My career as a yacht saleswoman was brief, instructive and exhausting. Although I was only on the job for less than 10 months, it seemed like a lifetime.

During that time I showed hundreds of boats to prospective buyers, made thousands of calls and fired off what seemed like a zillion letters soliciting business. I was cried on, yelled at and called at all hours of the night by demanding buyers and sellers alike.

I leaned new math, new bargaining techniques, and developed a flair for the you-must-buy-this mantra. I made good friends, lost others and had front-row seats for more than one personal drama. If the seller’s marriage was solid, I knew it. If his life was hanging by a thread, I knew that too.

Ultimately, I sold four boats, earning a fraction of the standard 10 percent commission paid to yacht brokerages and learning the hard way that the business simply was not for me.

If only I’d earned as much as I learned.

THE GAME

My foray into brokerage started when my husband and I decided to sell the sailboat that we had lived on in the San Francisco Bay for 20 years. Winter was drawing close and we didn’t relish the idea of sitting outside in the cockpit for another wet season. We wanted a vessel we could enjoy year-round.

We contacted McGrath Yachts, a reputable broker in Sausalito recommended by friends. Ed McGrath, a charming, curly-haired Irishman who loves his single malt, showed us trawlers in our price range. My husband instantly fell in love with the PT 38, probably because of the carved dragons that seemed to litter every surface below decks. Our sailboat was called the Dancing Dragon. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that he liked the layout of the boat and saw that we could comfortably pilot her well into in our later years. Kim HaworthThe author, who survived almost a year as a yacht broker.

For his part, McGrath is a likeable guy with a great sense of humor, one of those people who can charm the hard off a rock. During our dealings he discovered that I too was blessed with the gift of gab and suggested that I try my hand at the brokerage business.

Unlike boat dealers who purchase their inventories new from manufacturers like Nordhavn or Catalina, yacht brokers only sell used boats and get their stock from private boat owners. It’s an immensely difficult task.

Brokers have to know the market inside and out, understand the nuances of all kinds of boats—both sail and power—and be willing to drop everything to drive half way across the state to pick up a listing that may or may not be worthwhile.

A broker will write hundreds of letters and place thousands of calls before being rewarded with a single listing. For example, I sent out letters to every registered owner of a Catalina sailboat in Northern California—there are thousands of them—before getting a solitary bite.

Despite the odds of success, working yacht sales is a coveted job where I live in the Bay Area. You need solid contacts in the boating industry and the know how to distinguish between an Ocean Alexander and a Michelson. If you don’t, you’re sunk.

THE COMMISSION

Dealing with the clients was easy for me. It was the business end that kept me up at night. McGrath Yachts keeps meticulous records. Every transaction—even faxes—must be documented, signed or initialed. That’s because the Department of Boating and Waterways, which regulates brokerages in California, is strict. Yacht brokers are responsible for protecting the interests of both the buyer and the seller.

Yacht brokerages operate a lot like real estate agencies, with the sales staff and the brokerage splitting the commission, which is generally 10 percent of the sale price on a used boat. McGrath was generous. If, for example, another salesman sold one of my listings, Ed would take 5 percent off the top while I’d split the remaining 5 percent with the other salesman. Some brokers pay less to their sales people, sometimes as little as 2 or 3 percent of the sale. Kim HaworthThe two dragons, sailboat and trawler, side by side.

I was naïve. This sounded so easy. So, with the encouragement of my husband, I studied for the Yacht and Ship Salesperson License test that is administered several times a year by the state.

I studied hard for two months, reading and re-reading the material that the agency provides to applicants. The test was as ugly as I had imagined. There were eight of us taking the test, which included the calculation of property taxes and bank loans, and questions on ethical business practices and fiduciary responsibility.

Somehow, I managed to pass, and my license arrived at the brokerage in a few weeks. I was now a licensed yacht and ship salesperson.

SOLICITING BUSINESS

Ed put me right to work sending out letters to boat owners. If your vessel is properly documented at the time of purchase, then your name, address, boat type, length, name and year of construction are public information. We used a computer program that was updated quarterly to collect that information and generate the letters.

I would target the types of boats I wanted to list and send out letters to their current owners. They read something like this: “Is 2006 the year to sell Liberty? Your 2001 Albin is extremely marketable.”

The more you contact a potential seller the more familiar they become with your name. Still, the percentage of return on this method of solicitation is miniscule. Hoping to maximize bang for the buck, I would solicit the owners of high-end yachts with great regularity.

