Chances are you received in the mail or have been approached with a great offer to stay at a luxurious resort for an unbelievably low fee. The small catch is that you agree to attend a 45 minute sales presentation. Seems innocuous enough, right?
An offer like this usually involves a timeshare. This program will usually allow you to purchase a weeks vacation at that specific resort or allow you to possibly trade with another owner and visit some other exotic destination. Determining if the program is financially feasible and makes sense is up to you.
I have attended three presentations in the course of about twenty years. You sit down with a sales advisor who has offered you a beverage and a snack and begin to make small talk. They are all basically the same starting with: Do you like to vacation? What do you like to do on vacation? If you could go anywhere on vacation where would you go? Blah Blah Blah.
See a pattern here. They are throwing you some very easy to answer questions, all designed to get you in the frame of mind to say “yes”. They have this down to a science. Effectively using questions to sell a prospect is an art form. You won’t have any idea that your wallet is missing.
Everything goes really well until you decide this program may not be for you. The sales person you have been speaking with will usually bring their boss over. Its the typical good cop, bad cop routine. They know that if you do not sign the contract within the next ten minutes, they will never see you again. At this point they are not afraid to belittle you or humiliate you into signing a contract. The video below is an excellent example:
I think the timeshare philosophy is much like the airlines. If they make you mad or upset, there are 200 million more prospects out there. I once told the presenter we were sitting with that I wanted some time to think it over and I would call him in the next few days. His reply “when you call, ask for blue boy, I will be the one holding my breath”. Touche!
About Doug Willis
Ha, yes, the manager…that’s a good (but funny) example of what a high-pressure sales tactic could involve. I don’t think a lot of people realize that when they elect to sit through these presentations — it’s not something I would put myself through after doing the research. As my “website link” I put another video I found through google about succumbing to these presentations; I think it was made by a company offering escape routes from timeshares. Also good viewing, although not as funny, actually kind of sad.
Attempting to shame someone is not the way to acomplish an objective. Maybe it only serves to produce a temporary feeling of superiority.