1)How were you both dressed when you entered the showroom? I find
they are VERY sensitive to what you drive and what you wear at any
boat dealer, especially if they don't know you.

My friend Dan, a rather well-off medical researcher, wanted me to go
to the boat show with him to look for a smaller boat than the Hatteras
56 he'd just moved off of and sold because he loved to buzz around
Charleston in my jetboat. I agreed to go with him providing he wore
the same clothes he mows the lawn in on Saturday morning, not the
Brooks Brothers doctor's outfit with the Florsheims of his position,
which would make us a "target" for the sharks. He agreed.

Except for being run off a few yachts half the size of the one he'd
just sold because we didn't look like we belonged, the dealers all
just left us alone as we dug through the pile, poking around in the
crannies and bilges trying to see what kind of cheap it was made from.

There was one exception, a young salesman from Seels, the Grady-White
dealer. We'd picked out the bowrider Grady-White with a Yam EFI 150
on it and were poking around in it. Unlike the rest trying to get rid
of the rif-raf-rats, this kid was polite, genuinely interested in
helping us answering questions and, well, BEING A SALESMAN. I doubt
he was 22, so wasn't the hardened criminal you sometimes meet around
the showrooms.

He stood by while we poked into the holes and beat on the hull. I had
my head in a cabinet trying to figure out where I could run the
electronics cabling and Dan says, "What do you think?" I simply said
from inside the cabinet, "Buy it."...snapped my fingers a couple of
times and said, "Checkbook!" Dan looks at the kid and says, "We'll
take it." while reaching in his pocket for his checkbook.

About this time, the other salesmen who had been ignoring the rif-raf
wandered over to rescue the kid from these scruffy dock walkers. The
kid asked them to bring HIM a contract. He'd just sold a boat. To
quote the Mastercard commercial, the look on their faces was
"Priceless".....His gross just went up $35K.

I think you can use dress and your car as a consumer tool. If you
want to be fawned over, borrow someone's new Lexus or Cadillac
Escalade and go boat shopping in your suit dressed-to-kill. If you
want to be left alone to poke around, wear the clothes you mow the
lawn in...and drive your daughter's boyfriend's old Toyota with the
big rust holes in it....(c;




Larry W4CSC

"No, NO, Mr Spock! I said beam me down a WRENCH,
not a WENCH! KIRK OUT!"