Terrible sale photos...why??

Agree to a point, but as pointed out earlier, the manufacturers are selling a new boat so condition is a given.

The better the photo for an older boat the more important the resolution / quality becomes so you can see what you are getting.

What also gets me is when they don't show pics of important areas. To me on a Squadron 58 the utility room is relatively critical as there were several layouts - but the broker declines to photo it and gives a generic layout diagram - and then of course can't be assed to reply to your email!

It is of course all relative. I looked at several boats on a phone call as I was in Mallorca and the effort to see it was minimal. So if you live in Southampton and the boat is on the Hamble I doubt you care.

You can of course turn it to your advantage - as you hope no one else will look given the dire pics!

I rent my place on Air BNB, professional photos make a really significant difference to the response rate.

I have only tried to sell through a broker once. None of them took photos or looked at the boat. I had to supply them all. It didn't sell and I PX via Boats. co.uk - who put a lot of effort in to photo them ( and use the same props again and again if you look!). They will also not photo it until you have paid for a professional clean. Given they sell more boats then just about anyone else I think we can assume it makes a difference!
 
petem said:
I think effort is more important than what type of camera you use. Take this example...

https://youtu.be/o9AlwADbwlw
https://youtu.be/K6Ugv2qby0c

...from this ad http://www.jamesdickensmarine.com/brokerage/Powerboats/EllingE3Monte.htm.

Now James Dickens isn't going to win any prizes for cinematography, website design or even spelling but he makes an effort to work with clients to prepare the boats for sale, he knows what he's talking about and is enthusiastic. I would defy anyone to decline to view the boat just because the photos or video were taken with a phone.
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I know his work very well and think it's appalling on so many levels. There is no way of quickly going to a particular view, you have to mentally piece together 18 pieces of a jigsaw to understand the layout / interior of a boat and I get motion sickness every time I try to look at his videos. I managed 2.6 seconds of the link you sent before I closed it down. I'm sure James is a lovely guy but he will never be selling any of my boats.

Henry
 
henryf said:
I know his work very well and think it's appalling on so many levels.
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Dont hold back Henry. Just tell it like it is:D. Out of interest, what do you say to the SWMBO when your dinner isnt quite up to your exacting standards? Have you got a dog? ;)
 
jwilson said:
I am a broker too. We won't sell a boat I haven't been aboard, the camera kit cost rather more than £1,500. Try https://www.yachtsnet.co.uk/boats/b82718/images/saloon-table-ss.jpg as one of about 30 photos of a sailing yacht. We never act as secondary broker. We won't sell planing powerboats though - I just can't be enthusiastic about them. We also quite often turn down boats.
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No it doesn't......

£963 inc UK Vat to do the basics.

£1,392 inc UK vat to do the basics but also have the ability to do some super sexy outside shots of the boat floating the water.

Prices were taken from the first website I went to using brand name products, savings could no doubt be achieved by shopping around. As with all things photography based the world is of course your oyster so you could multiply my figures by 10 or more if you wanted to but you don't need to. That will get you a lovely broker photography package. Throw in another £50 and get a nifty camera bag so you look the part when turning up to a job.

Henry :)
 
novanta said:
It's not a contest who is making the best pictures, it's how you present the boat. If you are not interested in selling boats, even the most expensive camera won't help you. Just got back from the Med to inspect some boats which had lovely pics including the 3d tour... in real life they looked different...
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But you physically can't take the required photos because your phone won't let you. I totally agree that having the right camera gear doesn't polish a turd - actually it can help, but that's where you step in. Your knowledge and integrity back up the lovely images which the potential buyer sees. But they must first get in touch with you. Better still they must get in touch with you excited that yours is the one they want to buy before they have even spoken to you. Otherwise your boat is no better than all the other badly photographed boats and it comes down to price before they've even started....
 
Henry is right on the money

Some of the presentation out there is unbelievably poor, at least it makes it easy for a seller to choose their Broker.

From my experience in the letting sector, we used to work to a strict best practice regarding photography:

All of the property team would be trained by the head of department with regard to photography.
The property team would take responsibility for in house photography workshops and competition monitoring
Camera stock replaced (exchanged) every 12 months (costs are minimal when you use a camera exchange)
Every photo shoot would work to an agreed (with the client) story board - key selling points and general flow through the property.
All photos would be taken in HDR and subject to post production
Every property would receive the same amount of images per listing, 26

Keep in mind that our average commissions pa per client were £5000 with a 10 year client life and you can see that a day’s effort was time well spent.

Imho the only way to differentiate in business is through exellence, if you’re going to do it, do it properly!
 
Deleted User said:
Dont hold back Henry. Just tell it like it is:D. Out of interest, what do you say to the SWMBO when your dinner isnt quite up to your exacting standards? Have you got a dog? ;)
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If it's horrible I say. By the same token since signing up to Hello Fresh I now cook half the dinners myself.

I take you underlying point though, Mrs Henryf deserves a medal :)
 
petem said:
Whether you would sell a boat through him is immaterial. The question is whether his photos / video would put you off viewing a boat that was on his books.
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Yes they would. I would almost rather just have a text listing rather than trying to wade through the treacle of their presentation.

The photographic solution isn't particularly difficult, you just need to know what equipment to use for starters and then have some photographic skills but welcome to the world. To do something well you need to be good at it. The better you are the easier your job becomes. If you can't do it pay someone who can.

