At any given time, Mac Tools distributor J.D. Whittington will have a raffle going on his truck.
This month's cover story subject, Whittington says he finds raffles and giveaways have helped to encourage customer engagement and visits to the truck. He says it also allows him the chance to give back to his customers.
When I was on Whittington's truck this past August, he was holding a raffle featuring a BINGO game giving away a Yeti cooler or a Traeger grill. Every $50 payment a customer makes, he or she receives a raffle ticket. In addition to having weekly raffles for smaller items like knives, hats and other apparel, for every six tickets acquired, a customer receives a bingo sheet. The customer keeps those existing tickets, marked by Whittington, so he or she can still participate in the weekly raffles as well.
Whittington says the BINGO game has provided by far the most engagement. He also says customers will readily pay more on their balance, and subsequently receive more raffle tickets, when he is giving away a firearm.
“Sometimes they go quick, sometimes they drag on,” Whittington says about raffles.
The raffles generally require a payment to participate.
“Most of my guys are $50 payments per week,” says Whittington, which is the typical amount required to receive a raffle ticket. “It'll push a lot of guys that were $20, $25, $30 (payments) a week, now they'll do $50.”
The raffles typically involve some kind of ticketing system, and Whittington makes sure not to include customer names on the tickets in the bin ready for drawings.
“Some guys think it's rigged,” Whittington says. “One of the guys I did training with said, ‘Don't ever put [customer] names on tickets.’ I don't want to play favorites. If you put names on [the ticket] and you get a customer you don't like or is not good, and you'll want to rig it. I don't care who wins. I don't want to know.”
There is a secondary reason not to include a customer’s name on the tickets: it encourages the customers to come out to the truck to check their tickets against the winning ones.
“If they want to know who won, either they have to have their buddy come out and take a picture of it, or they have to come out [to the truck], so this creates a ton of traffic,” Whittington says. “And the best shops are the shops you don't even have to walk into.”
Read the mobile tool truck business profile "You Get What You Give" featured in the September 2017 issue of Professional Distributor, to learn more about how Whittington runs his business.
