Nobody needs a boat
By Peter Granata, President, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — Nobody needs a boat.
Everybody needs a life. As an industry we have but a few reasons anyone would be enticed to buy our products.
Granted, a customer may be interested in a boat’s dimensions and unique features. He may even be interested in the smallest details about its construction and design. But the one thing that attracts him to that boat in the first place is the simple emotion of how the boat makes him feel.
Too many times in today’s market, we’ve ignored that simple ingredient.
I wrote this story some time ago but I think it’s still relevant today.
Sometime ago a friend of mine attended his first boat show and he proved how important feelings were. The first thing that struck him was just how beautiful the boats were. They were so beautiful, in fact, that my friend spent the first hour just walking the floor looking at the many dozens of different models. Finally, though, he settled on one boat that really grabbed his attention. He ambled over, trying not to appear too inexperienced, and asked about the boat.
“What do you want to know?” the salesman asked.
“Well,” my friend said, “I really don’t know what to ask. Tell me what I need to know.”
“OK,” the dealer replied, and began a 10-minute talk about the length of the boat, the
beam, the draft, fuel capacity, planning characteristics, deadrise and the construction of
the hull.
My friend said later that he hadn’t even noticed the boat had a hull before that. Something magical – something emotional – had attracted him to the boat. But by the time his conversation with the dealer was over, the magic was gone.
There’s a lesson for all of us there. For all of the innovations we’ve made over the past decade and for all of the new technology we’ve pumped into our products, boating is still a very personal activity. Tomorrow’s boaters will be attracted to boating for the same reasons we were. And they’ll react to their first boat purchase the same way you and I did– with emotion.
Boats can be seen as a “trophy” that fulfills a lifelong dream, or a piece of equipment to accomplish a recreational activity, but a boat can also be the very thing that binds a family together, or gives meaning to a life well lived. Regardless of how it is perceived there is an underlying passion and feeling for the product by the customer. A customer that considers a boat as a purchase is a person that wishes to embrace life. Help him.
Well said, Peter. The boat business, and for that matter the yacht business, is a business of “images.” Actual use generally falls far short of the image that a buyer carries in his mind’s eye. Witness how few owners of hard core fishing boats and yachts actually spend any significant time offshore and with fish blood on their decks. So too, most of the yachtsmen who delight in owning vessels with globe-girdling capabilities will rarely, if ever leave home waters. But it is the image of what they could do, if they so chose, that they carry around with them. And it is that which gives them the greatest pleasure. We in the industry need to understand that. Boat buying and ownership is an affair of the heart.
AMEN
you can say what you want in the end a boat is all an emotion similar to the one when one sees a nice woman walking down the street, if one likes it you can say whatever you want about its construction he will still do
I agree, Peter hit the nail on the head. Boat ownership, no matter the size, is an emotional purchase for all the right reasons. You may dream about what you can do and not so much about if you did it. I have owned 5 or 6 larger cruisers myself, and I die everytime I sell one. I see it later and the new owner is not doing what I hoped he would, or other obvious disappointments. Word to the brokers and salesmen…..Sell The Experience!! The details come later and with time. I bought my first boat within a week of spending two nites on a friends boat. I was totally in LOVE!
Very, very true in my sales experience, not only for boats but also for many aftermarket products, so we should always try to find ways to appeal to the customer’s emotions as well as to his needs.
Well said. We boat because we want to have an experience. They vary by age and lifestyle, but they are an experience. Bells and Whistles help differentiate which boat one may buy, but the bottom line for this industry is getting that person on the water, as painlessly as possible. We need to understand our customer needs, create a solution and then provide a way to get to that solution.
Buying a boat is not a knee jerk reaction, it is a well studied reaction, mixed with emotions of both past, present and future visions of life on the water. Growing up on the water and expecting to grow old on the water, this video sums it up for me, http://www.discoverboating.com/goodrun.aspx
Boating is definitely a lifestyle. Either you embrace it or don’t. How many times has someone walked into your showroom and said, ” I was out on a friends boat and….”? That person is hooked. They have experienced something on the water that they never found on land. It is then our responsiblity to align that person with a boat that fosters that experience. How about the person that has their heart set on a particular model of boat that you know they are not going to be happy with? Are they thinking with their head or their heart? Yes, boating is an issue of the heart. We, as responsible boat dealers, are responsible for fulfilling their hearts desire. If we don’t have the product that will meet that need, then we should send them to someone that can.