Should a Golf Cart Dealership Sell LSVs? The Business Side of Adding Them to the Lot

Should a golf cart dealership sell LSVs? Yes, if four things check out this week: buyers are already asking for them, your bay can service them, you can carry the higher-ticket units without starving the cart lot, and your floor can sell a longer, more expensive deal. Miss one and the answer is not yet.

Should a golf cart dealership sell LSVs when the cart lot is already working?

Only when the lot tells you to.

Picture a Tuesday, 2:15 in the afternoon. A couple walks past your front row of lifted four-seaters, and the husband asks your salesperson one thing: “Do you carry the LSV version?” He says no. They thank him, climb back in the truck, and the next lot they pull into is not yours.

Once a season, that is a story your salesperson tells at lunch. Every week, it is a line you are missing.

An LSV, for this article, is the higher-ticket, road-ready unit a maker offers next to its regular carts. A working cart lot does not need it. You add it because buyers are already asking, and because you can stock it, fix it and sell it without hurting the carts that pay the bills.

Take the four checks in order. The first one is free. The other three cost money.

Who is asking for the higher-ticket, road-ready unit?

Find out before you call the rep. It takes a notepad and thirty days.

Put the notepad at the counter. Every time somebody asks for an LSV, make a mark. Walk-ins. Phone calls. Messages at night. A comment under a photo of a lifted six-seater that says “do you have this as an LSV?” Write down which cart the person was looking at when he asked.

A made-up example: say the pad has two marks at the end of the month. That is curiosity. Now say it has two a week, and half of them were standing next to your nicest cart when they asked. That is a buyer who came to buy and left to buy it somewhere else.

This buyer is not a stranger. Often he is the same person who would have bought the top cart on your front row. He wants more unit, and he did his reading before he walked in.

If the pad is empty after thirty days, stop here.

How is an LSV sale different from a neighborhood cart sale?

Five ways. Every one makes the deal longer.

The ticket is higher. A neighborhood cart can sell on a Saturday afternoon. One lap around the lot, a handshake, a deposit. This one rarely does. The buyer goes home to think, and what he thinks about is whatever your salesperson did not answer.

There are more questions. A cart buyer asks about seats, the lift, the battery and the color. This buyer asks all of that, then asks what he has to do after he buys it. That is the paperwork question. The paperwork and the rules differ by state and by town. Check your state and local rules, and ask your maker’s rep what your store has to handle.

More of them ask about a payment. If the payment conversation on your floor is a business card for “a guy we use”, fix that before the first unit lands. The store’s side is in golf cart dealer financing and warranty.

A spouse is in it. She may never see the lot. She sees the listing, on her phone, that night. If the page cannot answer her, the deal stalls, and your salesperson never finds out why.

The shopping starts online. Nobody visits four lots to compare a unit at this price. He compares four websites from the couch, then visits one or two.

It is a cart deal with more steps, and the steps have to be written down. The base version is in the golf cart sales process.

What does adding LSVs do to the cash sitting on your lot?

Adding LSVs to a golf cart dealership puts more money into fewer units. And the money stays there longer when a unit sits.

Each unit costs you more to bring in than a cart, so three of them sitting is not the same problem as three carts sitting. Whatever it costs you to carry inventory, you pay it on a bigger number, every day the unit does not sell. How that cost builds on an aged unit is in golf cart floor plan financing.

The bigger question is what the money pushes out.

Picture the first warm Saturday of spring. The front row is short of the one lifted four-seater everybody wants, because the money went into a row of higher-ticket units back in February. That lot did not grow. It traded a fast cart for a slow one.

One question before you order. Which carts turn fastest on your lot right now, and would you run short of them if this money were tied up for a season?

And if the aged list is already long, clear it before you add a line. Fix the gaps first. Then create more demand. The method is in golf cart dealer inventory management.

Can your service bay and parts counter handle LSVs?

Sell one and it comes back. To your bay, with your name on the receipt.

There is more on these units than on a neighborhood cart. More for a tech to learn. More part numbers for the counter. Picture the first one that comes back with a problem your tech has never seen. It sits in the bay for a week waiting on a part, and the buyer who spent more than anyone else on your lot that month calls every morning.

The tech. Has he worked on this unit? If not, who trains him, and does it happen before the first sale or after the first comeback? If the bay is already a person short, read hiring golf cart technicians first.

The parts. Which ones should be on your shelf the day the first unit arrives, and how fast do the others ship?

The bay time. If the bay is booked two weeks out every April, the new units land in that same line. Decide now whether they get a faster lane, and tell the service writer.

A bay that cannot fix what the floor sold turns your biggest sale into your worst review. Growing that side of the store is covered in golf cart service department.

What does selling LSVs ask of your salespeople?

A longer conversation, and a process on paper.

Your best cart closer is good at the fast deal. He reads the family, walks them to the right four-seater, gets them on it and writes it up. This deal has several conversations in it. A first visit. A message at 9 at night. A ride with the spouse on the seat. A payment talk. A follow-up three days out.

A deal with that many steps dies between the steps unless they are written down. Five things, one page:

1. The first answer. How the unit differs from the cart parked next to it, in plain words, the same from every salesperson.
2. The paperwork answer. One person on the floor who knows what your store handles and what the buyer handles, with a one-page sheet to hand over.
3. The ride. Both decision-makers on the unit. How to run it is in the golf cart test drive.
4. The payment talk. Who has it, and when.
5. The follow-up. A link to that unit’s own page, sent the same night, so the person who was not on the lot can look at it.

If your floor already drops cart leads after the first reply, it will drop these too. Each one is a bigger miss.

How do you test LSVs before you commit a row of the lot?

