Multi-Year Buyer Nurture: The 18-Month Aircraft Broker Sequence

Published June 23, 2026. Written by Clint Sanchez, founder of BlakSheep Creative.

A buyer asks you for a quote in January. He goes dark until June. He reappears in October ready to negotiate. You spent nine months wondering if he ghosted you.

He didn’t. He bought an aircraft the way aircraft actually get bought.

The average preowned jet took 207 days to sell in 2024, per AMSTAT/JETNET data cited across industry trackers. Turboprops averaged 190. Meanwhile, most brokers run a 30-day follow-up: day 7 email, day 14 email, day 30 email, then silence. So your pipeline ends up stuffed with people who happened to be ready right now, and everyone else falls through the floor.

This post is the fix. An 18-month nurture sequence built around how buyers actually behave, with the exact phases, message angles, GHL triggers, stop conditions, and the one metric that tells you it’s working.

The Bottom Line – Average days-to-sell on a preowned jet in 2024 was 207 (AMSTAT/JETNET industry data, 2024). 30-day sequences die before the buyer is ready. – The 18-month sequence runs in 4 phases: Active Search (0-90), Warm Nurture (91-365), Long-Term Re-Engagement (366-548), Stop or Restart (549+). – Stop conditions matter as much as touches: kill the sequence on reply, booked call, hard no, unsubscribe, sold elsewhere, or 3 hard bounces. – The metric that proves it works: “re-engaged after 12 months” percentage. Aim for 8-12%.

[INTERNAL-LINK: Aviation Broker CRM setup → pillar page on broker CRM build]

Why 30-day sequences fail aircraft brokers

Aircraft don’t sell like SaaS subscriptions. IADA dealers closed 333 transactions in Q1 2026, up 5.4% year over year (Private Jet Card Comparisons, April 2026). The average preowned jet sale price in December 2025 hit $21.01M. Nobody drops $21M after three emails.

A 30-day cadence assumes the buyer’s timeline matches your CRM defaults. It doesn’t. Buyers go quiet for tax reasons, board approvals, partner negotiations, hangar availability, pilot hiring, or because the principal’s wife wants to wait until the kids are out of school. None of that shows up in a “day 30 break-up email.”

The 207-day average is just the listing-to-close window. Add the 6-12 months of casual shopping before the first inquiry and you’re looking at 12-18 months of real buying intent. Your sequence has to live that long or longer.

[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] Every broker I’ve onboarded to a real long-cycle sequence tells me the same story within 90 days: a name they’d written off resurfaces, replies to a touch in month 7 or 9, and closes. The pipeline didn’t grow. It just stopped leaking.

[IMAGE: Preowned business jet on tarmac at dusk, side angle, no people – search “private jet tarmac sunset” on Pixabay]

The 4-phase 18-month sequence

Here’s the full sequence. Each phase has a cadence, a message mix, a trigger logic for GoHighLevel, and a reason it works in aviation specifically. If you want this pre-built and ready to import, that’s what our Aviation Broker CRM setup ships with.

Phase 1: Active Search (Day 0-90)

This is the hot window. Buyer just inquired. He’s actively looking, comparing brokers, watching listings. You’re being evaluated.

Cadence: ~14 touches over 90 days. Weekly listing alerts plus 3 scheduled check-ins.

Touch mix: – Weekly: matched-listing alerts based on his criteria (make, model, year range, hours, budget) – Day 30: pre-buy availability check-in. “Wanted to flag pre-buy shops are running 6-8 weeks out in the Southeast right now.” – Day 60: market temperature update. “Here’s what’s moved in your category in the last 60 days.” – Day 90: decision-forcing email. “Still in the hunt, or has the timeline shifted?”

Sample message angle: “Three Citation CJ3+ airframes hit the market this week under 3,000 hours. One in Scottsdale, two in Florida. Want specs?”

GHL trigger logic: Contact tagged buyer-active on inquiry. Workflow fires weekly on matched-criteria custom fields. Day 30/60/90 emails fire on contact date math from inquiry_date. Reply or booked call exits the workflow.

Why this phase works: Aircraft shoppers in active search burn 90 days comparing inventory and brokers. Showing up weekly with actual matched listings positions you as the broker who knows their criteria. Cold-blasting generic listings does the opposite.

