Mark Wilken - Director of Avionics Sales - Elliott Aviation

Every year, we like to profile an avionics manager for the D.O.M. magazine issue that we take to the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) trade show and convention. I find it interesting to interview avionics professionals and learn about the paths they took in their avionics careers. This month, we interviewed Mark Wilken, director of avionics sales for Moline, IL-based Elliott Aviation. This is Wilken’s story.

Mark Wilken grew up in Carlyle, IL, a small town in southern Illinois. It was a small farming town, population 3,000. No one in his family was in aviation. Wilken’s interest in aviation began when he was in grade school. He received a radio-controlled (RC) plane as a gift when he was 12 years old. He enjoyed building and flying that plane and was hooked. He continued to build and fly RC planes. By the time he was in high school, his hobby grew to the point where he was building 1/3-scale models. “It ended up getting to the point where I had to use a pickup truck to get my planes out to the field because I was building ¼- and 1/3-size models,” Wilken shares.

“I ended up re-kitting a lot of the airplanes I built,” he says. “I would build them and then put them back into kit form. I called it ‘re-kitting.’ Others would call it ‘crashing.’”

Wilken enjoyed building RC planes as much as he enjoyed flying them. “I built the kits up from a box of balsa wood,” he shares. “I built the stringers and ribs. It was like building a little airplane when you look at it. I was putting frames in the fuselage and making sure everything was straight. Without knowing it at the time, I was learning a lot about airplanes while I was doing it. I learned how airplanes fly and what makes them do what they do.”

In addition to building and flying RC planes, Wilken had another passion – working on electronics. “Electronics seemed to come easy to me,” he says. “I would take radios apart, and I would get into the middle of the electronics and work on them.”

Wilken says he was never a “star” student in high school, but he always got decent grades. During his senior year, he thought he should go to college and get an education. But there was one problem – he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He did as many high school juniors and seniors do, and he visited with the school’s guidance counselor. The counselor started off by asking, “What do you want to do?”

Wilken replied, “I don’t know.”

Then his counselor asked, “What do like? What are you good at?” 

Wilken thought about it and answered, “Well, I enjoy building and flying radio-controlled airplanes and I like electronics.”

The guidance counselor then asked, “Have you ever considered avionics?”

Wilken had never heard about avionics. However, after his guidance counselor explained that avionics meant working on the electronics systems of airplanes, he knew that is what he wanted to do.

Avionics School

Not too far south from his hometown of Carlyle was Carbondale, IL, home of Southern Illinois University (SIU) at Carbondale. The university had a well-known aviation program based at the airport. It had A&P, avionics and flight schools. Wilken enrolled at SIU in its two-year avionics associate degree program.

Pilots License

Two years later, after getting his associate’s degree in avionics, Wilken decided he wanted to pursue further education. “I knew I was going to work in aviation,” Wilken says. “If I was going to work in aviation, I wanted to know how to fly airplanes.”

Wilken signed up for flying lessons at SIU. “The first time I ever flew in an airplane, I was sitting in the pilot’s seat taking my first flying lesson,” he shares. Wilken got his pilot’s license that year.

After getting his pilot’s license, Wilken stayed at SIU to pursue a bachelor’s degree in aviation management. Two years later, with an associate’s degree in avionics, a bachelor’s degree in aviation management and a pilot’s license, he was ready for his first job in aviation.

Entering a Down Aviation Industry

Unfortunately, Wilken’s timing wasn’t good. It was December of 1989 and the aviation industry was in a slump. “I interviewed at a lot of different places, but not many people were hiring at that time,” Wilken shares.

After about six months of job searching, and with student loans coming due, Wilken was able to land his first aviation job. “There was a job opening with a company in northwest Illinois in the Quad Cities,” Wilken says. “The company at the time was called Elliott Beechcraft. I talked to the manager, Dan Frahm. The company was looking for someone to repair radios on the bench (a bench tech), and I practically begged my way in for an interview. ‘You don’t have to give me anything,’ I told him. ‘I’ll just drive up there if you could take some time to talk to me.’”

Wilken got an opportunity to interview with Frahm at Elliott Beechcraft. During the interview, Frahm was asking typical questions. “What do you know about radios?” “Can you do this?” As the interview progressed, it turned out that a college buddy from SIU would help Wilken land the job. “I didn’t know it when I went in for the interview, but one of my classmates at college, Lance Fox, had already graduated and had been hired by Elliott Beechcraft,” Wilkin tells D.O.M. magazine. “Lance was hired on as the avionics manager at Elliott Beechcraft’s Omaha facility. During the interview, his name somehow came up. ‘I know Lance,’ I said. ‘Oh, you do?’ he replied. ‘What do you think he’d say about you?’ I told him I thought he would speak pretty good about me. ‘Let’s just get him on the phone,’ Frahm said.”

Frahm got Fox on the phone. “I’m sitting up here with Mark Wilken,” the he said. “He’s up here trying to get a job as a bench tech. What do you think about him?”

“I remember Lance’s reply to this day,” Wilken says. “He said, ‘he taught me everything I know about radios.’”

