Special event venues are often overlooked by golf cart dealers. This is a shame because these venues are numerous and they’re the types of businesses that like to create relationships to other businesses that have a local footprint. This means that they’re often seeking business partnerships with local employers, but this doesn’t mean you can rely on them to seek you out. Golf carts for event venues are an overlooked opportunity, but they aren’t one that will always come knocking on your door.
Prioritize Flexibility
This is, in part, because special event venues are often overwhelmed with the amount of work they have to do. Staffing is often low compared to the needs of the venues, and staff are often asked to take on multiple roles – switching back and forth as different events demand. Such special event venues include wedding venues, concert venues, and business retreats that make themselves available for exercises like team building.
These are venues that often cater to many different kinds of event. They have to be flexible, which means they need their personnel and the tools they use to be flexible as well. The key here isn’t to pitch them golf cart builds that are good at one job, but to focus on the versatility of a customized golf cart that can be adapted to fit many jobs.
Take an outdoor wedding venue, for instance. On a weekday, it might be used for maintenance of the grounds. The next day, it might be used to pre-stage set up for a wedding. It will be carrying lights, speakers, and chairs. On the wedding day, it will be offered with a driver to help shuttle elderly relatives who have trouble walking. Only a golf cart has the versatility to help haul one day and to gingerly shuttle relatives into a fully staged wedding the next day.
Focus on Accessories & Trailers
An approach like this means you need to focus on accessories and their ability to make a customized golf cart versatile in its duties and flexible in its roles. Golf carts for event venues need to be designed with the kind of ground they’ll cover in mind. This means your body (tire choice, controller, lift kit) should be designed for the ground it will deal with and the maximum haul that will be asked of the cart.
Where you should focus your customization is in trailers and time-saving accessories. Keep the golf cart itself to their basic needs. Build a golf cart package instead. They’ll need a utility trailer and a trailer providing extra seating. They’ll need dome lights to provide lighting when they take an event down in the evening. Make sure they have canopies for rain (including one for a seated trailer). If going with a strong battery-powered cart, make sure they consider a rooftop solar panel charger that will save them from having to take recharging breaks.
Special event venues need tools that help them focus on ever-changing roles, and that can eliminate wasted time. Don’t try to up-sell them on the golf cart itself. That’s an easy walk out the door for them. What they’ll value most often isn’t the cart, it’s the flexibility it can provide for them and the time it can save them. Focus on making golf cart builds for them that prize their time and can easily switch between roles. Ask what those roles are so that they can tell you their story, hear the problems that they highlight, and build a golf cart package with them that can ease each of those problems.