There is so much to learn about yachts and yacht brokerage, you will never know everything.

I was reminded of this fact a couple of days ago when our brokerage company was visited by a representative of Azimut Yachts. You may recognise Azimut as being a part of the Azimut Benetti Group; the most prolific group of yacht builders in the world.

The lady representing Azimut had come to show us the Azimut Grande range, an incredible line up of yachts that vary from a 26 meter model all the way up to a 38m model.

One thing that I learned from the visit was that they have a new 44m model in development, this will be the largest yacht they have ever built under this brand. Many of the brokers present were also interested to learn that whilst a broker network has exclusive representation of Azimut yachts for the smaller vessels, the Azimut "Grande" range had no such representation.

This kind of information can make a huge difference to the potential earning of a yacht broker. If a broker is forced to represent a buyer through a local dealer they will have to share the commission payment, and may even lose contact with the client. I know of brokers who have gone through a dealer network because they believed it to be necessary...when actually they could have made substantially more money by dealing with the shipyard directly.

So my advice for this week is simple: if you are associated with a yacht brokerage already, make sure that you attend the meetings held with shipyards - it could make a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars to your future commission payments.

And if you are NOT associated with a yacht brokerage...then maybe now is the time to take the first steps by joining the ever growing number of students who are benefitting from the Yacht Broker Master Class!