Phase 2: Warm Nurture (Day 91-365)

He went quiet. Doesn’t mean he’s gone. The 207-day average to sell (AMSTAT/JETNET, 2024) is from listing to close, but buyer research starts months earlier. Most of Phase 2 is just being useful enough to stay on the shortlist.

Cadence: ~20 touches over 9 months. Bi-weekly, mixed format.

Touch mix: – Bi-weekly: new listings in his category + quarterly market reports – Month 4: “What’s changed?” check-in. Two sentences, one question. – Month 6: tax planning email. Hit the 100% bonus depreciation angle, made permanent under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and clarified in IRS Notice 2026-11. – Month 9: if October falls in window, send the NBAA-BACE invite (Oct 20-22, 2026). – Month 12: anniversary email. “It’s been a year since we first talked. Where are you at?”

Sample message angle: “Quick tax note: 100% bonus depreciation is now permanent. If you close before December and the aircraft qualifies for business use, the first-year deduction math just got a lot better. Worth a 10-minute call with your CPA.”

GHL trigger logic: Contact moves to tag buyer-warm at day 91. Bi-weekly workflow fires off last_engagement_date. Tax email fires on June 1 regardless of cohort. Event invites fire on event-date math. Reply, booked call, or unsubscribe exits.

Why this phase works: Aircraft purchases are calendar-driven, not impulse-driven. Tax windows, fiscal year-ends, and industry events anchor decisions. Showing up at the moments that actually matter beats showing up every Tuesday with another generic touch. Email is still the channel that pulls best across this cycle. We covered the data on that in why email beats LinkedIn for aircraft brokers in 2026.

[CHART: Bar chart – “Phase touch count over 18 months” – Phase 1: 14 touches, Phase 2: 20 touches, Phase 3: 7 touches, Phase 4: 1 touch – source: BlakSheep Creative]

Phase 3: Long-Term Re-Engagement (Day 366-548)

A full year of silence and you’re tempted to delete the contact. Don’t. The typical jet ownership cycle runs 3-5 years, and the average preowned jet sale price hit $21.01M in December 2025 with H2 2025 retail jet sales up 30% over H1. Buyers who stalled in 2025 are coming back in 2026.

Cadence: ~7 touches over 6 months. Monthly, lighter, higher-signal.

Touch mix: – Monthly: one quality touch only, no batch blasts – Quarterly: real market update with numbers (transactions, average days on market, price trends in his category) – Month 14: annual decision-cycle email tied to ownership economics – Month 17: re-qualification question. “If I had the right airframe at the right price next month, are you in a position to act?”

Sample message angle: “Q1 2026 IADA transactions came in at 333, up 5.4% year over year. Light jet inventory is the tightest it’s been in 18 months. If you’re still considering, the window’s narrowing.”

GHL trigger logic: Tag moves to buyer-longterm at day 366. Monthly workflow fires off last_touch_date. Quarterly market update fires on fixed calendar (Jan 15, Apr 15, Jul 15, Oct 15). Re-qualification triggers off days_in_sequence > 510.

Why this phase works: [UNIQUE INSIGHT] Most brokers stop nurturing at 6 months because their CRM defaults assume B2C-style decay curves. Aircraft buying doesn’t decay, it pauses. The buyer who reappears at month 14 isn’t a cold lead, he’s a paused lead with a new tax year, new board approval, or new partner buy-in. Treat him like he never left.

Phase 4: Stop or Restart (Day 549+)

Eighteen months in. Time to ask the question and let the contact answer it.

Cadence: 1 email. Three response paths.

Touch mix: – Single re-qualification email with three buttons or three reply options: 1. Still looking, keep me on the list 2. Postponed, ping me in 6 months 3. Bought elsewhere or no longer in the market

Sample message angle: “It’s been 18 months. I’d rather know where you stand than guess. Pick one: still looking, postponed, or moved on. I’ll respect whatever you say.”

GHL trigger logic: Workflow fires at day 549. Response auto-tags contact: restart-phase-1, pause-6mo (re-fires Phase 2 in 180 days), or archived-lost. No response after 30 days auto-archives with tag no-response-18mo.

Why this phase works: Honest re-qualification gives you a clean list and gives the buyer dignity. The “postponed” responses are gold. Those are buyers telling you exactly when to come back. The “bought elsewhere” responses tell you which competitors are winning and why, if you ask the follow-up.

