Boosted sales more than 100% per year and helped build a new plant.
Traditional travel trailer dealers were a little befuddled by
TrailManor's unique trailers that fold down like tent campers, yet
have hard walls, a bathroom, and other amenities you'd expect in
conventional trailers.
Because dealers didn't understand the product, they couldn't sell it
effectively. Sales were dropping at dealerships and dealerships were
dropping TrailManor.
TrailManor wanted a program to bolster sagging sales at
the dispirited dealerships, many of whom were only
selling three or four trailers a year.We told them this was a plan for disaster.
Instead, a BrainPosse team developed a marketing
strategy that called for abandoning unsuccessful dealers
and focusing on reinforcing the efforts of the few
strong TrailManor dealers capable of selling significant
numbers of trailers.
The team also identified the key characteristics of the
successful dealers (typically aggressive used car
dealers and other entrepreneurs who were good
salespeople first, and RV dealers second) and devised a
program to recruit more dealers who shared those
characteristics.
We created direct mail that showed the tremendous
profitability available to dealers from TrailManor
Trailers (about three times that of a conventional
travel trailer), and dealer support materials such as
direct mail that were so predictably effective that
TrailManor could show dealer prospects how many trailers
they could expect to sell during their first major sales
and how much money they could expect to make.
As the company began establishing new dealerships, we
developed a new brochure that focused on TrailManor's
affordable luxury, a video plant tour, a new website,
and even a television commercial. The campaign showed
consumers who had been spending $10,000 and up to buy
canvas tent campers how for just a little more, they
could have a hardwall trailer with a bathroom.
Sales grew at 100% a year, year after year. The
once-struggling company had to move out of its old
converted textile mill into a brand new manufacturing
plant that was twice as big, and designed specifically
for building its travel trailers.
