When Michael Berman joined Airborne Express as a sales rep in 1981, Airborne was so insignificant that it did not even register on the business radar. At the time, they had only one truck to cover Mike’s extremely large sales territory that included Monmouth, Middlesex, and Somerset counties in New Jersey. The driver for Mike’s area would leave Newark airport, follow highway 287, go west for drop-offs and then east and west for pick-ups, and return to the airport.
Mike was struck by the fact that his sales area had large populations of businesses, most noticeably an AT&T office or location on nearly every corner, yet their pick-ups and drops were scattered and few. As was the industry standard practice, the only discount that Airborne provided customers was a “multiple package discount” which consisted of a scale offering reduced pricing for three or more packages picked up at a single location. Noticing that the majority of the shipments picked up from AT&T locations were bound for other AT&T locations across the country, Mike approached his manager with an idea for a “corporate discount” that would reduce the shipping rate for all pick-ups and deliveries for the same corporate customer.
Although no other express delivery provider offered corporate account discounts at that time, Mike was able to convince his manager to give it a trial run in his territory. Mike was willing to be personally and professionally accountable for the results—whatever they might be. The corporate discount was a huge success and generated multi-millions of dollars in revenue and clients asked for it to be expanded across the entire country.
Airborne established a competitive edge that swept the nation and gobbled up corporate accounts everywhere. Airborne grew in employees, parcels shipped, and revenues. According to company records, Airborne had 1,113 employees by 1985 year-end; by the close of 1990, they had 3,341; and by the end of 1994, they had 5,741. In 1998, Airborne had earned a place on the Fortune 500 list for the first time and became an industry leader because of offering the corporate account.
What began as a Michael Berman suggestion, moved from an idea worthy of trial to become the forerunner of the Airborne strategy. Airborne grew from a small operation, not even registered on the business radar, to surpass Emery Air Freight as the third largest express parcel carrier in shipment volume following on the heels of longtime leaders Federal Express and United Parcel Service.
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