And while there is no need for your boat for sale video to be as professional or as slick as this little gem, it must be effective in delivering an all important emotional response; something which this video does in buckets and spades.

http://youtu.be/PUvLR-APTaQ

To start with, after reading the book, and reflecting on the information, it became pretty apparent that we had done the exact opposite of just about everything that you recommended!

Basically our boat had been on the market for about 8 years (talk about stale)… and the second, and connected, issue was we probably weren’t 100% committed to selling her.  Anyway, after reading the book, we did some soul searching and realised that yes, we really did want to sell, and that was a major priority for us.  So basically we went through the list and followed each of your recommendations step by step.  Including effecting all of the repairs that the boat could possibly need in the middle of a major far north queensland summer heatwave – that build up right before the wet.   No matter how hot or exhausted we were we decided to do lots of positive visualisation about selling our boat to the right person, and how everything we were doing would make her beautiful for them so they would enjoy her as much as we did. We then took all our possessions out of the boat – that was about 5 ute loads which surprised even us!

The only things we left were the nice linen on the bed and the bottle of wine with two glasses strategically placed.  We had written a bit of a story and taken photos and sent them all to a friend who was doing the website.

After this mammouth effort we decided to invest $2000 for a crane lift  out so we could store her on the hard during the cyclone season, and drove down to NSW where we planned to spend the next year.  We were certainly not expecting to sell our boat in the near future, as there were no ads out and the web site hadn’t been completed.  We didn’t even have email at that stage.  Eerily enough we got three calls within a month, and, long story short ended up selling the boat in March!

Thanks so much for your help

Rick & Alex

The first problem vendors in this situation confront is that the orderly boat market of years past has disappeared. The tried and true channels that worked like clock work pre-GFC, don’t work in this market. To say that ‘yacht brokers are all at sea’ in this new unfamiliar landscape, is no understatement.

In 2012 I published a book on Amazon Kindle: How to sell your boat without fail – The Formula

The book is a primer on boat buyer psychology without a knowledge of which, boat vendors in this market are stranded up shite creek without a paddle. The advice to the vendor of a boat for sale in the USA or indeed the UK or Australia for that matter: is, that you can’t ‘teach an old dog new tricks’. The brokerage profession is in a time-warp, waiting for the champagne days; otherwise known as ‘normality’ to return.

The inconvenient truth is that austerity is the new normality! In this market there’s only one way to be sure to sell your boat for a decent price and it’s DIY.

But on the flip side of vendor advice; I occasionally find myself, on the other side of the fence; that is on the buyer’s side in a transaction.

From this perspective you get to watch while vendors put themselves on the menu. I can’t claim to enjoy the spectacle. While it is highly instructive about what not to do, part of me aches to grab the vendor by the scruff of the neck: “for heaven’s sake man can’t you see what’s happening to you here?”

In a recent case where a vessel was purchased for a fraction of its true value the vendor oversights could be summarized as follows:

- The vendor’s trust in the efficacy of the traditional boat marketing process, effectively washing his hands of the process, was misguided and misplaced.

- The vessel was presented as yet another undifferentiated sail-boat, in a market stuffed to choking point with more or less undifferentiated sail-boat stock.

- There was no attempt made to identify and market to a ‘probable buyer’; there was no sales strategy.

- The vessel had obvious (albeit superficial) maintenance issues which would discourage buyers not competent to see beyond them, which is to say: 99% of buyers. The interior for example, stank! Maintenance issues like this are unforgivable and a total deal killer.

-  Information about this vessel hadn’t been properly collated prior to listing with the result that details had to be sourced from the vendor which should have been available within the marketing package.

- There was no marine survey as part of the package which was an open invitation to the buyer’s surveyor, to wreak havoc with the transaction.

- There was no attempt made to ‘set the scene’. To the contrary, the default ‘scene’ confronting the prospect was off-putting. The vessel’s bilge reeked of damp and oil even though the hull didn’t leak and the engine when eventually revealed, was found to be was in pristine order.

To my perpetual amazement the scenario described here is one that is very commonly encountered by buyers. The deal killing circumstances described here are far from atypical

It illustrates the vendor’s extraordinary weakness and vulnerability in this market place; the sad results that flow from ignorance of this new market landscape; ignorance of buyer psychology and the absence of sales strategy

For vendors of boats for sale in the USA, the UK or Australia, DIY is the only way to engage effectively with the psychology that drives the boat buyer to buy. How to sell your boat without fail – The Formula shows you how.

Tactics without strategy as Sun Tzu famously wrote in the seminal book: “The Art of War” (written circa 500 BC), is the noise before defeat.

Firstly, every buyer has for want of a more nuanced and descriptive term: ‘a problem’. Secondly, he’s interested in his problem and not your problem. Narcissism is universal among the human species.

The buyer may be consciously aware of ‘his problem’. More likely is the case that ‘the problem’ is a subliminal itch that Mr Buyer has never actualized or become consciously aware of, let alone verbalized.

