New marine inventory is down more than 20% year over year. Fewer units on the water should mean it’s easier to compete for the ones you do have. Instead, the performance gap between the best marine dealers and the rest is widening.
According to The State of the Dealer: 2026, the top 10% of Dealer Spike’s dealers generate 4.5x more leads and turn 54% more inventory than the rest of the market. That’s not a small edge. That’s a different business.
It’s Not About Who Has the Biggest Budget
It would be easy to assume those dealers are simply outspending everyone else. They’re not.
In a recent episode of Boating Industry Insider, host David Gee sat down with Dealer Spike’s Hayley Hollen (Manager of Brand & Client Marketing) and Bill Koehn (Director of Digital Marketing) to unpack what’s driving the gap. Their answer: a handful of operational habits, executed consistently, layered with a paid strategy that’s spent smartly rather than heavily.
Top-performing marine dealers carry roughly 5x more inventory than average and run multiple layered tools — website, payment calculator, trade valuation — instead of relying on a site alone. The result shows up directly in the turn rate: about 2.4 to 2.5 turns per year for the average dealer, versus roughly 5 turns per year for the top 10%.
The Habits that Separate the Top 10%
A few things came up again and again in the conversation:
- Every unit is published everywhere it should be, and every inquiry path (forms, calls, chat, text) actually works and gets tested regularly.
- Listings show the basics buyers need: price (even a starting MSRP with a “call for our best offer”), enough photos to match the real thing, and full specs.
- Response time is treated as a competitive edge, not an afterthought, with a real plan for the leads that come in after the store has closed.
- Reporting gets checked against gut feel, not the other way around. A “soft” weekend on the showroom floor doesn’t always mean a soft month online.
- CRM data gets mined, not just collected. Past leads who weren’t ready six or twelve months ago are often ready now.
None of this is exotic. It’s discipline, applied consistently, across every touchpoint a shopper has with your dealership.
The Listings Piece Matters More than Most Dealers Realize
One detail from the conversation is worth calling out on its own: complete listings aren’t just a buyer-trust issue anymore — they’re an AI visibility issue.
It’s not just for consumers to read — it’s for the AI, for the crawlers, to rank you and show up on those AI Overviews and AI modes that more and more people are using to ask questions directly.”
Bill Koehn, Director of Digital Marketing, Dealer Spike
That means a listing without a visible price isn’t just harder for a shopper to trust. It’s less likely to surface when someone asks Google’s AI Overview how much a comparable boat costs nearby
You Don’t Need a Bigger Budget; You Need the Right Habits
If there’s one thing worth taking from the episode, it’s this reassurance: closing the gap isn’t about outspending the market.
You don’t have to spend a ton. You just need to know where your shoppers are coming from and make sure your name is front and center.”
Hayley Hollen, Manager of Brand & Client Marketing, Dealer Spike
That’s the throughline across everything the top 10% is doing — full-funnel visibility, transparent listings, fast and consistent follow-up, and a paid strategy that flexes with the season instead of running flat all year.
Watch the Full Conversation
Hollen and Koehn go deeper on all of this, including a four-question check you can run on your own account this week, in the full episode of Boating Industry Insider.
Want the Data Behind It?
Download The State of the Dealer: 2026 to see how your dealership’s numbers compare to the top 10%.