If you've ever been on a timeshare presentation, or thinking of going on one, be sure to read this guest blog from Bobby, a former timeshare salesperson. Extremely honest and well-written. Bobby's contact information can be found at the bottom of the post.
So you’re going to go on a timeshare
presentation. You’re not really sure how
this happened, but you’re going. Maybe
you got a postcard, maybe you were on vacation and accepted those
Disney/Universal tickets, maybe you answered an ad on Craigslist, and maybe
someone you know is in touch with a person who runs a resort. In any event, you’re going.
Shouldn’t you know what
you’re in for?? Wouldn’t you like to
have some inside information?? Timeshare
and travel club presentations have such a wonderful reputation. How do you do the best for your family??
Back before Wyndham,
there was Cendant. Back before the
Cendant organization bought Fairfield to merge with Equivest, there was Eastern
Resorts. Starting back in 2001, I was a top
salesperson for Eastern Resorts and went through all those changes. Timeshare is a great product but it is sold
and marketed in a horrible way. Before I
went off on my own as an independent investor, I own 141 weeks, I was the Sales
Director at the Newport Bay Club. I
managed to take a lot of the horribleness out of the presentation. Today, let’s talk about how to make that
whole process work for you.
Before even going to the
presentation, you have to decide if timeshare is right for you. It’s not right for everyone – including some
owners. This doesn’t happen as much anymore,
but timeshare resorts are pretty spectacular and some couples fall victims to
the “ether”. This is more likely to
happen if you have your kids with you.
Do yourselves and your “presenter” for the day a favor – leave the kids
with a sitter if you can. If you can’t,
expect the Disney button to get pushed, a lot.
To decide if timeshare
is right for you, you’re going to do 2 exercises. First, ask yourself, “Do we really vacation
at least one week per year as a family??”
You do or you don’t.
Following that, I need
you to do some math. You know what you
spend per night on hotels when on vacation.
Multiply that by 7. Multiply that
by 25. Multiply that by 1.47. Subtract 30,000. That’s the amount of timeshare you should
buy.
So using Newport, RI’s
base numbers, $238/night times 7 = $1666.
Times 25 = $41650. Times 1.47 =
$52,896. Minus $30,000 = $22,896. Ideally, you would not spend more than that
for a timeshare. For fear of boring
everyone with theory, if you email me privately, I will share how the formula
works. I’m sure some of you have figured
it out already. On the presentation, you
should see a version of it except for the “minus $30,000” part.
Ok, so now you’re ready
to go. You have your number in
mind. If you got a card in the mail or
contacted while on vacation, the 90 minute presentation will feel like you’re
being sold vinyl siding. In a lot of
ways, the timeshare presentation and the vinyl siding presentation are exactly
the same. Try to ignore that if you like
the product. If you’re meeting someone
at a resort, the presentation will feel more like you’re buying a combination
of burial plots and insurance on a bad day, just hanging out with a friend on a
good day. Again, if the product is right
for you, try to ignore if the salesperson is in bad day mode.
In both cases, their
goals are the same. Make a friend out of
you, show you a great resort, present a high opening price, and then use a
bunch of tricks to make it feel like you “got a deal”. Everyone in the history of timeshare who
bought at a resort will have some story about the deal they got. Here’s the dirty little secret – you all got
the same price.
So if it’s a great
product, why all the games?? Marketing
cost.
To put you, and every
other couple, in the room it can cost $600.
If there’s a “podium speaker” with a whiteboard or a power point and
they’re staring at 8 couples, they know there’s $4800 in company cost staring
back at them. I was a podium speaker for
a travel club. I know this feeling all
too well.
The company thinks
anybody can sell 1 out of 12. They
expect salespeople who stay with the company to reliably hit 1 out of 10. 1 out of 8 can send you to the hall of fame. At the end of my career I was 1 out of 5. Everything that is about to happen to you,
everything you are about to hear and see, all the games played with pricing is
centered on this math.
For this reason, the
presentation makes the product sound a little more perfect than it is. Plan to spend 65-85% of your vacations at
your home resort so make sure you’re happy with it. RCI and II all work fine. On the presentation, you’ll be asked for 5
dream vacations to reinforce this point.
Problem is real life happens too.
Same things are true for
point systems. You’ll all kinds of
things about “being able to take two weeks after buying only one” and “one week
here in Newport is worth 183 days in Fairfield Glade in Tennessee”. Those things are all true, but 65-85% of the
time, real life happens and you will not take advantage of them.
“Hey Bobby, why are you
bothering with all this when people are giving weeks away for a $1?”
Yes they are – off
season weeks bought because they couldn’t afford the product in the first place
or because the weeks are event centered.
Think about weeks that happen when boat shows and art festivals are in
town. All the hot weeks for $1 have been
scooped up by investors like me. We use
them for rental purposes.
I literally get calls
every week from somebody at some resort saying, “The Jones’s are in their 80’s,
they really don’t want their July week any more, kids aren’t into it, would you
like to take it off their hands??”
That’s why we’re
talking. That’s why you need to know
after 75 minutes of the presentation are over and they finally show you a
price, just like vinyl siding, multiply by .6 and that’s the price you can have
it for. When you say no to the first
price, I can’t even get into all the ways they’re going to “set the narrative
and do the drop”. Most salespeople can’t
remember the various scripts.
Again, at this point,
you know whether you like the resort enough to spend 16 to 20 of the next 25
vacations there. You also know your
bottom line number. Look at your
salesperson square in the face and say, “I know you don’t have the ability to
do this, but we will pay X”.
If the salesperson has
been trained correctly, the following words will come out of their mouth almost
robotically, “So if the price is X, you will do this today?? Which credit card will you use for the
initial investment??”
If they say “down
payment”, they failed my “naughty words” class.
After you answer in the
affirmative, if the salesperson comes back alone with paperwork, you actually
could have gone lower. If they come back
with the “manager”, it has very little to do with you. The manager will have been told by the
salesperson the salesperson’s recounting of the story and the manager will not
believe the salesperson.
The manager can
literally ok any number the computer will accept. So even if he/she says “we can’t do that”,
don’t be surprised when you get up to walk away that suddenly he/she can. Remember that $600?? Use it to your advantage. Don’t be ridiculous but use it to your
advantage.
If you’re going on a
presentation, have two conversations with your partner. Are you really vacation people?? What is your magic number?? Go on the presentation, see an amazing
resort, have an outstanding time. When
you get to the money, remember it’s nothing personal. The number fits or it does not. Be in silent control.
Oh, I didn’t mention
those “gifts” you got for showing up??
Outside of “attraction tickets”, would they be giving them away if the place
was full during those times?, they represent about 4% of that $600. Yeah, good luck with those.
Bobby can be reached at bobby@quahogsunited.com or you can visit his blog at bobbyo1967.wordpress.com
