This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@juno.com. Selling Airplanes With a Smile February 17, 2002 By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN Few jobs seem more challenging after Sept. 11 than selling commercial airplanes. In the teeth of the most dramatic downturn in aviation history, most of the world's airlines are trying to put off paying for the new jets they had on order, much less buy new ones. But Toby Bright, recently named to lead commercial airplane sales at the Boeing Company (news/quote), is philosophical. "It's going to be tough, but on the other hand, it can only go one direction," he said. "It can't get any worse." Commercial airplanes accounted for $35 billion of Boeing's $58 billion in sales last year, but that proportion is now expected to shrink sharply. Boeing plans to deliver 380 jets this year, down from 527 in 2001. The number is expected to drop next year to 275 to 300 deliveries. But Mr. Bright, 49, has thrived in the face of similar adversity. During the last big airline industry recession, in the early 1990's, he was given the account of United Airlines, then Boeing's largest customer. Soon after, United asked to cancel orders worth several billion dollars. By the time Mr. Bright left the account five years later for a bigger job within Boeing, his friends at United presented him with a graph that still hangs in his office, showing that he had still not made up those lost sales. "Only Toby could have negative sales and get promoted," said Frederic F. Brace, who worked closely with Mr. Bright at the time and is now United's chief financial officer. "I have not met anyone that doesn't like Toby." Mr. Bright's relaxed manner is in marked contrast to John Leahy, the brash, intense chief salesman at Airbus Industrie, Boeing's archrival. Mr. Leahy, who is American and has presided over Airbus's rise to parity with Boeing in global airplane sales in the last decade, always seems to be selling and rarely misses an opportunity to knock the competition. Mr. Bright is more likely to make his point with humor. During the mid-90's, when the slogan of the Seattle Mariners baseball team was "Refuse to Lose," he had bumper stickers printed that said "Refuse Toulouse," a reference to the French city where Airbus has its headquarters. Mr. Bright has large shoes to fill within Boeing. His predecessor, Seddik Belyamani, spent 28 years at the company before announcing his retirement last month. Born in Morocco, Mr. Belyamani speaks French and Arabic as well as English and forged many close relationships around the globe. Mr. Bright said Alan Mulally, the head of Boeing's commercial airplane division, told him that before he got his new job, there had been some discussion about whether Boeing "needed a Leahy." Mr. Mulally decided that it did not. In an interview last week, Mr. Mulally said he had chosen Mr. Bright because he was so skilled at managing the relationship between Boeing and its customers. "When you buy an airplane, it is like getting married," Mr. Mulally said. "It is a long-term relationship." Mr. Bright, he explained, is excellent at understanding the customer's needs and relaying them back to the home office. "He seeks to understand more than he seeks to be understood," he said. "Those were the characteristics that we needed and that I wanted in a leader." Mr. Bright says he was concerned that he does not speak a foreign language when 70 percent of Boeing's airplane sales are outside the United States. Mr. Belyamani, however, assured him that language was less important than understanding and appreciating foreign cultures. "Even in the Middle East, we do not discuss airplane sales in Arabic," Mr. Belyamani said. "Toby will be fine. He is the best choice. We have been thinking about Toby for quite some time." Like most of Boeing's other top executives, Mr. Bright began his career as an engineer, but his love of flight goes back a long way. As a boy in the 1960's in Mullens, W. Va., population 2,000, where his father was a letter carrier, Mr. Bright dreamed of becoming an astronaut. As a teenager, he hitchhiked 45 miles to the nearest airport, where he fueled airplanes in exchange for flying lessons. By the time he was 17, he was flying single-engine airplanes up and down the East Coast. One of his jobs was with the Veterans Administration, helping to ferry bodies back from the nearest V.A. hospital for burial. Mr. Bright was set on life as a pilot, he said, when the father of a high school girlfriend convinced him to get an engineering degree, telling him it would broaden his options. He went to Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and was the only person in his high school class who went to college out of state. After graduating in 1997, Mr. Bright interviewed with Boeing but decided to take a job with Grumman on Long Island after the company treated Mr. Bright and his wife, Linda, to a trip to New York. But before he started, he received a call from Mr. Mulally, who was running a Boeing program for NASA in Langley, Va. "Alan was very persuasive and persistent then as now," Mr. Bright recalled. He signed with Boeing. After working on the flight controls, which include the autopilot and auto-landing controls, throughout the development of the 757, Mr. Bright decided that he wanted to move into sales, having found that he enjoyed contact with customers. It took him almost a year to convince the company that he was right for the job. He started out handling Singapore Airlines (news/quote), Air New Zealand and Aloha Airlines, making a Pacific circuit once a month to service his accounts. Since then, he has held increasingly important jobs, including head of European sales and, most recently, head of business strategy and marketing for the airplane division. During the Asian financial crisis in 1998, Mr. Bright was tapped to set up an aircraft trading arm to sell Boeing's growing inventory of orphan aircraft that were returned by Asian carriers short on cash. He also played a role in a controversial deal in which Boeing agreed to buy 17 Airbus A340's from Singapore Airlines so the carrier could replace them with Boeing 777's. Mr. Bright said he felt relieved when he left that job because he would not be the one who would have to resell all those A340's. "But now I do," he laughed. "It's come back to me." But Boeing has not done too badly, he added. The company has sold five. "We sold more A340's last year than Airbus," he said, one of his few jibes at the competition. Mr. Bright still likes to fly. He has a 1953 Cessna 170B that he uses to carry himself, his wife and dog to their weekend cabin on one of the San Juan Islands north of Seattle in Puget Sound. It's a refuge that Mr. Bright may not see too often in the coming years; Mr. Belyamani sometimes traveled 250 days a year. "I always wanted to travel," Mr. Bright said. "I got my wish there." http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/business/yourmoney/17PROF.html?ex=1014974274&ei=1&en=d01a2015da9c2776 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company