Penton Aviation sets sales course

By Matthew Schwartz

Mark Flinn

VP-market leader

Penton Aviation Group

Penton Media in December named Mark Flinn as VP-market leader for Penton's Aviation Group. Flinn is responsible for managing Penton's commercial and business aviation units, whose assets include Air Charter Guides and Air Transport World. Prior to joining Penton, Flinn was the publisher of McGraw-Hill Cos.' Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Media Business: What's your initial sales and marketing strategy?

Mark Flinn: We want to continue to improve on how we take our products to market and how we sell them, and make sure we're bringing customer-focused solutions. It's not about selling advertising pages but what our portfolio can do for our customers. It's about understanding the customers' objectives and what they're trying to do, whether it's in print, digital, events or webinars.

MB: Does your audience bring any inherent advantages in terms of expanding your product line?

Flinn: I'm focusing on new product development and developing our digital presence for the entire portfolio, and identifying potential partnerships as well as acquisitions. There are a lot of different places to go because there's lots of moving parts within both commercial and business aviation. When it comes to our overall audience, our portfolio is a little bit different in the sense that we have a lot of data, whether it be for business aviation, information for pre-flight planning and all sorts of different types of information for airports all over the world, or events.