The point is that as a hopeful boat vendor; when you accurately define ‘the problem’ your buyer will instantly recognize both it and the solution you offer as relating specifically to him/her. Simply by virtue of the headline, you have created the essential pre-condition for a sale.

This is the essence of your task as a headline copywriter.

A UK based boat owner consortium (one of my book readers) recently requested help with their exceptionally tricky marketing problem; one that illustrates the point. They have a boat for sale in a remote location; but not just any boat; rather a highly unusual boat and not just any location. Their tricky for sale offering takes the form of a junk rigged catamaran parked on a marina…in Greece.

How in the name of providence do you uncover a buyer probably located in the UK …for an oddball, junk rigged catamaran located in Greece? Firstly consider a conventional headline:

“For Sale – Junk Rigged Catamaran …location: Greece”?

What kind of response would this pull? I would suggest that this headline has a perfect, gold plated, 100% chance of failure.

The fact is; the buyer of this vessel will NOT be looking for a junk rig, NOR will our buyer be searching for a catamaran, NOR INDEED for a boat in Greece.

As a headline copywriter you need to ask yourself: “what then are the ‘needs’ implicitly beneath each of these parameters that might deliver a sale?” When you ask the right questions the answers are not so difficult. We know for example that statistically, over 80% of buyers of sail-boats are novices new to sailing and boat ownership. To a novice, learning to handle a sail boat is apt to be a little intimidating. So what is it about a junk rig that might particularly appeal to a novice owner?

The answer might well be ease of handling. The junk rig is famously easy to handle. Secondly there is the romance of sailing your own boat on the Mediterranean Sea without the bother and danger of the voyage from the UK.

From these two ideas your writer’s febrile mind concocted this headline:

 “For Sale: The Easiest Boat to Sail on the Ionian Sea”

Postscript: The vendors in early 2012 reported that they sold the boat for their asking price and that the demand was so strong that they could have sold it several times over. Obviously not 100% of this happy outcome is attributable to the headline, because their website followed to the letter…the spirit of The Formula.

The headline however is pivotal in setting the scene.

Arguably there is no more brutal field of contest than in the midst of this vituperative affray; mixing it with that most disappointing segment of the human species: the semi-super rich.

They are as Henry often said; ‘different’ and not just in the Ernest Hemmingway sense: “yeah… they’ve got more money!” His clients lived in enclaves characterised by the highest rates of property litigation per square mile in the southern hemisphere.

My friend; who ought to know, had an emotional carapace from which negative emotion bounced off, like small arms ordinance from the hull of a Tiger Tank. Along with his polished urbanity, Henry was possessed of a physical demeanor that suggested: if push came to shove, he wouldn’t be averse to a bit of biff; male or female… it wouldn’t matter and he’d probably enjoy it.

He was in other words, perfectly adapted to his calling.

But above all, Henry was effective. His mantra was: “you’ve got to ‘do the business’ mate”: meaning be quick, absolutely across the details and seriously effective.

Indeed it was from Henry that I learned about the need for speed. His style was to get contracts under the signatories noses once agreement had been reached, before second thoughts intruded. He had his well oiled support team organized to achieve this; no waiting for lawyers and stuffing around for days and weeks after agreement is reached. And if he had to bang a head or two, this is the time that it would be done.

I learned a great deal by watching Henry. With an emotionally charged transaction, like the sale of a boat, there’s always a pull back or reaction as emotional factors flood back to cloud the thinking of one or other of the parties to a transaction. Delay and hesitation at that this point, usually spells the death of the deal.

Sometimes like a nervous groom at the alter, it’s the boat buyer who falters. This is understandable. Othertimes, believe it or not it’s the vendor who backs out of a golden deal, clouded by his emotional attachments.

So being effective means getting the contracts signed and the survey and sea trail organized very quickly. I used to strive to achieve this in one day.

In the pursuit of speed, I sometimes didn’t bother with the contract and holding deposit, but I’d give the buyer my ‘hand on heart’ assurance that the boat wouldn’t be sold out from under him and go straight to survey; with the object of exchanging bank cheques and contracts immediately after the sea trial, normally within a day or so. It worked!

Yet as mentor to buyers; a role that I occasionally find myself filling, it’s truly amazing how many industry professionals don’t get it about the need for speed; even in this market which is beyond any shadow of doubt, the worst since the great depression.

Recently I was advising a buyer who wished to proceed on the purchase of a vessel. Because the vessel was local to me and the buyer located interstate, I submitted the verbal offer on the buyer’s behalf.  We were presented with a contract which we were advised had to be signed before matters could proceed and the deposit lodged in the broker’s account; fair enough.

The first problem however, was that the contract contained a rediculous penalty clause, obviously drafted by a lawyer with no idea how boat transactions proceed. But the penalty clause posed the real threat of loss of buyer’s deposit. I have seen this happen and it’s not pretty. So what proceeds is an argument about penalty clauses; ‘re-arranging the deck chairs’ as it were, while the buyer fumes and his offer is sidelined.

When finally our deposit is lodged and our signed contract minus the penalty clause is presented to the vendor, nothing happens. Inexplicably, for three days there’s no response…nothing. My buyer is furious. “What are these clowns (meaning: the brokers) doing, if not obstructing the transaction they’re supposed to be facilitating?”