The First Year

Wilken got the job as a bench tech. The company really didn’t have anybody at the time — just one person doing a few repairs here and there. “They had a stack of around seven KX 170B radios stacked on the bench needing to be repaired,” Wilken says. “I had worked on those radios in school and knew them inside and out, so it was easy for me to hit the ground running.”

Throughout that first year at Elliott, Wilken worked on numerous avionics systems including NAVCOMs, weather radars, transponders and the newer King and Collins radios that were coming out.

Wilken had become proficient as a bench tech. He says that he is the type of person who, once he becomes proficient at something, gets bored and wants to learn more. He started to do more flight line repairs. He started learning the autopilot system. Soon, he was “the autopilot guy.”

“Looking back, I think it worked out so well because I had my pilot’s license – I knew how airplanes fly and what they need to do,” Wilken says. “As an avionics tech, I knew how the avionics system worked, and how everything worked together.”

Working on the flight line also gave Wilken the opportunity to build up some right-seat time doing flight tests.

The First Supervisory Job

Wilken moved up to a supervisory role his third year at Elliott. The company had hired more bench techs because business was booming and Wilken was their supervisor.

Elliott was getting more and more into modifications — and when Wilken saw what was going on in the modifications department, he wanted to learn more. He started to work more closely with the modification team. He was building up wire harnesses, working with the sheet metal mechanics, and doing final system checkout tests.

Never one to sit still, Wilken expanded his knowledge by working with the engineering department. The avionics manager at the time was selling more complex packages. Elliott was getting into TCAS, FMS, EFIS and other complex systems, and Wilken was doing more engineering and fabricating. He also started to get more involved in the certification side of things, working with the FAA in Chicago for STC approvals. He also participated in certification flight tests and conformity checks with the FAA.

Avionics Manager

Then, in 1996, the avionics manager at Elliott moved to the sales side, and Wilken was promoted to avionics manager. “I was a hands-on manager,” Wilken shares. “I liked being out on the floor helping instead of sitting at a desk. I wanted to be the first one in and the last one out.”

In the late 1990s, Elliott was expanding and performing offsite mods for King Airs for Beechraft (Raytheon at the time). If someone bought a King Air and wanted options that Beechcraft didn’t offer, they sent the work to offsite modification centers like Elliott. Wilken oversaw the modifications. “We did well with that program,” Wilken says. “We made sure the airplanes were done and waiting for delivery a day or two before the scheduled delivery days. The day of delivery, we wanted to maybe wipe a smudge or two from the airplane, not be arms and legs trying to finish the project.”

Growth at Elliott

In 1993, Herb Elliott’s son Wynn assumed the company helm. In 1995, the company changed its name to Elliott Aviation to better reflect the full scope of services it provided. One of the things Wynn did in those early years at the helm was to get the company doing active noise cancellation (ANC) installs in turboprops. They did a lot of ANC installs over the next years, and when Beechcraft decided to offer ANC as an option in the late 90’s, all the ANC installations were done at Elliott Aviation. “All King Air 350s came here for active noise cancellation installations for a two-year time frame,” Wilken says. “They would sometimes fly in two or three at a time from Wichita. We would jokingly refer to them as ‘the green angels,’ because they were primer green. That business allowed us to grow significantly. We grew from five installers in 1996 to 20 installers in 2000.”

Elliott Aviation also started doing more STCs and Wilken got involved in the process. They worked with avionics manufacturers during product development and would start to develop STCs for those new products before they were released. STCs were often available shortly after a new product was released. “Having early STC approvals for new products created a lot of business for us. As we developed more STCs, the process fed upon itself and continued to give us more and more business,” Wilken shares.

The Switch to Sales

“I got to the point where I wanted to give sales a try,” Wilken tells D.O.M. magazine. “I had guys working under me that were taking on more responsibility, and I wanted to see if I could get in the sales side. I wasn’t very outgoing and not what you would think a typical salesperson would be like. But I had most of the other jobs here, and wanted to give it a try.”

In 2003, Elliott Aviation opened its completions center in Moline. This expansion allowed the company to offer paint, interior, avionics, and maintenance. The company needed more sales people to sell its new offerings. An opening came up for a regional sales manager, and Wilken was hired for the job.

What kind of sales training did he receive? “My introduction to sales was them saying, ‘Here’s your Ford Taurus, and here’s your section of the country. Start knocking on doors,’” Wilken shares. “I was out of the office three weeks out of four and on my own. There were a lot of cold calls, a lot of driving around, and a lot of staring at bad paintings in hotels.”

Because of all of Wilken’s experience at Elliott, he was quite knowledgeable on what he was selling. This gave him an advantage when he walked in for a sales call. “Directors of maintenance, aircraft owners and pilots really don’t want a polished high-pressure sales guy,” Wilken says. “They like people who can talk intelligently back and forth instead of just buying them a lunch. If someone was too busy to stop and talk, I would see they were having a problem with their aircraft and offer to help. Because of my knowledge and troubleshooting skills, I would often help them solve the problem. I built a lot of strong relationships like that. I wasn’t ‘the sales guy’ — I was someone who could help them find solutions to their problems. I earned their trust and respect.”

