Brokers on blagging and the art of the deal

opinion

by Rob Hodgetts

14 April 2025

L-R: Chris Cecil-Wright, Jan-Jaap Minnema, Will Christie, Jamie Edmiston.

Blagging to a billionaire is likely to end in tears. Not actual ones, although it’s a possibility when you lose that deal because they’ve seen through your bluster.

For superyacht brokers, especially at the top end, credibility with clients comes from knowledge and insight. Lose their trust and the deal is gone.

“You can’t sit in front of a billionaire, who has spent 30 years building an incredible business, and blag it. They quickly get the measure of you,” said Chris Cecil-Wright, founder of brokerage Cecil Wright during a wide-ranging broker panel at our Superyacht Investor London 2025 conference. “It’s pretty self-regulating.”

But even then, the panel agreed that there was still a band (a blag?) of bad brokers doing the industry a disservice.

“The barriers to entry to be a yacht broker are low,” said Jamie Edmiston, CEO, Edmiston. “Any idiot can be a yacht broker and many are. It’s a business card and a mobile phone. But the barriers to success are very, very high.”

Jan-Jaap Minnema, sales broker for Fraser Yachts added: “People get badly advised, they get into boats that are not really good for them, they get disappointed and get out of boating because they’re not happy. Pleasure is the only reason these things exist. So make it a good and pleasurable experience.”

Risk capital

Minnema suggested introducing a qualification for yacht brokers, although the panel agreed that regulation might be difficult. “I’m not sure any of us would pass the exam,” laughed Edmiston.

According to Cecil-Wright, there is a perception, both inside and outside the industry, that brokers “make too much money and don’t deserve it”. Just for fun, a straw poll of the audience confirmed as much. “Very often we add much more than we take,” said Cecil-Wright.

But to achieve any success requires “time, investment and a huge amount of risk capital”, said Edmiston. “For every deal you see done, there are lots that haven’t happened,” he added. Will Christie, the founder of Christie Yachts, likened it to “gamblers who only tell you about their successes”.

Edmiston highlighted a deal recently where his team had worked for eight months, with legal fees alone close to a million euros.

“The lawyers got paid, the surveyors got paid, everybody got paid,” he said. “We only get paid if it’s 100% successful, not 99%, not 99.5%.

“People often forget that. I think the role of the broker needs to be better understood and better portrayed.”

READ: ‘Does this make the car go faster?’ – Edmiston

Will Christie (left) and Jamie Edmiston (centre) see the funny side at Superyacht Investor London 2025.

The panel argued that the role is more important than ever to make sense of the wealth of data available and to steer clients in their sale and purchase. (They would say that, they’re brokers.)

“The reality of it is the good brokers have got 20 years-plus of knowledge, relationships, data, anecdotal evidence, they understand the market, and that is hugely valuable,” said Edmiston.

Minnema added: “There’s so much data, but it is worthless if you don’t put it in perspective and explain to a client what it is all about. Then you can have an educated decision.” For Christie it all comes down to adding value. “If you do that then your fee is well deserved.”

Massive disparity

One area that is a “big problem” for the industry, “potentially putting off new people”, is the number of yachts coming to the market at “totally unrealistic prices” and then taking years to sell, according to Christie. It can lead to sellers running a “beauty parade”, with competing brokers suggesting inflated prices to secure the contract. “It’s a bit frustrating to those that are honest with owners,” he said.

Cecil-Wright added: “It drives me crazy that there is so much data and yet there’s a massive disparity in what people think a boat is worth.”

But while good brokers are trusted advisers, a key part of the job is fighting a rearguard against the competition while maintaining good relationships on all fronts. They can be pitching against one another for the central agency of a yacht in the morning and collaborating on a deal in the afternoon.

“It’s a very unusual business,” said Edmiston. “We’re all rivals, obviously. But you’re also friends and colleagues.”

Christie added: “The top brokers understand that by working together, we create transactions, which the rest of the industry really feeds off.”

Advising on a new-build project is another area where a trusted broker can add real value, according to Cecil-Wright. In many cases, a broker will have done a couple of deals with that client before venturing down the new-build route with them, he said.

“I’ve got a fairly strong view on this,” he added. “The broker’s job here is to gently bring the buyer to the table and guide that person to roughly the right place because otherwise, it’s a total minefield.”

But for the broker, chasing that new-build commission cheque is very much a long game, he added. “Yes, it is a payday, but it’s 20 years in the making,” he said. “That particular 5% [introduction fee] is not very big compared with doing a second-hand deal which has taken three months.”

READ: Cecil-Wright on the art of a broker

L-R: Jan-Jaap Minnema, Will Christie, Jamie Edmiston.

Will Christie (centre) makes his point at Superyacht Investor London.

Art of the deal

The broker can be invaluable to avoid clients receiving a “real haircut” when it comes to resale of that distinctive, one-off new-build, according to Christie.

“Whenever you’re building a boat, you have to think that one day you are going to have to sell it,” he said. “So while you want exactly what’s right for you and your family, bear that in mind. That advice alone can add a lot of value to the process.”

Given President Trump’s dominance of the economic and geopolitical news agenda, the panel were asked for their thoughts on the art of the deal, a nod to Trump’s controversial 1987 book The Art of the Deal.

“Know when you are the wrong person to deal with this client. You don’t always click,” said Edmiston, whose business employs a host of brokers across the world.

“You’ve also got to be very driven. You’ve got to be good with people. You’ve got to be able to live with disappointments and you’ve got to have relationships with all of the key people. If you can do that, then you can be successful. We can probably count on two hands the guys in this industry who are regularly doing big deals.”

READ: Christie on slow burns, broking and bear markets

Christie said: “You have to work out very quickly, what does the person want? Sometimes they don’t even know what they want. It’ s also knowing who to introduce to the process at what point to facilitate the deal.”

According to Minnema, it’s “a combination of endurance and resilience”. “It’s all the time adapting to the different situations,” he said.

For Cecil-Wright, the key is to keep your eye on the prize. “The answer is really to get to the place where somebody says, ‘Yes, I want to do that’,” he said.

“If you focus on that then all the drivers around it are in the same direction; spend time on the relationship, spend time on finding out exactly what they want, on research, making sure they have the right information to make a good decision. Then it’s giving them the confidence to say, ‘Yes, that’s the right decision’. Take the deal.”

The message is clear: blaggers beware.