The offer that we put forward I should say is as good as the vendor is ever going to receive in this market. By day four we know that something has gone wrong, but of course we know not what. Eventually we receive a call from the broker advising that the Vendor has recanted his verbal agreement and the deal is off.

That was months ago and the boat is still for sale and eating it’s head off, with maintenance and holding charges. Prices meanwhile are going down and this vendor is on a hiding to no-where. For our part, we straight away switched our buying attention to another boat which we settled on rather quickly. There’s no shortage of exceptional boats for sale.

So what did these brokers do wrong?

Of course they don’t get it about speed being ‘of the essence’, even though selling boats is ostensibly their business. Penalty clauses are designed to bring the reluctant buyer to consumation of his commitment. In reality they are no more than a ‘red herring’ distraction. If the buyer can’t be brought to the table…he isn’t sold; there’s no deal, end of story.

Equally important; there comes a time in every transaction where as a broker or agent, you have to ‘bang heads’. By this I mean that the broker has to cut through the emotional garbage clouding the vendor’s thinking and pose the question: “do you want to sell the boat?” The implication of the question, if the answer is anything but an unqualified “yes”: is that the vendor is wasting everybody’s time.

To the vendor’s cost, the broker didn’t do it. I can just hear Henry’s brutally truthful summation of the abortive transaction: “no guts & no deal…a shortage of ‘bottle’ mate!”

My father once related a story about his experience of the great depression. One day as a young man during the height of the depression, he was walking through the Sydney’s central business district, where by happenstance he encountered his Uncle.

“Things are looking up” his Uncle remarked; “I’m back on my feet again!” With that he lifted his shoe to reveal a sole worn right through and a bare foot revealed.

And while this might have qualified as a slapstick scene from a Charlie Chaplin silent movie, it was real enough and spoke eloquently of the pain of those times.

There’s a real sense out there in boat vendor land that things are tough like they’ve never been tough before. Boats for sale are many, while buyers are nowhere to be seen or heard. This is the tip of a very big iceberg. The outlook is closely tied to real estate. When real estate sneezes, markets for all soft assets, like boats: drop dead.

The state of this market is fundamentally about the principle enabler; namely, credit. When confidence in real estate values rising is high, the boat market is buoyant. Conversely when confidence is in decline, the last thing on a highly geared mortgage owner’s mind, is buying a boat with a further extension of credit.

Asset values are falling and credit markets World-wide are oriented towards deleveraging. Those that can are getting out from beneath their debt burdens; those that cannot are being buried.

Easy credit isn’t coming back so it’s pointless to imagine that ‘a recovery’ is going to bring back the good times. All in all, if you have a boat that you’re considering selling: best advice is…do it now!

A great many vendors; when they reach the point of listing with a broker, seem to want nothing more to do with the boat. This response: ‘washing your hands’ of the matter; ‘hand balling’  the problem to a broker is disastrous! This is the mother of ways to get yourself ‘eaten alive’.

The smarter approach is to by-pass the brokerage channel & sell your boat on a DIY basis. This is because the only reliable way to attract a buyer in this market is by invoking principles of buyer psychology. The boat broker business model simply doesn’t work this way. And neither is it likely to adapt. The industry has had too many years of champagne growth and too much champagne.

Post GFC everything has changed, but they don’t get it! The industry is locked into denial awaiting the return of ‘normal times’. The flaw in this presumption is that the boat market pre-GFC wasn’t normal. Champagne sales conditions are gone forever.

Moreover the broker business model works on numbers. The Broker doesn’t have a strong relationship with the buyer and so he cannot exert influence to initiate action or break a stalemate. In this market the Buyer is confronted by a Chinese restaurant menu of choice with prices all the while falling. Meanwhile boats are not moving. Maintenance and holding costs continue and Vendors are desperate.

Buyers don’t buy boats out of any rational process of mind. Boat ownership is about as rational as is shovelling $100 dollar notes into the drink; which is to say that it isn’t rational at all.

The buying decision is moved by egoic delusion and subliminal factors that are heavily influenced by the ‘scene’. Your boats exposure is important. Your mental attitude is important but the practical implementation of a proven process is even more so. Having your own web site is crucial to the process of hooking a buyer. But most important of all is ‘the scene’ confronting the prospective buyer.

The main obstacle that the DIY boat Vendor faces, is overcoming the urge to shove 57 salient facts re: the boat down the buyer’s throat during said buyer’s inspection of the vessel. It happens all the time.

This negates ‘the scene’ and kills the deal. I have sold many boats successfully, sometimes in terrible market conditions by doing the opposite.

The buyer thinks that I am a poor salesman. He may be right but, this works like magic on a subliminal level and you’ll never read about it in any selling text book ever written!

So, as bad as the boat market is and as bad as it’s likely to get; it is always going to be possible to sell a boat. The boat market will be alive; if not exactly thriving, so long as egoic delusion reigns amid those members of the human species that still have money in their pocket.