My Boat’s Been on the Market for 2.5 Years With a Broker and No Offer: What's My Boat Worth?

Let me tell you a quick story about a call I had today, with a potential client … Here’s what you can learn from it if you’re thinking of selling your boat.

I had two discovery calls booked with boat owners this week. This was on top of another call late last week.

Today was exciting and interesting. And so were Tuesdays to be fair; a new to the market boat, recently listed with a broker. I sent out a proposal and hope to confirm with him next week on the project, as we can really help this owner.

Today’s call was even more interesting, a bigger boat, and bigger problems so they say! And he was excited and optimistic when we got off the call. A good project for me and some hope for him.

We knew his boat had been on the market for a long time as we know the market very well. And because of this, and the fact that getting the price incorrect at the get-go is one of the main reasons that boats don’t sell, I had already sent him a copy of our boat pricing white paper called ‘The 9 Boat Pricing Secrets — 9 Steps to Pricing Your Boat Correctly’.

As I was preparing for our call, I was reflecting on another potential client who’d reached out to us again. We’d known about his boat for sale from a previous chat. It’s been on the market for more than a year. The broker said he should list it at USD160,000.

He was feeling a bit anxious, as it was now a year later, and he’d reduced the price for the third time to USD80k.

He’s selling assets for an estate, as a trusted family friend. Unfortunately, it seems like this one isn’t going to end well, as the price was incorrect from the get-go. A lot of wasted time, energy and costly mistake for that family. He now realises the price suggested and the approach to pricing wasn’t correct from the outset.

So, going into my call this afternoon, I started by asking him a few background questions, including how long he’s owned the boat, how long it’s been on the market and how many offers he’d received. That’s when he told me no offers, and only very occasionally would there be an enquiry.

He was quick to agree with me that if there hasn’t been any price feedback from the market (or offers) in the last 2–3 years, then it’s very challenging for him to know the worth of his boat for sale.

This means it’s difficult for him to know what to do to move forward with a quick sale for his boat. He said he’d researched a bit on the web, but really was unable to figure out what his boat was worth. He was quite confused about the value.

I encouraged him because he hadn’t adjusted his price every few months like the previous guy his ‘internet price footprint’ would be small and that does give him a good price platform to step into a new Online Boat Show Sales Program.

I advised him we’d be able to get three times the sales enquiries in 90-days compared to traditional methods. (This one won’t be at all hard to achieve given the rather dismal results to date). We’ll also get him four times (4x) price feedback or offers so he can understand the market sentiment on his beloved boat and enable him to make his move more quickly.

He wholeheartedly agreed that Stage 1 is Research. I explained the 3 steps in this stage

Step 1: Determine what’s for sale

Step 2: Identify what’s been sold

Step 3: Assess what the market’s doing and the implication for your boat sale

It was a good call and real progress was made in a short space of time. Tomorrow, I’ll send him a proposal for how we can help him to price and market his boat for sale. And I’m confident he’ll sign up for our Boat Research and Pricing Service. This is regardless of whether or not we’ll eventually work together on the sales and marketing project.

The most urgent thing for him is to know what his optimal pricing point is for his boat and the research items in Stage 1 will put him on the right track to correctly pricing his boat for sale. A productive and satisfying call for both parties.

The thing I really want you to take away from this is sometimes we could all benefit by having someone to coach us and help us see boat prices in a different way, indicators we haven’t understood until now.

So what this means to you in your boat-selling life is we all need to have a clear step by step path to get from Point A (complicated and unclear) to Point B (confident with a clear pricing strategy) and cut through the overwhelm and confusion.

So here’s your next step as it relates to what you and I just shared: consider joining my Boat Research and Pricing Program so I can be the one who researches your boats value, what’s sold, what the price gaps are, where your boat will likely sell, who will buy it (your avatar) and your optimal boat pricing strategy so you can be more confident of getting faster offers so you can make your move.

The moral to this story is not about selling boats, here. It’s about pricing your boat right at right time. If you don’t, you're starting off on the back foot. In other words, don't give them an easy excuse to pass on buying from you.