By Dave Millhouser

"Bus Company."

That was the way the phone was answered, for more years than I want to remember, by almost every charter company in the biggest U.S. market.

If you wanted to charter a bus and were working your way down the Yellow Pages listings, sometimes you struck a deal but forgot who youd called.

Most of us agree that, in our industry, competing on price can be lethal.

Unless youve discovered a magic way to reduce overhead (that nobody else has thought of), most competitors have similar costs.

In real life, there seem to be two ways of pricing. The "chicken" method involves selling below your competitor, who then lowers its price, forcing you to . . . well, you get it. Sometimes called the "Last Man Standing" plan, the hope is to outlast the bugger down the street.

Once youve buried them (in tons of YOUR money), they or someone similar pops up again, like in a horror movie. Meanwhile, the market has been trained to expect cheap buses.

The alternate is to differentiate your company. Give customers reasons to pay a bit more . . . and feel good about it. We probably should begin by doing better than "Bus Company" when answering the phone.

Charter sales folks need to be trained to, well, sell. If a query begins and ends with a price, then your expensive coaches have become a commodity. If your folks dont tell a customer what makes your company great, who will?

It starts with drivers. Safety and operational training are a given, but airlines put accomplished pilots through Captains School and teach them how to relate to passengers. Drivers are salespeople, and theyll either sell your company, or your competitors.

One bright bus executive has suggested that operators offer a guarantee that the customers coach will arrive at the pickup point on time. Charter customers have bought expensive event tickets, made reservations, and planned based on a schedule. Lots of things can happen on the road, but cant we at LEAST pick up our customers on time?

My friend was appalled when most of the operators he discussed the idea with indicated they couldnt control drivers enough to afford such a thing.

In other words, someone trusted with a $400,000 coach and 50+ lives might not be reliable enough to show up on time? Give me a break. Many things are difficult to do, but showing up aint one of them.

You cannot afford unreliable drivers. If you cant get enough good ones, sell some buses. Thatll perk up your good folks, and alert the mediocre ones.

In ye olden days, customers used the Yellow Pages, but that has largely been supplanted by searching "web sights."

Unfortunately, many good operators hire competent technical web hosts who cant spell or write. Even a retired bus salesman should know its "website".

Electronic doodads cant compensate for poor spelling or goofy text. Many intelligent people arent great writers, but the smart ones know it, and hire someone. Your website is the face of your company. It should be full of the things that make you worth more than your competitors and all those adjectives should be spelled right.

It has become popular to book charters over the Internet, but that method offers few opportunities to sell your companys unique benefits. Have a live person respond to inquiries.

Curb appeal matters. I cant remember a single successful coach operator who didnt use his coaches as billboards with some sort graphics that made it clear whose coach it was. How can you tell someone your bus is worth more if hes just staggered out of a ball game trying to find his ride home, and is faced with dozens of monochromatic machines differentiated only by unit numbers and legal lettering?

Refined interiors and superior entertainment systems should be worth extra to a customer, but they have to work correctly. Drivers need to be able to - enthusiastically -- operate them.

Years ago we were finishing a 10-day, 2,000-mile coach trip with a load of high schoolers. The natives were getting restless until, at last, a tire blew. The spare turned out to be useless, and we told the kids wed have to wait a couple of hours for a new tire.

A cheer went up because most of their friends, on similar trips, had some sort of breakdown. Somehow, a flawless journey meant they were cheated out of extra time and adventure.

Clearly our little non-profit organization had differentiated itself, just not in a good way. If there was anything positive in the experience, it was that the passengers took cues from the drivers. If the driver saw a problem as an adventure, so did the kids.

You might not want to emulate our maintenance, but drivers and employees who are that effective in selling the company need to be found, cultivated and cloned.

Dave Millhouser is a bus industry marketing consultant and freelance writer. Contact him at: dave_millhouser@hotmail.com.