Snowbird Golf Cart Buyers: Selling to Seasonal Residents Who Shop From Two States Away

Snowbird golf cart buyers decide about the cart before they leave home. She picks it in October, from a kitchen up north, and she picks the dealer who answered her from that far away. Then she decides again in April: store it, sell it, or haul it home.

Win both and you sell her a cart, store it every summer, service it every spring and buy it back when she is done. The owner whose second home is at the beach shops the same way, and that sale is in beach house golf cart buyers. The family that keeps a summer site at a campground is covered in campground golf cart buyers.

Who are snowbird golf cart buyers, and why do they shop from two states away?

Tuesday night in October, a little after eight. A couple at a kitchen table in Ohio. The winter house is on the calendar for the 15th. She has her phone out and she is looking at golf carts. Not carts near the summer house. Carts near the winter house, a long drive south, because that is where the cart is going to live.

She is not going to see it before she buys it. She wants it sitting in the carport, charged, the day they pull in. So she is shopping dealer websites at night with a short list: seats, battery, price, can you deliver to the community, can you hold it until the 15th.

Seasonal resident golf cart sales go to the dealer who answered those questions before she asked them. The cart page that said “we deliver to the parks and communities, ask about summer storage” got a message that Tuesday night. The page that said “call for price” did not.

When do seasonal residents decide about a golf cart?

Twice a year, on two calendars.

The arrival calendar: October through December. She books the cart before the drive, or in the first two weeks after she gets in, when the neighbors are all rolling past the porch in theirs.

The departure calendar: March and April. She is packing the car and looking at the cart in the driveway. Store it here. Sell it here. Take it home. Storing it means she buys from you again next fall without shopping.

A winter resident golf cart dealer builds the year around those two windows, and how to plan the quiet months between them is in golf cart dealer slow season.

What does a winter resident want from a golf cart dealer?

Four things, and none of them is the lowest price.

A cart that is ready the day she arrives. Charged, washed, in the carport, key where she told you to leave it. If your answer is “come pick it up when you get in,” she buys from whoever says “it will be there on the 15th.”

Storage over the summer. Dry, indoors, batteries looked after.

A service check before she leaves. Batteries, brakes, tires and charger, the last week of March. Book it the day you deliver.

Delivery to the park or the community. To her site in the RV park, or the driveway in the 55+ community, through the gate you already know the code to.

Selling golf carts to seasonal residents is a service sale that starts with a cart. Spell those four things out on the cart page and you get the deal without a price fight.

What does the cart page have to answer from two states away?

Everything she would have asked on the lot, because she is not coming to the lot.

• Real photos of the actual cart. Every side, the seats, the dash, the battery compartment with the cover off. The photos are her test drive.
• A price. “Call for price” from two states away means she calls the other dealer.
• Seats, battery and the basics in text. Four seats or six. Lithium or lead acid, and how old the pack is.
• A line about delivery, storage and holding. “We deliver to the parks and communities around town. Ask about summer storage, or holding this cart until you arrive.”
• A way to ask about this exact cart. So your salesperson knows which unit she means Wednesday morning.

Answering that list is the job golf cart dealer websites are supposed to do: be a dealership she can buy from in October instead of one she has to visit in November. What a page built around one cart looks like is in golf cart online showroom.

And name the communities you deliver to. She is typing her park’s name and “golf cart” into her phone. How to build a page for each one is in golf cart dealer service area pages.

What do you say when her son calls about a cart for his mother?

Sometimes the buyer is not the snowbird. It is her son, on his lunch break, a few states away from both of you.

Wednesday, 12:15. He has your cart page open at work. His mother heads south next month and has talked about a cart since August. She wants to know the cart will be in the carport. He wants to know she is not getting taken. So he asks harder questions, and fast.

What he needs from the call:

• The exact cart. “The white four-seater with the lithium pack.” Have the page open so you are both looking at the same unit.
• One out-the-door price. Delivery to her community and any add-ons included. He is going to repeat it to his mother tonight.
• Who she will deal with. Your name and a direct number, not a main line.
• A link he can send her. The cart page, so she sees the photos and says yes at her own table.

Then ask: “Do you want to put a deposit down so we hold it for her?” How to run the whole call is in golf cart phone sales.

Write down both numbers. He bought it. She drives it. Each one gets a text the morning it is delivered.

How do you hold a cart until she arrives?