Henry :)
 
petem said:
That strikes me as rather odd. Why would you take the same number of pictures for a 1 bedroom house as a 10 bedroom one?
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That’s a good question Pete, and one that I’ve answered maybe 1000 times!
Standardization was the key, you can you imagine that with 650 clients it would have been chaos without a stock solution.
My view - and dictate - was that if we couldn’t produce 26 strong images of a property then we probably shouldn’t be letting it.
Standardisation of the main website was equally important, page times, image tags and customer expectations being critical.

Of course the larger stuff required more effort - that was solved by taking a 2 tier approach in terms of brand - so the expensive stuff would also appear on a ‘high end’ sister site.

But the thrust of this is that good photography resulted in fantastic client acquisition rates, page times and conversion rates. We used analytics to prove this time and again. It’s a no brainer.....
 
Sharing two parallel experiences in the last 12-18 months, both with real estate rather than boats:

We were selling one property in a very smart UK address through one of the major international agents.

Also a property in Canada, again in a fabulous location, this time with the best realtor in the province.

UK experience: property sold well because of its location. Olly allowed his old-Etonian presence to infuse the deal with a little bit of magic and the property sold itself.

Canada experience: Annette Bening (reprising her role in American Beauty) prepped and staged the joint within an inch of its life and in ten days of the property being exposed to the market had had two open days for civilian-punters and one for property professionals. I'm not sure she didn't waterboard someone in order to close the deal. Anyway, the property sold at a record price per square foot for its type and more due to active sales activity than laconic charm.

Me, I couldn't sell a fire extinguisher to someone on fire, but at least I am capable of recognising that and getting someone else to do it, using what works in that market.
 
novanta said:
https://navis-yachting.nl/pre-owned-sessa-fly47-salute/

As I already said, it's not only about the pictures, but you have to get the interest of the buyer.
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Proves my point perfectly. I'm far more impressed by a broker that knows the boat, has presented it well and has taken the effort to describe it accurately than some professional images and a crap description.

Of course, if you have a broker that does both well then that's even better.

BTW, Novanta, you should resize those photos as they take a long time to load.
 
novanta said:
https://navis-yachting.nl/pre-owned-sessa-fly47-salute/

As I already said, it's not only about the pictures, but you have to get the interest of the buyer.
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This falls into the jigsaw category. I have to try and piece together random segments of boat to try and get some sort of idea as to what is for sale. On their own some of the photos are quite good as images but just to use as a couple of fill in stylish detail shots. I need to see the overall context, but you can't do that on a mobile phone.

I started to look but then gave up because it was too difficult.

Henry :)
 
jrudge said:
I have only tried to sell through a broker once. None of them took photos or looked at the boat. I had to supply them all. It didn't sell and I PX via Boats. co.uk
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This echoes the point I made earlier in the thread.

ari said:
With regards to bad broker photos (poor quality, poor resolution, or just a complete lack of), what actually amazes me is that people use brokers like this in the first place. The world is not short of brokers these days, if I were listing my £130,000 boat with a broker, I'd have a quick look at how he was representing other boats before I decided to list mine with him and make sure I used one that was making some effort.
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I'm curious as to why you would use a broker who makes so little effort he doesn't even take photos? His commission rate might be cheap, but that's not actually much help if he doesn't sell it.

I'm not trying to have a dig, I just am genuinely curious?
 
After our short life so far in boating I do very much understand where you are all coming from . My good lady even comments while we look through all the boating classified ads etc .

Most ads are shocking and horrid pictures. Agreening with most of you in presentations of said item forsale and attention to prepping said sale item and detailing exactly what your getting let alone understanding what your looking at in some pictures .

For some time I was a commercial van trader from home as a pass time / hobby I could take a builders van and give this 3 days love affection and magic and the van would look like it's just rolled out of the show room . I would then load said van with a few of my own tools all posh and shiney. Take my time over the pictures and list the van for top asking price .
I never failed to sell a van for what I was asking for it even when people tried to drive me down . They would go off look at others but always be back the next day cash in hand .

Selling anything is the detail . You don't sell the boat you sell the life you could have on the boat . You don't sell by cluttered work tops and messy bed areas . Clean minimal well dressed spacious!!!! Looking . Just enough items to look used but not bare . Admittedly the manufacturers do a fabulous jobs of this selling the new boats but brokers and more so the people selling there boats are horrific at this from what I've seen . First time looking for a boat I was expecting fancy well to do sales reps etc etc in the used market . But actually found a lot quite the opposite ( to be fair the broker I delt with was brilliant even though his earning were small from my sale he went above and beyond and was very fast and professional throughout) so can't thank him enough.

Still such a high end money laden luxury thing as boating can be the used market is more like a speedy action sale than prestigious luxury items . I see boats forsale still now that were forsale when I bought mine some 18 months ago . The state there in I'm not surprised, but if a few days was spent on these boats just cleaning having a de clutter etc all very simple things I'm sure these boats would have sold by now .
It's down to the owners but also a frank honest broker to point out ( sorry this will not sell in this state ) harsh words sometimes but your paying for him or her to sell a boat so constructive criticism should be a must to lift the level of your sale .
 
It was about 10 years ago and I suppose it knew no better.

The boat was in jersey. I found the local broker and he asked for pics so I gave them to him. I don’t believe we had a single enquiry.

It was my first “real” boat and I was pretty nieve and very busy elsewhere so I just subbed out the problem. ( or so I thought)

Outside of this forum and experienced boat sellers there will be more like I was. The expression there is one born every minute comes of course from reality.

I have px to boats to boats.co.uk. They both sold in less than 2 weeks - so I also beleive they are motivated to shift their own stock ( and of course ask realistic money and present it well.
 
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