LinkedIn is a fantastic tool. For connecting, employing and learning. However, what I find that what it is most useful for is reading peoples stories and experiences in all sorts of different industries. The below story is my favorite. The writer is a salesman who gets drunk and ends up being sold a timeshare. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending but I think this is a great example of how anyone can be tricked. You don’t have to be “old and vulnerable”. Being in “holiday mode” can be enough to turn anyone’s head.
“Ok, this is one of my more embarrassing stories but since I always try to learn something from my mistakes and hope others do too I figured it was something I had to write about. I’m going to apologize in advance for the length of this post but hopefully you’ll find it entertaining and walk away with a few tips on what not to do when negotiating.
It starts with me in the car on my way to the airport when I got a call from a major hotel chain that I’m an honors member of so I took the call. It was some woman trying to sell me a time share and offering me 3 nights/4 days in Vegas in exchange for 2 hours of my wife and my time to listen to their pitch. Since I have no interest in timeshares based on what I’ve seen others go through I told her I wasn’t interested and went to get off the phone. She hit me with “you don’t like Vegas?” I paused and thought to myself “are you kidding me? I don’t just like Vegas, I LOVE Vegas.” My wife and I not only go once a year to get our gambling fix and act like degenerates pretending like we have no responsibilities but I just happened to be sitting on a $1000 ticket from the Red Sox winning the World Series the year before that needed to be cashed in. (Lesson1: You should have a few ‘go to’ questions you can ask people when cold calling to get their attention and earn a few extra minutes of their time).
She got me to pause and think for a minute and that’s all she needed. I engaged in the conversation. Every objection I had for her she had a response. It was obvious she had been trained well by her company and was ready for whatever I had for her (Lesson2: know all your objections and have at least 1-2 responses for each of them). She did such a good job that I started throwing out random objections just to see how she would handle them. She nailed every one (price, time, not interested, send me info, etc). After going back and forth I finally got her down to $100 for 3 nights/4 days in a suite with VIP tickets to 4 shows, dinner vouchers and some other crap I don’t remember. I still didn’t want the package but I was so impressed with her sales skills I decided to sign up just so she could get credit for it. In my mind, if I didn’t use the tickets I didn’t really care, it was only $100.(Lesson3: how you engage with people throughout the sales process makes a difference and can help differentiate you regardless of your product/solution).
There I was with a package for 3 nights/4 days and $1000 burning a hole in my pocket. I told my wife about the story and then didn’t think much of it until she brought up a few months later. She was itching to go to Vegas and the package was going to expire soon. Against my better judgment I agreed to go. We booked Thursday night to Sunday at the Hilton with the timeshare pitch at 10am on Friday morning. The plan was to get up Friday morning, get drunk, be completely obnoxious and have fun with the crappy timeshare pitch and then party the rest of the weekend on them. She was going to be the good cop, I was going to be the bad cop, etc. We agreed that under no circumstance would we buy the timeshare no matter how attractive the offer was.
We got up Friday morning, went down to the pool and proceeded to enjoy a few cocktails as planned. By the 10:00 we were feeling pretty good and ready to go have some fun. When we showed up they escorted us to a computer where we had to register and answer a bunch of questions about what we liked, where we liked to go, etc. Then a nice older gentleman with an English accent came out to great us. My wife immediately liked him and started joking around with him. If he was some slick sales guy I would have been able to disassociate and treat him as such but this guy was super nice and seemed harmless so it was hard for me to be the “bad cop” right out of the gate. (Lesson4: if you can effectively profile the person and company you are meeting with beforehand you can figure out what approach should work best went trying to develop rapport and connect with them).
We then sat us down in a nice room with a bunch of big screen TVs. The head pitch lady came out and started with “so which one of you is the good cop and which one is the bad cop?” Doh! She called out the objection before there even was one. (Lesson5: If you know the objection is coming then try to get ahead of it and address it before the client can use it against you). She then went on to set the stage and ask everyone to have an open mind, etc. From there the sales guy brought us back to his desk. He started by asking us what kind of trips we liked to take, where we’ve been on past vacations, what our most recent trip was, how often do we take vacations, where do we like to stay, etc. (Lesson6&7: when qualifying, try to ask open ended ‘pleasure’ questions that get them talking instead of diving right into pain. Also, if you want real intel, don’t ask hypothetical questions, ask people to give you specific examples).
