3 ways not to get the sale

Long story coming, but it’s worth it.

I received a call last week informing me that my brother-in-law just won a free vacation and he wanted me to win one too. It was Worldmark by Wyndham calling, and they wanted me to come in and sit through one of their presentations on time shares. They are not actually time shares in the conventional sense of the word, but they are similar.

So I said ok, convinced April that we would get at least a free night stay and dinner, and booked the date to attend the presentation. Most of you have probably been to one of these things, so I’ll spare you all the details, but suffice it to say that it was a typical sales environment. There was loud music, happy employees greeting us, drinks, cookies – all aimed at softening us up for the upcoming sales pitch.

We spoke to our “representative” about our dream vacation and nice feel good type stuff, then proceeded into a large presentation room where we listened to a guy talk about how we needed to start going on planned vacations if we were ever going to be happy in our lives.  Typical expected sales stuff – no big deal.

We then went back to our representative and he explained why they differ from everyone else.  I admit that I think their idea is great and anybody should at least look at it to see if it’s for them.  I can see how a lot of people would be really interested in this program.  We were as interested as anybody else, but then he got to price.  We listened to him, talked it over privately, and decided that this vacation deal was not in our budget at this time.  We went over our reasons with him – both of us being full-time students, looking for a better job, debt payment plans not allowing superfluous vacationing expenses, and so on.  We felt ready to pick up our free vacation and leave.  But no.

Our representative, who was very courteous throughout the entire process, tried to overcome our objections to no avail.  He even brought over his superior, who was also very nice, but couldn’t sell us either.  They both gave up, then told us that they were going to have another guy come over who would verify that our representative was on his best behavior and did everything he could to please us.  So he came over, but they hadn’t told us the truth.  He was another salesman.  He was a bit more pushy than our representative but we told him no without going into all the details that we had just explained.  He then told us that they would like us to fill out a survey before we left.

Another half-truth.  The next guy was an other salesman, but this one really got under my skin.  He said he was from “corporate” and that he would be giving us a survey to fill out.  So he proceeded to pull out the survey, turned it over and gave us the “what do I have to do to get you out of here today with this car” speech.  Anything we told him went in one ear and out the other.  He was the type of salesman that tries to make you feel stupid by making the deal seem too good to be true.  He offered some no obligation trial plan that might have been nice had we decided to buy, but our minds were made up at this point.

What really got to me was when he said something to the effect of “Well most people like to spend quality time with with their loved ones.  I like to spend quality time with my loved ones.  I guess you guys just don’t like to spend quality time with each other.  I guess you guys just don’t think it’s that important.  Quality time is a good thing though.”  He said this whole thing with one of those smug faces that makes you want to reach across the table and lay him out flat.

Needless to say he ruined the pleasant experience I had been having up until that point.  He then carelessly led us over to some guy who gave us the free vacation.  He didn’t say anything else to us.  Not a thanks for coming in, not a hope to see you again soon.  We were dead to him.

So, three bits of advice for these guys:

1.  Tell people the truth.  Don’t speak in half-truths or flat out lies.  If you are going to throw three levels of sales at them, then tell them.

2.  Don’t insult their intelligence.  If they’re not buying, don’t treat them like idiots.  Chances are they really do like your product and they’ll either come back when the time is right or they’ll refer someone to you.  Don’t ruin it by being a smug jerk.

3.  Act like you still care about their business if they turn you down.  Most no’s mean “not right now”.  If you act like you never want to see them again, then guess what, you won’t.  They’ll take their business elsewhere and chances are they’ll tell their friends to stay away from you.

Can you guess my opinion of Worldmark by Wyndham?

Tags: Worldmark by Wyndham, sales, salesman, hotel, timeshare