Wilken was successful as a regional sales representative. But the company wanted him to take on a different role to help grow sales even more. “My boss told me that my talents were better focused on the avionics side of the business, and helping the regional sales representatives close their deals when it came to avionics,” Wilken says. “I was moved back to an inside sales position as an avionics sales manager in 2003, and have been managing avionics sales ever since.”

Wilken manages a team of three other avionics sales people. We asked him what he looks for when hiring someone for an avionics sales job. “I’m looking for someone who’s technically knowledgeable,” he says. “I want somebody that has ‘been there, done that.’ We are estimators; we need to figure out what it takes to do a job. We need to be able to figure out labor, parts and certification costs. I don’t need somebody who is just a ‘sales guy.’ I want someone who understands all that is involved with the different pieces we need to package together for the customer. I was told by one of my bosses in the past, ‘You’re not a typical sales guy. Don’t get me wrong, that is a good thing. You are more of a consultant. People gain trust in you because you can help teach them the things they need to know to make educated decisions.’ I want my sales guys be consultants, not pushy sales types.

“Finally, they need to be confident,” Wilken adds. “They need to have a desire to win. We need to close deals to keep everybody working here. If we lay people off, that reflects poorly on us. It is our responsibility to keep them working.”

Garmin G1000

One of the main avionics programs at Elliott Aviation that Wilken has helped grow is the Garmin G1000 King Air upgrade. “The G1000 is the most successful avionics upgrade ever in general aviation,” he shares. “It is still going strong. That program has increased our staff even more. We have 35 avionics technicians now. The upgrade is a complete avionics upgrade ­ we replace all the avionics and wiring in the airplane. We take it back to square one and build up a complete new wire harness system as part of the upgrade.”

Finding Talent

The need to hire more technicians was one of the growing pains associated with the increase in business because of the G1000 upgrade. However, the closing of many avionics schools and the decrease of kids getting into aviation, specifically avionics, sometimes made it difficult to find qualified applicants to fill open positions. The company decided to groom its own technicians. “We hire local people that have the desire to learn possess basic skill sets,” Wilken says. “We bring them into the wire harness area to start build up wiring harnesses under direct supervision. Many of them have moved up to supervisory positions and have also transitioned to different departments. We have even had some go into engineering and quality control. Some have gone into sales. It’s on-the-job training and also requires them to do some study at home.”

Troubleshooting

Wilken says that SIU taught him good troubleshooting skills. He and his classmates were doing a lot of hands-on work on avionics boards. The instructors would introduce faults and have the students troubleshoot the systems He believes many of today’s students aren’t taught enough troubleshooting skills. “People who try to troubleshoot these days often don’t understand the basics of troubleshooting,” he shares. “Troubleshooting, no matter what you are working on, involves the same basic steps. You have an action, you put something in, and you expect an outcome — whether it’s a hydraulic system or electronics. Sometimes, when the correct input is applied, the output is not correct. What do you do then? Well, you go halfway between the input and the output. If the output at that point is correct, you know the problem is between there and the end, so you cut that in half and look there. Before you know it, you’ve halved your way to a solution. That’s the essence to troubleshooting anything. It’s a logical sequence.

“But you can’t troubleshoot a fault if you don’t know the system,” he adds. “The first place you need to go is to the tech pub library. If you don’t know how the system works, you can’t troubleshoot it.”

Management Tips

We asked Wilken if he had management tips he could share with our readers. “Don’t ask somebody to do something you wouldn’t do yourself,” he says. “Treat people like you would like to be treated. Treat everybody fairly. Personnel issues are always tough. You do your best in the interview process, but if you hire them, it’s always a chance it won’t work out. Understand that everyone is different. Encourage them to grow.”

Wilken says there is one thing that he never does as a manager: spoon-feed his employees. “The worst thing I can do as a manager is spoon-feed the employees,” he says. “I have had technicians come to me with a problem they couldn’t figure out. I knew what was wrong with it, and could have just told them what it was. But was I helping them out? Right then and there, yes. But in the long run, absolutely not. What I do is work with them and encourage them to sit down and read the manual to understand what is going on. Maybe I give a pointer or two along the way. In the end, they will become better technicians and be able to grow more.”

One-company Career

For many years, Wilken often thought that maybe he didn’t have a good perspective of the aviation industry because he had only worked at one company his whole career. Once he got into sales, he had his answer.  “Once I got out there and visited with my counterpart peers, I learned that the same things I was dealing with, they were dealing with. If their business was slow, ours was probably down, too. I realized it’s a very small world in aviation.”

Wilken had a parting thought on being in sales. “If you don’t land a job, lose gracefully,” he stresses. “You don’t want to make a person feel bad about his or her decision. What you should be thinking about is ‘How could I have done that differently?’ and ‘How can I get another shot at their business?’ Customers remember. Act professionally — win gracefully and lose gracefully.”