Golf Cart Fleet Sales: Selling to Resorts, Campuses, HOAs and Businesses

Golf cart fleet sales means selling several carts at once to one organization: a resort, a campus, a campground, a warehouse. The buyer has a job for the carts, a budget somebody approved and a boss to answer to. A written quote, a service plan and a name he can call win it. Price alone does not. The family that keeps a seasonal site at a campground is a different sale, covered in campground golf cart buyers.

What are golf cart fleet sales?

One buyer, several carts, one order.

Golf cart fleet sales are the deals where an organization buys carts to do work. Hauling linens at a resort. Moving a maintenance man across a campus. Running parts from one end of a warehouse to the other. You will also hear it called commercial golf cart sales. Same thing.

Picture a Tuesday in February, 10:15 in the morning. The lot is quiet. The phone rings. It is the manager of a campground forty minutes out. He has six worn-out carts, a season that opens in spring and an owner who told him to get quotes.

He is not shopping for fun. He is asking what six carts cost, when they show up, and who he calls when one quits on a holiday weekend.

A store that treats him like a walk-in loses him to the store that shows up at his property with a notepad. Fleet work is one more answer to how to sell more golf carts without waiting on Saturday traffic.

How is a fleet buyer different from the family on Saturday?

Three ways. Who decides, what he fears and what he calls about.

Who decides. The family decides at the kitchen table. The man who calls you runs the grounds, and the person who signs is an owner, a board or a business office. You are selling to one and writing for the other.

What he fears. The family fears paying too much. He fears looking bad. A cart sitting dead by the front gate in July is his problem, in front of his boss.

What he calls about. She calls about a price and a color. He calls about a cart that will not move on the busiest day he has.

The steps on your floor still hold: answer fast, ask before you pitch, put it in writing, follow up. That is the golf cart sales process you already run, with a trip to his property added.

One thing is the same. He looks your store up before he calls back. Good golf cart dealer websites give him a plain page for business buyers: what you sell for work, what you service, where you deliver and one name to call.

Who buys several golf carts at once in a normal town?

More people than your lot ever sees. Selling golf carts to businesses starts with knowing who they are.

• Resorts, hotels and inns. Bags, linens, guests, maintenance.
• Campgrounds and RV parks. Staff carts, and sometimes carts the guests rent.
• Schools and campuses. Grounds crews, security, athletics, event days.
• Property managers and HOAs. Maintenance, the gate, the pool.
• Churches. A big parking lot, older members, Sunday morning.
• Farms, nurseries and orchards. Tools, feed, people, long rows.
• Warehouses, plants and yards. Parts, supervisors, a long walk made short.
• Event venues, fairgrounds and marinas. Staff and gear across a big property.
• Golf courses. The one everybody thinks of first. It is one line on a long list.

An HOA is two buyers in one. The board buys a few carts for the maintenance crew and the gate. The homeowners buy their own, one driveway at a time. This post is about the board. The driveways are closer to selling into 55+ communities. How to earn a place in the neighborhood through its manager is in HOA golf cart sales.

What does a fleet buyer need from the cart?

He does not need a cart. He needs a job done. So ask about the job before you say a word about a cart.

1. What does it carry? People, tools, trash, linens, feed. Seats, a cargo bed, or both.
2. Who rides? Staff only, or guests too. How many at a time.
3. How long does it run in a day? One hour at check-in, or sunup to dark.
4. What does it drive on? Pavement, gravel, grass, hills, a wet dock.
5. Where does it park and charge at night? A barn with outlets, or a fence line with none.
6. Who drives it? One careful maintenance man, or a crew of summer hires.
7. What went wrong with the last ones? The best question on the list.

Write the answers down. They pick the cart. A crew of summer hires on a gravel hill needs a different cart than a church usher in a parking lot.

Fleet golf carts get picked by the job, not by the brochure. You know which cart on your lot fits each answer. He does not.

How do you find fleet buyers near your store?

You do not wait for the February call. You make a list.

