The most important question a business owner should focus on is the one often heared over the phone in a somewhat rehearsed and unconcious fashion: “How can we HELP you.”
When business owners put financial gains second, the magic happens. I’m talking about more people engaging with your business. Fulfilment as well as revenue will be the return on investment!
A few weeks ago I was contacted by an American who lives in Asia. He is the owner / driver of a 58ft sail yacht and he enquired about what we could do for him on a long term basis.
Many people think we only place crew or only manage crewed yachts but we also provide consultancy and training for owner-drivers. We help them find the best yards and marinas, source parts, organise maintenance, insurance, yacht transport, the occasional extra crew or delivery and so on.
A few minutes into our chat it became clear that this owner had a more accute issue at hand though.
When he left his yacht in an Italian marina, several weeks before, he was forced to give the keys to some guy he didn’t know from Adam. While he had planned to leave the yacht for a few months plugged-in with full freezers running, the marina told him last minute that that was not allowed for safety reasons. He was then forced to decide on a guardiannage service within the two hours before his plane took off. Once home it turned out the guardiannage folks were very bad at responding emails and they never sent any pictures of the yacht despite the owner’s requests.
He was very nervous about this. So within 2,5 hours when we managed, through our widespread network, to send him several pictures of his yacht. He was well impressed and I personally got a kick out of our achievement as detectives.
Sometimes we help people by refusing their request. (!?) A few days ago, the proud new onwer of a 60ft catamaran asked us if we could provide crew for one month. A hotel enquired to charter the yacht for one month to offer day trips.
I really wanted this person to have a good start to his ownership experience so I told him the harsh truth:
Good crew will not want to take this type of job and if they do, they will ask for a hefty freelance fee. Cheap crew will not last a month. The commercial French flag would restrict the search for a captain to holders of the French Capitaine 200 license. French social security charges will apply to the crew salary.
An hour later he called me up to thank me. He’s now smooth sailing towards Greece where they will set up a solid charter program and I’m quite confident they will take Invisible Crew on board for their support.
Worry-free ownership is what we offer, that’s how we can help you.
Jens Oomes
Article published in The Islander Magazine July 2019
