Before Cannes: how to prepare a sales team for the Yachting Festival

The Cannes Yachting Festival 2025 opens on Tuesday 9 September and runs to Sunday 14 September. It takes place in the water, across two venues: the Vieux Port, where the motor yachts gather, and Port Canto, which hosts the sailing yachts and day boats. The organiser, RX, and the French nautical industries federation, which owns the event, run shuttle boats between the two for ticket holders.

Our team will be there again this year, working alongside WAMA Yachts, as we did in 2024. We attend; we do not exhibit. That distinction shapes this article: it is written from the side of the person walking the pontoons, talking to people and trying to make sure nothing important is lost on the way home.

If you are exhibiting or attending, you have roughly two weeks. Here is how we would spend them.

Decide what the week is for

It sounds obvious, and it is the step most often skipped. A boat show can serve several purposes, and a team that tries to serve all of them ends up serving none.

Pick one or two:

• Sell a specific yacht or set of yachts. Then every conversation is measured against that list.
• Fill charter weeks. Then you want agents, repeat clients and anyone who asks about availability.
• Build a pipeline for the winter. Then you are looking for owners, buyers who will not decide this year, and introductions.
• Meet partners and suppliers. Then your diary matters more than your stand.

Write the purpose at the top of a shared page. When a good conversation does not fit it, you can still have the conversation, but you will know it is a bonus.

Make the geography work for you

Cannes is in two places at once. A person who plans a day entirely at the Vieux Port and then discovers that the meeting they wanted was at Port Canto has lost half an hour and some goodwill.

Practical habits:

1. Book meetings in blocks by venue, with a margin for the shuttle.
2. Wear shoes you can stand in for eight hours. This is advice for the ages.
3. Decide who covers which end of the show if you are more than one person.
4. Keep a short list of places for a quiet conversation. A noisy pontoon is a poor setting for a serious offer.

Prepare the material, not just the stand

A broker standing on a deck has about ninety seconds to make an impression, and the material that follows should be ready before anyone sets foot on the pontoon.

• A current specification for every yacht you are talking about, with the right price policy. If a price is on application, decide who answers that question and how.
• Photographs and documents you are willing to share, organised per yacht, so that nobody sends the wrong file to the wrong buyer.
• A proposal you can send within a day. If your quotes take a week to prepare, rehearse a faster way now. A quote that cannot change behind your back, and that the client can accept online, is much easier to send from a phone on a pontoon than a Word document attached to a late-night email.

Several teams make the same mistake: they spend a month on the stand and an hour on the follow-up. Reverse that ratio.

Agree how you will capture people

Every business card, every scanned badge and every "email me next week" is a lead, and a lead has a value only if someone can find it again. Decide in advance:

• Where leads are recorded (one place, not four).
• What the minimum record is: name, company, what they want, what you promised.
• Who is responsible for each follow-up.
• What counts as "hot", so that it is not a matter of opinion at midnight.

If your team shares a mailbox for show enquiries, make sure everyone can see who has replied. Two people answering the same enquiry is annoying; nobody answering is expensive. A shared inbox keeps the thread in one place, and it is one of the simplest changes a small team can make before a busy week.

Brief the team on conduct

A tidy team looks competent. A brief meeting before the show opens pays for itself.

Say the same things

Agree the answers to the five questions you will hear most. How long is the yacht available? What is the asking price? Where is she lying? Can we visit after the show? Who is the contact? If two colleagues give different answers, the buyer will believe the less convenient one.

Know what you will not discuss

There are subjects that belong in a private room, not on a pontoon: price negotiations, owner details, any detail that identifies a client who has not given permission. Decide the boundary in advance.

Listen more than you pitch

The most useful thing a visitor can tell you is what they are struggling with. A short question such as "what are you looking for this season?" will get more than any slogan.

Plan the week after

The work does not end on Sunday 14 September. The practical check is simple: on Monday, can you list every person you spoke to, what they asked for and who owns the reply?

A workable timetable:

1. Same evening. Record the day's conversations before you eat.
2. Within 48 hours. Send a short, personal reply to every serious contact, with the one attachment they asked for.
3. Within a fortnight. Make the second contact: a call, a viewing, an invitation.
4. Within a month. Review what came of it, honestly, and note what you would change.

What we will be doing

For our part, the plan is modest. We will meet as many professionals as we can, talk about partnerships and look at the projects that people are proud of. We will also carry a notebook and try to practise what we have written above.

Cannes is a very good show for conversations. It rewards the team that arrives prepared and leaves with a clear record. The pontoons will be full of people with the best intentions; the ones who follow up will be the ones who remembered to plan it.