The list of twenty. Sit down with a map. Write twenty properties inside the distance your service truck will drive. Next to each one, the name of the person who runs the grounds or the building. That person, not the front desk.

The people in town who already send you retail buyers know who runs what. That side is in golf cart dealer local partnerships. A partner sends you buyers. A fleet account is the buyer.

The first call. You are not selling a cart on this call. You are asking for fifteen minutes on his property. A template:

“Hi, this is Travis at the golf cart store on the highway. I look after the business accounts here. I drive past your place every week and I see your crew on carts. I would like to stop by for fifteen minutes, see what your carts do all day, and leave you a name to call when one goes down. Is Thursday morning or Friday after lunch better?”

Then stop talking.

If he says they are all set, ask one question: “Who works on them when one quits?” The answer tells you whether there is a door. The rest of the words for the phone are in the golf cart dealer sales script.

What happens on the site visit?

You walk his property and watch the job the cart does.

Leave the brochure in the truck. Bring a notepad and the seven questions. Ask him to show you a normal day. Ride along if he offers.

Look for what he will not think to tell you:

• Where the carts sit at night, and whether there is power there.
• The steepest hill and the worst stretch of path.
• What is strapped on with bungee cords, because the cart was the wrong cart.
• Which cart is parked behind the barn with a flat tire and weeds around it.

Count his carts and note the shape each one is in. You need that for the trade.

Then ask how his organization buys. Who signs. Whether he needs more than one quote. When next year’s budget gets set. Some organizations lease instead of buy; what you can offer depends on your lenders, so ask them.

Get the name of the person who signs. Spell it right. Before you leave, tell him what comes next: “I will have a one-page quote in your hand this week.” Then do it.

What goes on a one-page fleet quote?

Everything the person who signs needs to say yes, because he was not on the walk.

The manager hands your quote to someone who has never met you. That page is your salesperson in a room you are not in. Here is one as a template. The carts, the names and the prices are made up.

• Prepared for: Mike, grounds manager, and the owner who signs, by name.
• The carts: four four-seat carts with tops, windshields, lights and a rear-facing seat, $9,800 each. Two two-seat carts with a cargo bed and a hitch, $11,400 each. Six carts, $62,000.
• What is on each: listed cart by cart, in words he can read out loud to his boss.
• His old carts: we haul off all six. Trade credit, $5,400. Price after the trade, $56,600.
• Delivery: all six to his maintenance barn in the week he picks, before his season opens.
• Walk-through: on delivery day we show his crew the charging routine and the daily check.
• Service: one visit at his property before the season opens and one when it closes, with what each visit covers.
• When a cart is down: he calls Travis. The same day, we tell him when a tech will be there and whether a loaner is coming.
• Who to call: Travis, cell number on the page. The service manager as the backup.

Every figure in that quote is invented. Yours come off your own lot and your own cost.

If he wants a longer service agreement in writing, have your attorney look at any agreement before it goes out.

How do you price several carts without giving the store away?

Price the order. Do not discount the cart.

A fleet buyer expects a better number for six carts than a family gets for one. Fair. The order earns it: one trip with the trailer, one set of paperwork, one buyer to look after instead of six. But the number comes from your cost, not from his hope.

Know your floor before you leave the store. What you own each cart for. What it costs to prep and deliver. What a service visit costs you in a tech’s day. Without those, you are guessing in front of a man with two other quotes in his truck.

Give in service before you give in price. A second visit, a loaner when a cart is down, a walk-through for his summer hires. Those solve the thing he fears. Money off does not.

Do not chase the cheapest quote. Ask what the cheap quote does when a cart quits on a holiday weekend.

His old carts are part of the number. Six tired carts are not a problem. They are inventory. Take them in trade or buy them outright. Put a real figure on them the way you would on any trade; the method is in golf cart trade-in appraisal. Fleet trades are one answer to where do golf cart dealers buy used carts: several at once, the same model, and you saw the barn they lived in. They go through golf cart reconditioning and onto your lot for the family who wants a clean used four-seater.

Why is service the reason a fleet buyer stays?