Small, on purpose, with a rule for what happens next.

Here is a made-up test. Set your own numbers.

Say you bring in three units, not twelve. Two in the setup your notepad says people asked for. One that is different, so you learn something. Run them for ninety days like this:

• Front row. Not behind the carts, not by the fence.
• Own pages. Each unit goes on the site the day it lands, with photos of the real unit and a price.
• One owner. One salesperson is the name on these three. He knows the answers and he gets the leads.
• Tech first. The tech is trained before unit one sells.
• One sheet. Every question, message, ride and deal goes on one page at the counter.

And one rule: no second order until a unit from the first one has sold. Tell the rep it is a test.

How do you read the test?

Five lines on the sheet, in the order a deal happens.

Questions asked. How many people asked about the units, in person or on the phone?

Messages. How many came in from the unit pages? Messages with no visits means people are shopping you from the couch and not coming in. Look at the pages before you blame the units.

Test rides. How many people got on one? Questions with no rides means the floor is answering and not inviting.

Deals. How many sold? Did the buyer come in for the unit, or come in for a cart and move up?

Days in stock. These units will sit longer than your fastest cart. The question is whether they sat longer than you planned for.

A made-up example: say the three units drew forty questions, nine messages, six rides and no deals. That is not a demand problem. Something broke between the ride and the yes: the price, the payment talk or the paperwork answer. Fix that and run it again.

Now say they drew almost nothing. Then you carried three units for a season to learn the answer is no. That is cheap next to a full row.

Keep the five lines with the rest of your golf cart dealer KPIs and read them every Friday.

What should you ask the maker’s rep before you order?

Questions only. The answers are the rep’s to give, and you want them in writing.

1. What is the smallest first order you will take?
2. Do I have to keep a set number in stock, or can I reorder as they sell?
3. What happens to a unit that has not sold by the end of the season?
4. How do these units sit on my floor plan, and is it the same as the carts?
5. What training does my tech need before he touches one, and who provides it?
6. Which parts should be on my shelf on day one, and how fast do the others ship?
7. Who does the warranty work, and how does my bay get paid for it?
8. What paperwork does my store handle on every sale, and what do you handle?
9. Who else near me sells this unit?
10. What photos and written details can I use on my own website?

Add one for yourself. Does taking this unit mean signing on with the maker in a way you have not before? That is a bigger decision than three units, and the trade-offs are in authorized vs independent golf cart dealer.

What changes on your website and listings when LSVs join the lot?

The unit needs its own page, and the page has to do more of the selling.

This buyer does his homework online, and so does the spouse. At 10:30 at night they have three dealers open on one phone. One page shows the actual unit on the actual lot, with a price. One shows a brochure photo and “call for price.” One mentions LSVs in a sentence on the home page. Only one of those gets a message.

What changes:

• Every unit gets its own page. One unit, one page, one link your salesperson can text.
• Real photos. The unit on your lot, not the maker’s brochure shot. The shot list is in how to photograph golf carts for sale.
• A real price. The higher the ticket, the less likely a buyer is to call and ask.
• The details in text. Seats, battery, color, what comes on it, what the warranty covers. See how to write a golf cart listing.
• A place of its own. Its own spot in the menu. Not page four, behind sixty carts.

That is what good golf cart dealer websites do for every unit on the lot. The higher-ticket unit just punishes you faster when it is missing.

Once the pages exist, every ad, post and listing for those units points at them. Getting buyers to those pages is the job of your golf cart dealer marketing.

The four mistakes that sink LSVs on a cart lot

1. Ordering a full row before one has sold. A full row is a bet the notepad never backed. Three sold and reordered beats twelve sitting through August.
2. Pricing them like carts. The rule of thumb you use on a four-seater was built on cart costs. This unit costs more to bring in, more to carry while it sits, and more of the bay’s time to stand behind. Work the price from what this unit costs you.
3. Letting them sit behind the carts. On the lot, that is the back row by the service door. On the site, it is the bottom of the inventory page with one photo. A unit nobody walks past and nobody scrolls to did not fail. It was never shown.
4. Nobody on the floor can answer the paperwork question. The buyer asks what he has to do after he buys it. The salesperson says “I think you just…” and the deal is over. The buyer just found out he did more homework than the store.

When is the answer no?

When any one of the four checks fails. Plainly:

• Nobody is asking. Thirty days, an empty notepad. Sell the carts people came for.
• The bay cannot fix them. No trained tech, no parts plan, a bay already behind.
• The cash would come out of your fast carts. If stocking them means running short of the four-seaters that turn every week, the lot gets poorer, not bigger.
• The floor is already dropping leads. If messages on cart listings sit unanswered until Monday, a longer, harder deal will not go better.

No is not forever. It means not yet. Fix the check that failed and run the notepad again next season.

And a store can grow a long way without a new line. That is the subject of how to grow a golf cart dealership.

Where does Cart Launch fit?

We build the online showroom the units sit on. That is our only part in this.

We do not pick your lines. We do not handle titles, paperwork or the rules for you. We do not sell the units. Your team does that.

What we build is the place the higher-ticket buyer does his homework. Every cart and every road-ready unit 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 units got looked at and who reached out. The domain and the content stay yours. How that works on a lot that carries both is on our page about one online showroom for golf carts and LSVs.

Cart Launch works with 55+ dealer partners. Between the owners there is 14+ years operating in 8-figure golf cart dealerships.

If you are putting road-ready units on the lot and want each one on its own page when the buyer goes looking, book a call.

Keep reading

• Golf cart floor plan financing: how it works and what aged units cost you
• Growing a golf cart service department: the other half of the dealership
• Authorized vs independent golf cart dealer: the trade-offs for your dealership