12 enormous airlines, including TWA and Pan Am. They have all disappeared because their quality was rock bottom,” he said.

“The best always survive. The best clubs, the best hotels, the best restaurants, the best airlines,” he said. “We had five years of offering seatback videos while the other carriers didn’t.”

Never cut back on quality and people will seek you out and you will survive, he stressed.
 
Delegate to Grow

Asked how he could keep his fingers on the pulse of the 300 plus branded companies he now heads, Branson said that knowing how to delegate was essential. He said that learning to run his first company, a student magazine he started when he was 16, was his training ground.

“From a very early time…when we went from one company to two companies, I realized I couldn’t do everything myself.  I had to learn the art of delegation and to find people who were better than me to run the companies, he said, quipping “…and that wasn’t that difficult!” he said.

Branson said he immerses himself in the details of a business when he starts a new business, but then delegates and empowers people to make mistakes. “There is no better way to learn how to succeed in business than to learn from mistakes—yours and someone else’s.”

He said he looks for people with good managerial skills to run his companies and stressed that it’s important to praise, not criticize, the people who work for you. “That’s how you bring out the best in people.”

Take Risks

It’s also important to keep innovating, he said. “Businesses can’t sit and wait. They can’t keep doing nothing or the same thing or they won’t last. When they sit and wait because they’re afraid the unthinkable will happen, that hastens the unthinkable to happen.”

Talking about all the belt tightening businesses tend to do in a downturn, Branson said, “If executives continue to think like that (negatively), they will think themselves into a recession.”  

Branson said he believes said that “fuel supply and fuel demand should intersect within the next five years.” This raises the question of where to get fuel for airlines, he noted.

Not one to sit and wait, Branson is taking matters into his own hands with his company Virgin Fuels. Whether there’s global warming are not, clean alternative fuels and energies at better prices makes good sense, he said.

Algae is just one of the fuels his company is investing in developing. “We’re willing to invest and we know it works. Maybe five years from now, we’ll find it in use around the world.”

Win by Being Ethical

Branson said he believes that ethical behavior is important in business, a belief that was reinforced “when British Airways was trying to drive us out of business.”

He said that he stuck with his customer focus, and British Airway’s actions “damaged British Airways more than us.”
 
Seek Opportunity in the Soft Underbelly

Branson said he seeks arenas to compete in where other companies have become fat and complacent, looking for “the soft underbelly” and finding ways to differentiate his product.

Some of his most successful tactics have come from seeming adversity. Before he had big budgets for advertising and promotion, he said that used himself to promote the brand “by doing crazy things to get the Virgin Brand on the map.”

Branson said that success in business is all about making people happy—both your customers and those who work for you, and about pursing your passions. He said that he encourages his customers to communicate directly with him, and takes notes when he talks to passengers and crew.