Because the down cart on a Saturday in season is the whole relationship.

Picture the Saturday of a holiday weekend. The campground is full. A cart quits at the gate at 9:00 in the morning. The manager calls the number on your quote.

If a person answers, knows his name and tells him a tech or a loaner is on the way, he remembers it when the budget comes around. If it rings to voicemail until Monday, the next six carts come from somebody else.

So decide the answer before you sell the carts:

• Who picks up the phone on a weekend in season.
• Whether you fix it at his property or haul it in.
• Whether a loaner goes out, and from where. A store that rents carts already has loaners on the lot, which is one more reason to read golf cart rentals for dealers.

If your shop cannot answer those today, fix the shop first. How to build that side of the store is in growing a golf cart service department.

A family forgives a slow repair. A fleet buyer cannot. His boss is watching the gate.

Who owns fleet accounts at your store?

One person. By name.

Not “whoever is up.” The manager of a resort will not explain his property to a new salesperson every time he calls. Pick the person on your floor who likes driving out and returns calls. In a small store, that person is the owner.

The account sheet

One sheet per account. Paper or a spreadsheet. On it:

• The person who uses the carts, and his cell.
• The person who signs, spelled right.
• When the budget gets set.
• Every cart they run: what it is, when it went to work, what has been done to it.
• The last contact and the next one.

When that salesperson leaves, the sheet stays. The account belongs to the store.

Follow-up through the year

Tie every contact to his calendar, not yours. In this order:

1. After delivery. Go back once the carts have worked. Ask the crew, not the manager, what bugs them.
2. Before his season. The service visit. Every cart checked while a problem is still cheap.
3. In his busy stretch. One short call. “Any cart down?” Then get off the phone.
4. When his season ends. What gets stored, what gets fixed, what should be replaced.
5. Before his budget is set. Bring next year’s quote before he asks. This is the contact that sells the next carts.

It is the same habit as golf cart lead follow up, stretched over a year. And it is the idea behind golf cart dealer customer retention: the buyer you already delivered to is the easiest one to sell again.

What mistakes lose a fleet account?

1. Quoting from the desk. A number over the phone, for carts you picked without seeing the hill, the barn or the load.
2. No service answer. “Bring it in and we will look at it” is a retail answer. He has a full property and no time to trailer a cart to you.
3. Treating him like a walk-in. Showing him colors and wheels. Talking about fun.
4. Losing the name of the person who signs. The manager liked you. The quote went to a business office that never heard of you.

When is fleet work not worth it for a store?

Sometimes it is not. Skip it for now if:

• Your shop is already behind. A fleet account buys service first and carts second. If retail customers already wait on repairs, six more carts make it worse.
• Nobody can leave the building. No truck, no trailer, no tech who works on a cart in somebody else’s barn.
• The property is outside your service drive. The sale is easy. The Saturday call from two hours away is not.

Fleet work is slow. An order can take a season to land, because his budget moves on his calendar. A store that needs carts sold this weekend should work the lot first. A store with a good shop and a quiet winter should start the list of twenty.

Where does Cart Launch fit?

We do not call fleet buyers for you. We do not write your quotes, bid on anything or service a cart. Your team does that.

What we build is the online showroom he checks before he calls you back. Every cart has its own page with real photos, a real price and the details in text. Your team keeps it current from a phone. You see which carts got looked at and who reached out. The domain and the content stay yours.

The manager gets your quote, and then he or the person who signs types your store’s name into a phone. Same as the family does. If the carts on your quote are on your site with photos and prices that match the paper, the quote reads like it came from a real store. If the site says “call for price” over three stock photos, the paper has to do all the work alone. That is the job of a golf cart inventory website.

Between the owners there is 14+ years operating in 8-figure golf cart dealerships.

If you want your showroom ready before that manager looks you up, book a call.

Keep reading

• Golf cart dealer local partnerships: the people in town who send you buyers
• Golf cart rentals for dealers: what changes when you add a rental fleet
• The golf cart sales process: from first message to delivery