When an owner responded to one of my letters I’d slide into my sales pitch, laced with the smoothest talk I could muster. My job was to convince him that his yacht would be best represented by our team, not the competition. I have a pretty colorful personality and I tried to be myself on the phone because basically, that’s what I was selling: me.

Once the listing was made and volumes of paperwork were filled out and signed, we determined a sale price and went about placing ads.

PRICING AND DRESSING

We used information we gathered on Soldboats.com to price our listings, considering the sale price of comparable boats. Price a boat too high and nobody calls. Correct evaluation was essential to coming up with a price that would please both seller and buyer.

Then it was on to the sale. For the most part, boats were advertised in print and on the Internet. McGrath advertises in all of the local boating publications, a few regional publications, and, for the mega boats, in the national boating magazines such as PassageMaker and Yachting World.

Ed told me that most of our customer traffic came through Yachtworld.com However, many boat owners still want to see their vessels listed in print. McGrath Yachts spends about $10,000 a month on advertising.

More is better when advertising a boat. More gear, more power, more value, more everything. I spent hours listing minute details such as sail upgrades, battery banks, new halyards, bigger primary winches, stereo equipment—anything that would make my listing more appealing to potential buyers.

Presenting the boat in the very best light often resulted in a battle with the owners. You simply can’t sell a boat that smells like a holding tank or a diesel engine. Potential buyers will stop dead at the companionway and turn around. Owners, on the other hand, think their boats are perfect. I know I did. It’s very difficult to get an owner to spend money on waxing, upholstery cleaning or new canvas, even though those are major selling points.

After our sailboat had been on the market for a year, my sister-in-law suggested that I add some color to the interior. I spent $200 at Target on a new bed spread, pillows and throw rugs. The boat sold two weeks later.

THE BARGAINING PROCESS

My first listing was basically a gift. It came from a friend who had not actually used his boat for quite some time. If you’re a boater, you know that boats, like dogs, need to go out for regular exercise. If they don't move, they get cranky.

That was the case with my friend’s Catalina 36. The roller furling was frozen, which I didn't find out until the sea trial. The canvas was frayed, making the boat look much older than it really was, and the bilge was greasy. Still, the gentleman wanted top dollar.

After advertising the boat for three months I got a call from a fellow who was looking for a Catalina 36. There were two other Catalinas on the market at the time and the buyer had seen them both. We were last on his list of walk-throughs.Kim HaworthCarved dragons are a major feature on the PT38.

I described the condition of the boat, said she belonged to the original owner and that she was at our dock. The boat wasn’t in great shape: the canvas was tatty and the electronics were old. But I made a point of telling him all this on the phone. You never want to exceed the buyer’s expectations and risk disappointment when he arrives at the dock.

The buyer was a young guy. He looked at the boat and didn’t appear to be impressed. Fortunately, the other Catalinas he saw were seemingly in worse shape. He offered us $10,000 below the asking price.

That’s when fireworks ensued between me and the seller, who thought his boat was worth top dollar and couldn’t see its inherent defects. That’s about the time I learned that you can’t take the bargaining process personally. You can’t get emotional. Rather, you have to be firm. To that end I used a method I learned in therapy called “broken record,” in which you repeat the same thing over and over again until it finally sinks in.

The bargaining process can make or break a sale. It’s a lot of back and forth between seller and buyer, during which every step is documented so that there can be no finger pointing after the transaction is complete. Sellers want what they feel their boat is worth and buyers want a bargain. It’s the job of the salesperson to make each person feel that they got a good deal.

During this sale, dozens of phone calls and faxes were made before a price – $10,000 less than the $57,000 asking price – was set. A deposit check was written and a date set for the haul and survey.

SEA TRIAL

The test sail was held on a beautiful summer day on San Francisco Bay. The wind was light in the morning and the there was a strong ebb running. The engine turned over immediately. We backed out of the slip and motored past the Sausalito waterfront.

I am a fairly able sailor, often handling our sailboat solo. Our young buyer, however, was a novice who knew very little about handling a large sailboat. We had a fairly uneventful, pleasant test sail until the wind came up strong, which is typical of afternoons on the Bay. I didn’t want to be out on the water in an unfamiliar boat, with an untested sailor, so I suggested we head for home. I tried to roll in the jib. No Luck. Then the buyer tried to roll it in, but no amount of pulling or cursing would encourage that sail to move. We finally gave up and raced for the Sausalito channel.

The docks at the brokerage are vintage WWII. A long, wooden pier runs out from shore with steep ladders descending 20 feet to a floating dock below. We sailed that boat into the dock running like Dennis Conner on his final winning leg of the America's Cup.