With a deposit, and one sentence that says exactly what the deposit does.

Picture the four-seater she picked on Tuesday night. She arrives on the 15th. Without a deposit, that cart sits on your page for a month, and a local buyer walks in on a Saturday and drives it home. Now you are calling a woman two states away to tell her the cart she told her neighbors about is gone.

The script is short: “I can hold this exact cart with a deposit. I will mark it sold on the site today, and it goes in your carport charged and washed the morning you get in. The balance is due on delivery.”

Then do what you said:

1. Take the deposit while she is still on the phone.
2. Mark the cart sold on your site that day.
3. Tag it in the building with her name and arrival date.
4. Send her a photo of the tagged cart, and the deposit terms in plain words.

How to take one and what happens next is in golf cart deposit.

How do you reach her before she drives south?

Two lists. The people who already know you, and their neighbors who do not.

Last year’s buyers

An email in September and a text the morning the cart is ready. Your team sends both.

You already have the list. Everybody who bought a cart last winter. Everybody who messaged about a four-seater in November and did not buy. Email them in September and you are the dealer they already know, not one of three pins on a map.

A template your salesperson can send:

Subject: Ready for your cart when you get back?

Hi NAME, it’s YOUR NAME at the dealership. Your four-seater is in the back of the building, batteries topped off, right where we left it in April. Tell me the date you get in and I will have it charged, washed and in your driveway that morning. If you have been thinking about a bigger one, here are three six-seaters on the lot right now, with prices.

For the ones who asked and did not buy, same email, this week’s carts in the middle. How to build the list is in golf cart dealer email marketing.

Then the text, the morning the cart is in her driveway. “Hey NAME, it’s YOUR NAME. Your cart is in the carport, charged, key in the cup holder. Safe drive.” The rest of the texts are in golf cart dealer text message marketing.

And her Tuesday night message needs an answer Wednesday morning, not Friday. The rhythm is in golf cart lead follow-up.

Her neighbors up north

Facebook, aimed at the towns her neighbors come from, in October. How to set that map is in golf cart Facebook ad targeting.

Pull last winter’s delivery addresses and look at where those buyers live in the summer. Snowbirds can come in clusters, because a neighbor told a neighbor.

So in October, aim an ad at those ZIP codes up north, not the ones around your store. The ad says what the cart page says: “Heading south this winter? Your cart can be in the driveway the day you arrive.” The click goes to the cart page, not the homepage.

The dealer near her summer house is not talking to her about a cart, because she is leaving. The setup is in Facebook ads for golf cart dealers.

What does delivery day look like when she arrives after the cart is ready?

The cart is ready on the 10th. She gets in on the 15th. Those five days are where a good sale goes sideways.

The battery sits. On the 15th the cart shows up with a low charge and a dusty seat, and that is what she tells the neighbors.

So run the late-arrival delivery off a list:

1. The day before. Charge it full. Wash it. Check tires, lights and horn. Confirm the address and the gate code.
2. The morning of. Text her: “Your cart goes out at nine. Is the carport still the spot?”
3. At the house. Park it where she said, charger beside it, key where she asked.
4. The photo. The cart in her carport, clean, in good light. Send it to her, and to her son if he made the call.
5. The walk-through and the service date. Book a ten-minute walk-through for when she is settled, and put the March service check on the calendar.

The photo does three jobs. She sees the cart is there before she pulls in. Her son sees the money was well spent. And it is a cart in a real carport in her community, which is what the next buyer from her town wants to see. Why every sale ends with one is in golf cart delivery photo, and the full handoff is in golf cart delivery checklist.

Why does a storage program beat the dealer near her summer house?

Because the cart is the easy part and the summer is the hard part.

She does not want a cart problem all summer: batteries dying in a hot carport, a neighbor asked to check on it, seats cooking in the sun.

The storage program answers all of it. In April you pick the cart up, do the service check, and put it in your building. In October she emails you a date, and you drop it in her driveway charged and washed. And twice a year she is standing in your showroom next to the new six-seaters. That is where the upgrade comes from, and the referral, because the neighbor at the park asks “who stores yours?”

Write the program down, pickup to return, and put it on the cart page. A storage program that lives only in the service manager’s head does not sell carts to anyone who has not walked in.

And tag every stored cart. Say you have thirty in the back with no system: fine in June, a problem in October when a customer emails and nobody can find hers. Treat the stored fleet like inventory you do not own, the way it is laid out in golf cart dealer inventory management.

