CRESTVIEW — To businessmen like Dale Henderson, a Lee Buick/GMC sales executive, the Triple B Cookoff is more than downtown’s premier spring festival.
It’s a giant sales opportunity.
For five or six years, the dealership has exhibited vehicles at the festival, and each year it’s sold every one of them. At last year’s festival, Lee displayed — and sold — eight cars and trucks.
The cookoff offers high visibility for the dealer that can't be beaten, Henderson said.
“You have 10- or 12,000 people walking by,” he said. “It’s hard to get 10- or 12,000 people walking into the dealership.”
People may not buy a new car or truck on the spot, but for two — and sometimes more — weeks after the Triple B, customers continue to walk into the State Road 85 dealership and inquire about vehicles they saw on display.
“They would come in and say they saw it at the festival,” Henderson said. “One guy came in and asked to see the truck he wanted but we’d already sold it. But he bought a similar one.”
‘PRETTY AWESOME’ SALES OPPORTUNITY
Nothing beats a potential customer who's at the cookoff, enjoying the food and already in a good mood, Henderson said.
“It’s better than seeing a picture on a piece of paper,” he said. “When they can see it (a vehicle) and touch it and sit inside of it and see the features and what it does, it makes it pretty awesome.”
Originally Henderson began as a barbecue judge, but soon he discovered there were so many people interested in his vehicles he had to devote more time to car sales.
“We thought during the judging we’d have a lot of people interested about the vehicles,” he said. “I was a judge for two years, but I had to stop because we had so many people interested in the cars.”
Being a festival sponsor turned out to be a shrewd business move as well as a good way to foster community relations, Henderson said.
“To get your word out and get your face out there and push your product out there, it helps tremendously,” he said. “Every vehicle we’ve ever had there we sold.”
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Triple B: Cookoff is a 12,000-person showroom for this Crestview car dealership