Luckily, the slip was upwind and the boat turned on a dime. The buyer had such a good time that he ignored the less than enthusiastic advice from his surveyor—who warned him that there was a diesel leak in the fuel system, among other problems—and bought the boat anyway.

NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS

While selling yachts has no life or death component, you wouldn’t know it from the hours. I was on call around the clock like a world-class surgeon. Downtime didn’t exist. It seemed like every time I settled down in our trawler’s cockpit to relax, an irate buyer would ring my cell phone demanding that I lower the price. Or an owner would call, expecting me to raise the price on some greasy sinker. There was no respite.

I worked every weekend selling boats in Sausalito on top of my regular job as a television producer (this sounds glamorous, but it isn’t). My wonderful husband would bring the trawler over from South San Francisco so that I didn’t have to make the long drive home on Saturday nights. We would usually go out for dinner with McGrath and his wife Pam, sometimes adding a client to our little party. It was always a good time spent in excellent company.

One Saturday morning, a prospective client, Dr. Russ, and his wife arrived with their kids in tow. Their enthusiasm made the whole office bubble. The doctor didn’t know anything about boats, but he had just relocated from New York and wanted weekend recreation that would involve his family. I sat them down at my desk and asked what kind of boat they were looking for.

“Something that goes fast” said their teenage son.
“Something where I can sit in the sun” said Dr. Russ.
“Something with a nice kitchen” said his wife.
“Something with a private bedroom” said their older daughter.

The key to matching people to the right boat is talking to them. How will they use the boat? Do they fish, race, cruise or spend time at marinas or at anchor? Do they want to cross oceans?

Some clients know exactly what they’re looking for. Others are chasing a dream, and many more don’t know what they want until they see it. Those are the hardest people to please. You can spend days and weeks with people like this. Kim HaworthThe Soluable Fish is one of four boats sold by the author.

I showed the Russ family boats we had at the dock and got a feel for what they were after. We didn’t have a boat that exactly suited their needs, so I found several they could look at across the bay at another brokerage. After spending three or four weekends in their company I found a KaShing 40 with a beautiful sun deck and separate staterooms for all. The check was written.

Dr. Russ and his family liked the experience so much that they decided to keep their boat at the McGrath docks so they could visit with us on weekends. We enjoyed many sunset cruises and barbecued steaks on their boat, Soluble Fish, that summer. In return I was delighted to show them the Bay and some of my favorite anchorages. Later that year we took Soluble Fish and Dancing Dragons on a long cruise up to Benecia, where we ate the best semi-frozen Thanksgiving turkey that Safeway had to offer. I’d call them perfect customers.

HEARTBREAKERS

Other transactions didn’t start or end nearly as happily. Like the sale involving an older couple that had cruised extensively on their sweet little 28-foot Tollycraft since buying the boat new in 1977.

They were getting out of boating after a lifetime of cherished weekends spent on the water. Selling the boat was very difficult, and the wife stood on the dock with tears streaming down her cheeks as her husband and I took Cherries Jubilee out of their slip for the last time and headed for the McGrath sales dock.

Then there were always folks who made offers, but couldn’t get financing. That always made me sad, for both the buyer and the seller. It’s a good idea to get the money before you start shopping. There are many boat loan agencies listed in yachting magazines. Call around and find out who can give you the best rate, then lock in your loan before you go shopping. The Broker will know you’re serious if you have money in hand and you’ll have more leverage in the bargaining process.

Another heartbreaker was a wonderful couple who gave me the listing on a pretty Cruiser 33. I showed it many times, but there were no offers. Eventually the wife got sick, the husband lost his job and the couple landed in bankruptcy court. Ed suggested that we forgo a commission on the sale so that we could drop the sale price, but the boat never sold while I was working there.

NOT TO BE

I sold four boats during my short career for which I was paid $9,700. Not much for almost a year’s hard labor.

In my opinion, the best yacht salesmen are folks without personal lives, skin as tough as buffalo, and easy-going personalities.

I sold one other Catalina during my time with McGrath, an extremely well maintained 38. After driving back and forth across the Bay, from Sausalito to South Beach Harbor, at least 18 times to take the listing and show the boat, I decided the business was not for me. How could anyone find fault with such a nice boat? After four months, she finally found a new home, and my career came to a thankful end.

My only regret is that I missed an entire summer of boating with my husband. I won’t make that mistake again.

Kim Haworth, a television producer and former yacht broker, lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay aboard their trawler, Dancing Dragons.