By Marcus Barnett, co-founder, Turner & Barnett Consulting
Every dealer knows the shape of the year. Boats get sold through the winter shows and the months after. Then spring arrives and everyone wants theirs on the water before Christmas. The deposits taken in June turn into a workshop full of hulls in November, and the whole business finds out at once whether its handover process actually holds up.
Most of the time it holds up because of people, not process. A service manager who knows which rig is waiting on a part. A sales rep who rings the customer before the customer rings them. An office manager who remembers that the trailer rego is still with the transport department. It works, right up until two of those people are flat out on the same afternoon.
This piece isn’t about selling more boats. It’s about the six weeks where the boats you’ve already sold all need to arrive at once.
Where the crunch actually bites
Walk the workshop floor in late November and the problems aren’t usually technical. Riggers know how to rig. The trouble sits in the gaps between jobs.
A boat is ready, but the electronics package the customer added at the show isn’t in yet, and nobody told sales. A handover gets booked for Saturday, but pre-delivery hasn’t been signed off because the sea trial got bumped by rain. The customer’s finance settled, but the warranty registration for the engine hasn’t gone to the manufacturer, so the first service a few months later starts with a phone call nobody wants to make.
None of that is a skills problem. It’s an information problem. The status of each boat lives in a few heads, a whiteboard and somebody’s inbox.
The question worth asking now, not in December
If you want one test of whether your business is ready for the run home to Christmas, try this. Pick any boat due for handover in the next six weeks. Ask three people separately, in sales, the office and the workshop, what’s left before it goes out.
If you get three different answers, you’ve found the problem. If anyone has to go and check, you’ve found it too.
The fix starts there, and it doesn’t start with software.
One board, one owner per boat
Before anything gets automated, a busy dealership needs one place that shows every boat due out, and one person who owns each one.
That board needs to answer a handful of questions at a glance. Which options and accessories are still outstanding, and from which supplier? Has rigging been signed off? Has pre-delivery and the sea trial been done? Is finance settled? Is registration and transfer paperwork done? Is the handover booked, and does the customer know the time? Has the warranty registration gone in?
Plenty of dealers run this on a whiteboard, and that’s fine if it’s kept honest. The trouble starts when the whiteboard, the dealer system and the workshop job cards all disagree. So decide which one is the truth, and have everything else copy from it.
Then let the system do the chasing
Once the board is real, the repetitive work around it is where automation earns its place, and it’s dull work.
- A note to the sales rep the moment a back-ordered part lands, so they can ring the customer with good news instead of waiting to be asked.
- A daily list of boats that have a handover booked but no pre-delivery sign-off.
- The warranty registration filled from the order details and flagged if it hasn’t gone in within a few days of handover.
- The first-service reminder set from the handover date, so it doesn’t rely on someone remembering in March.
- A short message to the customer before handover with the time, where to park and what to bring.
None of that replaces your dealer management system. We build on what a business already runs and connect the pieces it already has. That makes for a smaller job, a cheaper one, and one your team will actually use in the busiest weeks of the year.
What stays with people
Some of the most valuable moments in a boat sale should never be handed to a system. The handover itself, when your best person walks a family through their new boat. The call when a delivery is going to be late. The decision about what you’ll do for a good customer when a supplier lets you down.
Done well, the admin side frees your people up for exactly those moments. The customer remembers the handover, not the paperwork behind it.
Start this week
There’s still time to take some of the pressure off this season.
- List every boat due out between now and Christmas.
- Give each one a single owner.
- Run the three-people test on five of them.
- Fix the gaps it turns up with a process change first.
- Write down every chase-up you did by hand. That list is your automation shortlist for next season.
The boats are already sold. The job now is getting them to their owners in a way that brings those customers back for the next one.
Marcus Barnett is co-founder of Turner & Barnett Consulting, a Queensland-based AI implementation and independent AI advisory firm. He works with owners and leadership teams of established Australian businesses to map how work really moves through the office, then builds on the systems they already run rather than replacing them. Turner & Barnett has built for two businesses with a combined revenue of more than $60 million.
Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn, HERE.
For more information about Turner & Barnett Consulting, visit turnerbarnettconsulting.com
