At ConExpo, the world’s leading construction conference, Caterpillar (Cat) dealers were having trouble connecting with current and potential clients. The conference had too much to see. Customers didn’t want to stop and talk on the show floor, plus, the event was too loud, making lengthy conversations difficult. The dealers needed a way to catch these customers while they were all in the same place in a way that was more conducive to conversation. In this case, the conversation is about stripping, cleaning, repairing, and rebuilding a piece of Cat equipment that the customer already owns. This service doubles the life of the equipment and the price starts at $200k (a fraction of the million+ price tag of a brand new machine).
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At Conexpo, there is an entire conference center filled with shiny new equipment with the latest bells and whistles pulling for buyer's attention. With over 2,000 exhibitors, 150 educational sessions, and 130,000 attendees, a Cat dealer's biggest competition for selling rebuilds is the rest of the event going on around them. While rebuilding a piece of equipment is significantly cheaper than buying new and has a much higher profit margin for the dealer, it is a hard sell in a noisy, crowded room full of the latest and greatest new models.
My team proposed a solution that would put the dealers in a better spot to start conversations with their customers and create the same sort of special experience that they would get from purchasing a brand new, million-dollar machine. Our idea was to put on an all-inclusive V.I.P. event in the same location as ConExpo on one of the evenings after the conference closed.
Dealers invited the customers that they thought would be most open to an equipment rebuild to talk with them, one-on-one, in a setting with less people and distractions. The event was held at a facility that lets participants drive high-end race cars around a private circuit. After the racing, there was a cocktail hour where dealers could connect with their customers and give them information about rebuilds. At the end of the night, customers were asked to sign on for an exclusive rate if they rebuilt one or more of their machines in the following year.
To heighten the sense of exclusivity and give the dealers one more chance to connect with their customers, we put together a custom invitation package that dealers hand-delivered to invitees a few weeks before the event. It included some information on rebuilds and the event as well as a lanyard and V.I.P. badge that served as their ticket for the night. The invitation had to be informational but also needed to make the customer feel special, like they were part of an exclusive club. I focused a lot on presentation and finishes, designing a false bottom for the box that allowed everything to fit together perfectly.
Race to rebuild was a huge success. The night of the event, 12 customers signed on for over 20 rebuilds. Dealers felt that the chance to talk with their customers, even the ones that did not sign on for rebuilds, was invaluable. The V.I.P. badges were such a point of pride for some of the attendees that they wore them for the duration of the conference.