After getting a good picture of what we liked and how often we went on vacation he brought out the ROI calculator and asked us to put in our own numbers that we were previously taking about (Lesson8: find a way to get people engaged in your presentation. If you can get them to do something and enter in their own information they are far more engaged and believe the info way more than if you did it for them). Taking “conservative” estimates he mapped out that depending on what package we went with (pre-selling the close) we would make our money back and be net-positive within 8 years. I’ve seen and used ROI calculators in the past and think they’re mostly crap but because of the way he walked us through this one along with the constant flow of drinks they were feeding us it started to make sense. He then piled on by showing us some of the locations and hotels we had had been to in the past and how much less expensive our trips would have been if we used the timeshare instead of paying out of pocket.
Then came the closer. The manager came out from the back room with the “special offers just for us” and started walking us through the options. Our sales guy had actually recommended one of the lower packages but when then manager came out she started talking about how it wasn’t going to get us what we wanted based on what she already knew about us. She “knew us” and knew we wouldn’t be happy with the lower package, playing into our VIP mentality when we travel.(Lesson9: when you know your audience you can play to their psyche and sometimes get them to upsell themselves).
Throughout this entire process my wife kept looking at me as if to say “what the hell is going on here? I thought you were supposed to be the bad cop and get us out of here.” I train on negotiations as a seller and am pretty good at it when it comes to someone buying from me. I never professed to be a great negotiator when it comes to buying things though. There is a difference. I’m good at one and terrible at the other.
As they worked towards the close it was like watching a train wreck without being able to look away, except we were the train. In our inebriated state we closed by telling them if they upgraded us to a bigger suite and gave us a bottle of Dom to celebrate we would sign. They tentatively agreed to both and there it was, we bought a f-ing time share. (Lesson10: don’t get drunk before you go into a negotiation).
As we walked out and started to sober up there was more than a little buyer’s remorse setting in. We went to our room and packed up our clothes to get ready for the move to the new suite. When we got to our new room we noticed it was the exact same room we had but just renovated. Same size and everything. We actually liked the décor of our previous room better than the new one. This was the first thing that we experienced right after the sale. It didn’t support our decision and make us feel better about it, it actually piled onto the buyer’s remorse that we were feeling. Then we had to go back to meet with our sales rep to finalize the paperwork. When we showed up, he had a bottle in a bag waiting for us as we sat down, presumably the bottle of Dom we asked for. We then went through all the paperwork and signed off on everything, still thinking the entire time “what the hell are we doing?” Once everything was signed our guy congratulated us and presented us with a bottle of….Moet…. Wait, what? Moet? We asked for Dom and you bring us Moet? I’m not a Champaign snob but when someone asks for Dom and you bring them Moet that’s like going to a fancy steak house and getting served a Big Mac. He shouldn’t have got us anything. Needless to say, we weren’t impressed. Another thing that didn’t make us feel better about our purchase, only worse. (Lesson11: the sale isn’t over when they sign the contract).
We proceeded to try and forget about the whole experience and enjoy the rest of the time we had in Vegas. We decided to use the VIP tickets to one of the shows and eat at one of the restaurants we got the free passes too as part of the timeshare package. Come to find out the only shows we could go to and restaurants we could eat at with the vouchers were in the Planet Hollywood attached to the Hilton. Needless to say, none of the shows were interesting to us (Zombie Burlesque – seriously?) and all the restaurants sucked. This was strike 3 and 4 for them post sale.
We ended up having a great time in Vegas as we usually do and finally got home Sunday night. On Monday we sat down to talk about whether or not we really wanted this timeshare thing and decided we didn’t. We sifted through the mountains of paperwork to see if there was a way out and found out there was a 5 day cancellation policy. We could get out of the whole thing by writing a cancellation letter and delivering it to their corporate office by midnight on day 5. We were psyched. The only problem was day 5 was Tuesday and we didn’t finalize our decision until Monday night. There were no same-day delivery options that would have gotten the letter there on time. So….I woke up Tuesday morning, cleared my schedule, went to the airport, bought a ticket to Florida, flew down, rented a car, drove to the Hilton corporate headquarters, handed in my letter, took a selfie and a copy for proof, got back in my rental, drove back to the airport, got back on the plane and came home. Yup, that happened. As ridiculous as that sounds, it saved me and my wife quite a bit of cash. I considered it my penance for being an idiot.
I definitely learned a few things throughout this experience that will benefit me moving forward, not the least of which is to never plan on getting drunk before going into a negotiations with trained professionals. I hope you took a few things away from this experience too other than the fact that I’m a degenerate. Good luck and happy selling!”
For more information regarding this article or assistance in any other timeshare related issues please contact the TCA on 01908 881058 or email: info@TimeshareConsumerAssociation.org.uk