77 Boat Sales Tasks Done by 3pm, Thought I Was Doing Great Until I Saw I Had 102 Tomorrow. Ugggh!

There I was, a newly appointed yacht adviser 4 days into the job trying to figure out how to allocate my time on my boat sales tasks: prospecting tasks, my consultative selling activities, pipeline management and handling all the incoming enquiries.

The thing is, at the time I was trying to learn how to make a living as a yacht adviser when I’d never worked for a yacht brokerage before and had no training on how to do that.

Yes, the simple idea is to “sell boats” but what I didn’t know, was the exact steps to follow so that the outcome would follow. And there was just so much to do, what’s the priority?

The big problem was that I was overwhelmed with inbound and we had been for months. Here’s what that looked like on Day 4

•  Did two sales calls first up and one turned into a proposal, then it was midday
•  Had 40 tasks from yesterday transferred in
•  Had another sales call
•  Spent two hours categorising and task setting up more inbound (approx. 25 enquiries)
•  By 4pm had 80 activities to get done before 5pm (about 40 inbound and 40 followups)
•  Didn’t happen
•  Followed up a request for proposal for advisory services, spent an hour on this opportunity
•  It’s now after 7pm and wondering how to allocate my time tonight and tomorrow, between inbound, outbound, income generation and moving deals along

It was written in my diary as “Food for thought today on Day 4”

Yes indeed, that’s a polite way to put it.

Then, as if by chance, something amazing happened…

I realised the key to my success was that I had to get really good at handling the scale and the volume of enquiries and contacts yet know how to focus on those that mattered the most. All of this, without dropping my customer service levels for everyone else who is in the nurturing and education stage of buying or selling a boat.

Instantly it became crystal clear to me how to focus on the first priority, the second and the third because I saw how I could allocate all my tasks and activities according to three main buckets that these activities came from.

My plan was to start grouping what our firm does into three broad buckets, Boats Wanted to Buy (WTB), Boats Wanted to Sell (WTS) and Boat Sale Enquiries for Listed Boats (BSE)!

So, I started right there and then, where I was on a boat in Singapore, I implemented a key sales rule: Implement a daily routine that supports income goals. But we didn’t stop there.

We then started to priortise all the incoming enquiries and tasks according to the income goals.

Building on that success, we moved all the Wanted to Sell enquiries to ‘Wanted to Sell Tuesdays’, all the Wanted to Buy enquiries to ‘Wanted to Buy Wednesdays’ and immediately attended to boat enquiries for listed boats immediately and on a daily basis.

After that, we set up the daily routine that supports income goals and approach to each day’s activities for every yacht adviser. This consists of:

1. First thing each day: 

a) Check the activity/task list for any appointments today and prepare for those meetings

2. Review:

a) Pipeline Revenue Forecast for green activities today, and familarise what is due on the revenue next steps. Fix any yellow or red activities.

3. Check task list:

a) For any deal descriptions that need a tidy up to the standard wording

1. Sort task list by ‘Deal’ and there should only be BSE, WTB, WTS — no other random deal titles — edit them by adding either one of these 3 prefixes

4. Move:

a) Any WTB to Wednesdays and WTS to Tuesdays (unless they are on the Pipeline Revenue Forecast)

5. Complete:

a) Any proposals first

b) Other tasks in the following priority order: BSE, WTS, WTB

6. Celebrate!

In my 90-day Training to a Highly Paid Yacht Adviser, we then called it “Step 3 — Execute a Daily Routine that Supports Income Goals”.

With this Step 3, I can now work through all 77 tasks I had yesterday and had them completed by 3pm.

While I have 102 tasks on my plate for today, it’s Wanted to Buy Wednesday here, so I’m no longer overwhelmed struggling with everything on my plate. I’m now confident that I can manage this number of activities by knowing which ones support my income goals, and which ones don’t and can be moved to next weeks ‘Wanted to Buy Wednesday’.

I feel free to focus on my income goals, yet still, keep in good contact with all my opportunities and deals in the pipeline. Relief and results combined!!

And that’s why I’m so excited to share this with you so you can get these types of results too!