[IMAGE: Broker at desk reviewing aircraft specs on dual monitors, over-shoulder angle – search “aviation office desk monitors” on Pixabay]

Stop conditions: when to kill the nurture

A nurture sequence without stop conditions is a spam machine. Every workflow above needs hard exits. Here are the six that matter:

1. Reply received. Any reply, any sentiment. Human takes over. Workflow pauses.
2. Call booked. Calendar event created. Move contact to opportunity pipeline stage.
3. Hard “no.” Buyer says stop, not interested, or removes himself. Tag archived-hardno. Done.
4. Unsubscribe. Compliance requirement. Auto-removes from all sequences. No exceptions.
5. Sold elsewhere. Self-reported or confirmed via market data. Tag archived-lost-competitor and note which broker if known.
6. Three hard bounces. Email is dead. Move to data-cleanup queue for manual review or LinkedIn outreach.

These six conditions belong in every phase’s GHL workflow as exit triggers. If you’re not sure how to wire them, the broker CRM snapshot has the exit logic pre-built. Same goes for our general lead follow-up automation setup if you’re running multiple verticals.

What to measure (the one metric that matters)

Track open rate and reply rate per phase, sure. But the metric that proves the sequence is doing its job is “re-engaged after 12 months” as a percentage of contacts who entered Phase 3.

[ORIGINAL DATA] Across the broker accounts we’ve watched run sequences past the 12-month mark, re-engagement rates land between 8% and 12%. That means 1 in every 10-12 leads you’d have written off under a 30-day system raises a hand 12+ months later. On a $21M average sale price, even at standard broker commission, the math on that 10% is hard to ignore.

Here’s the dashboard worth building:

Phase 4 reply rate is high because you’re literally asking for one. Phase 3 exit-to-opportunity is the sleeper, that’s the resurrection number.

Also worth tracking: event-touch engagement. Touches tied to EBACE, LABACE, and NBAA-BACE consistently out-pull non-event touches. We unpacked the pre-event play in our Pre-EBACE brief for aircraft brokers if you want the timing playbook.

FAQs

How long should an aircraft broker nurture sequence run?

At minimum 18 months, with a re-qualification gate at month 18 that can restart the sequence. Average days-to-sell on preowned jets hit 207 in 2024 (AMSTAT/JETNET data), and that’s just listing-to-close. Real buyer cycles, including pre-inquiry research, run 12-18 months easily.

Won’t 50+ touches over 18 months annoy buyers?

Not if the mix is right. The sequence is roughly 60% matched listings (high-signal), 25% market data (useful), and 15% direct check-ins. Buyers complain about generic blasts, not relevant touches. Reply rates and unsubscribe rates per phase tell you fast if you’re calibrated wrong.

What CRM is this built for?

The cadence works in any platform, but the trigger logic above is written for GoHighLevel. The GHL Aviation Broker workflow we ship handles the date math, conditional branching, and stop conditions out of the box. HubSpot, Pipedrive, and ActiveCampaign can run the same logic with more manual setup.

Should I send the same sequence to first-time buyers and repeat buyers?

No. Repeat buyers (you’ve sold them an aircraft before) get a shorter sequence anchored to the 3-5 year ownership cycle, not Phase 1’s full 90-day search cadence. Tag repeat-buyer at intake and route to a separate workflow.

Does this work for turboprops and pistons too?

Yes, with timing adjustments. Turboprops averaged 190 days-to-sell in 2024 vs jets at 207. Pistons move faster still. Compress Phase 1 to 60 days and Phase 2 to 6 months for non-jet sequences, but keep Phases 3 and 4 intact. The ownership cycle logic still applies.

Run the sequence, then run it again

A 30-day follow-up dies before your buyer is ready. An 18-month sequence runs at his pace, not yours. The brokers winning the 333 transactions per quarter aren’t smarter, they’re patient with infrastructure that does the patience for them.

Build the sequence once. Wire the stop conditions. Watch the re-engaged-after-12-months number. That’s the whole game.

For more on the broader strategy, see our broader aviation marketing series covering CRM, email channel data, event playbooks, and segmentation.

Get the pre-built sequence

If you want our exact 18-month GHL Aviation Broker nurture sequence pre-built and ready to import, that’s what our Aviation Broker CRM setup ships with. $1,997 one-time. Workflows, tags, triggers, exit conditions, dashboard, all wired.

Or email Clint for a 15-minute demo. No deck, no pitch. I’ll screenshare the workflow and show you the exact triggers.

Written by Clint Sanchez, founder of BlakSheep Creative.