What about the cart she keeps up north for the summer?

Some snowbirds own two carts. One at the winter house. One at the summer place, at the lake or the cottage, parked from October to May.

If your store is in the south, ask about it. “Do you have a cart up north too?” She might sell it and keep one cart down here, or bring it down and store it with you.

If your store is up north, she is the buyer who leaves in October, and the conversation is winter storage. Have it in September, before the car is packed: “When you head south, we pick up the cart, service it and keep it inside until May.” How a northern dealer runs that program is in golf cart winter storage.

The summer place shops like a second home, and that buyer is in lake house golf cart buyers. Same buyer, two dealers, two storage programs. The one who asks first gets the conversation.

What happens in April?

Three things, and each one is a sale if you are there for it.

The service check. She booked it in October. Batteries, brakes, tires, charger. If the cart goes into storage, it goes in ready.

The trade-in. Two winters on a four-seater, and the neighbors all have six-seaters with the rear-facing seat for the grandkids. April is when she says “next year we want a bigger one.” The right answer is a number for her cart and a six-seater held for October. Nobody else gets a shot at that deal, because it happened in your service bay.

The used cart that comes back on the market. The ones who are not coming back next year sell in April. That is a used cart with low hours and a history you already know. Say it is a four-seater at a made-up $8,900. Buy it outright or sell it for her, and put it on your site with real photos and a price the day it comes in.

Watch those carts. A trade that came in during April and is still sitting in July is the one that costs you, and how to move it is in aged golf cart inventory.

The snowbird’s spring is your used row’s best month, if you are the dealer she calls first.

Where does she live, and why does it matter to your dealership?

Two places, and they are two different sales.

The RV park. Sites close together, and the cart is how she gets to the pool, the mailboxes and Tuesday night cards. One cart delivered the day the neighbors pull in is the best ad you will run in that park. Get to know the park manager.

The 55+ community. A house, a garage, a course out the back, and the cart is the second car. She asks the community group online where everyone bought theirs, and the answer is the dealer who delivered to the street. How to sell into those neighborhoods all year is in 55+ community golf cart sales.

Both names go on your site, because they are what she types. The biggest winter markets are laid out in Florida golf cart dealer marketing and Arizona golf cart dealer marketing.

Every other market is in golf cart dealer marketing by state.

Where does the snowbird season sit in your yearly marketing plan?

The snowbird does not shop on the local buyer’s calendar. She decided weeks before she arrived, so her season starts before anyone is on your lot.

• August. Check the stored fleet. Photos and prices up on the carts you want to sell this winter.
• September. The email to last year’s buyers and unsold leads. Northern stores have the storage talk.
• October. Facebook ads up north. Calls from sons and daughters. Deposits.
• November and December. Deliveries, photos, walk-throughs, March service dates.
• March and April. Service checks, storage pickups, trade-ins, used carts coming back.
• May through July. Sell the used row before it ages.

The full twelve-month version is in golf cart dealer marketing plan, and when buyers shop in each part of the country is in when do golf carts sell.

Stop hoping for a big winter. Start building one on purpose.

Where does Cart Launch fit?

We build the cart page she reads from the kitchen table in Ohio. Your team does the rest.

Every cart on your lot gets its own page in your online showroom: real photos, the price, the seats and the battery in text, and the line about delivery and storage. Your team updates it from a phone, so when the four-seater sells on Tuesday the buyer up north is not falling for it on Wednesday. You see which carts got looked at and who reached out. The domain and the content stay yours.

We do not send the September email or the morning-of text. We do not call, take the deposit or run your storage program. Your team does that, because it is the relationship.

We also run Facebook, Instagram and Google ads for dealers, laid out in Google Ads for golf cart dealers. We do not answer or follow up those leads. Your team does.

Between the owners there is 14+ years operating in 8-figure golf cart dealerships. One dealership went from 24 carts sold in a month to 72 aged golf carts in 45 days, in winter.

Get a Free Audit before this winter: book a call. We audit your online sales process, how buyers find your store, what they see and what happens after they reach out, and walk you through where the biggest opportunities are.

Keep reading

• Golf cart dealer slow season: what to do when the lot goes quiet
• Golf cart dealer email marketing: the list you already own
• Golf cart dealer text message marketing: sound like a person, sell the cart