How candid calls got ‘job done’ for brokers
As a snapshot of life as a yacht broker it told a good story. Several unanswered calls, multiple messages left and then eventually the pick-up. “Hi, yes, sorry about that … oh, hang on, I’ve got to take this, it’s a client, sorry…”
When we do eventually catch up with Will Christie, he says it has been a busy morning talking to a handful of different clients. One assumes it’s the buzz generated by the announcement of the deal for the 55.5m Feadship Mary A, for which Christie represented the buyer. It turns out no one mentioned it.
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But it also highlights the boom-and-bust nature of broking. Sometimes the phone is red hot, sometimes stone cold. The peaks and troughs are more volatile than Bitcoin. Friends tease you about your apparent inactivity.
“For every deal you see that converts there are about 20 that don’t,” says Christie, founder of brokerage Christie Yachts, who suggests the grey hairs on his head represent the deals that didn’t happen. “It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong, it’s because nobody really needs to buy a boat. We go down a lot of those paths and it comes to nothing. You have to be spinning a lot of plates and no one sees all the failed deals.”
READ: Christie on the art of a yacht deal
Moved fast
This time, though, Christie and his client landed their target, with Henry Craven-Smith of Burgess representing the seller.
Mary A was originally put up for sale for $29.5m ahead of last year’s Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show before the owner, a client of Craven-Smith’s since 2003, took it off the market until this summer. One potential buyer “got cold feet” so the plan was then to take it to September’s Monaco Yacht Show, according to Craven-Smith.
“This buyer came two weeks before the show, made a deal and moved very fast,” he says of Christie’s client.
Being able to speak extremely candidly with each other is a successful recipe for getting any sale across the line – Henry Craven-Smith
Christie first met his client through an introduction in February and together they viewed a lot of boats, either physically or remotely, occasionally veering down a “few cul-de-sacs” which is just “part of the process”.
“His market knowledge was exceptional,” says Christie. “We were talking almost as peers rather than client and broker and discussing the merits, pros and cons of all different boats. That made it a really fun process. It was very thorough. The client knew what he wanted to achieve and his requirements were very clear.”
READ: Craven-Smith on broking, prospecting and disruption
Christie and Craven-Smith have done plenty of business together over the years and were able to smooth out the inevitable wrinkles that came up. “We managed to get both parties to a position where one was willing to sell and one was willing to buy,” says Christie, whose plate-spinning included showing the 40m Baglietto Club M at Monaco. “It never got heated and it was all calmly managed.
“That’s why it’s really important for clients to be with a broker that has credibility, trust and respect. And it’s really important we have good relations with third-party brokers. It’s a competitive marketplace; one day you might be up against each other pitching for a central agency or pursuing the same clients to represent in a purchase, the next your client might want to buy the boat they are listing for sale.”
Tolerance for negotiation
Christie references the deal he was involved in for the 95m Lürssen Kismet (now Whisper) in September 2023, representing the buyer opposite Chris Cecil-Wright who was acting for the seller.
“We weren’t the only party in the running for that boat but I think my relationship with Chris was really helpful; he knew me, he knew my track record,” he says. “That kind of credibility is worth a lot because he is having to go to the owner and say, ‘we should back this horse, not the other one.’”
READ: Kicking fenders amid the Monaco madness
Craven-Smith agrees. “Being able to speak extremely candidly with each other is certainly a successful recipe for getting any sale across the line,” he says. The fact that this was his fifth transaction for his client since 2004 also played a significant role. “Knowing the seller well and knowing his tolerance for negotiation and having a bit of insight into where his head was at certainly helped,” he adds.
On edge
At the start of the process, Christie suggested his client vet a number of brokers but only work with one to ensure he was getting their full focus and knowledge of the market, including the “valuable off-market options” that might otherwise be kept quiet. Or, he says, you end up with a handful of different brokers “hammering you with options” which is “quite distracting”.
It is a bit like finishing your final exams at university, it is more a sense of relief than a celebration – Will Christie
“When I called the client to tell him the deal was done he joked that he’d like to see a transcript of our WhatsApps from the last six months,” he says. “It would be bigger than most encyclopaedias. We were in touch 24/7, with phone calls late at night chatting about it.”
There were, however, “no big celebrations” in the Christie household the night the deal was sealed.
“It is a bit like finishing your final exams at university, it is more a sense of relief than a celebration,” he says. “I am always pretty on edge, I know how fragile these things can be. Until a boat is out in international waters and everything is signed and the money is transferred, anything can happen.
“I’ve had one boat where we completed the deal and about an hour later the boat hit a submerged container and ripped the whole stabiliser off. Luckily, I was acting for the seller. If that had happened an hour earlier the whole deal would have been off. Eight months of work wasted.”
Fair market price
Instead for Christie, it was a normal night of family life and speaking to another client on the phone. “You’re only as good as your next deal because the last one is already history,” he says.
Craven-Smith already had a trip planned to Barcelona to support INEOS Britannia in the America’s Cup and was able to toast back-to-back victories from Sir Ben Ainslie’s team to make it a short-lived 4-2 to Emirates Team New Zealand.
READ: Overcoming the Cannes complex – easy as A, B, C
“The longer you’re in this game the more you realise there are an awful lot of disappointments,” he says, referring to yacht sales, not the America’s Cup. “Sadly, you go into most of these deals expecting them not to happen. That’s the best way of dealing with the disappointment. You’ve got to try your best but they’re often out of your hands.
“The satisfaction for me in this one was the continuation of a long-term relationship with this owner. It was nice to have done it in a relatively quick time and achieve a fair market price, so job done.”
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