I thought, "Well heck it's been quite a minute since the last time I did one of these...sure let's try it!" after all, I'm no babe in the woods when it comes to this game.
Now yes, back in 1988 when I attended my first sales presentation for a timeshare, I was a bit wet behind the ears and, stupidly, I actually signed the contract. My sales resistance was pretty much nil back then and the sales lady somehow got me to believe her line of bull. More accurately though, especially as I look back at it in hindsight, she was just a good judge of character and realize that even though I was a young, good looking guy, I felt I was lacking in friends, popularity, and, since I think she pretty much read the room so to speak, knew I was lacking in male companionship hookups, if you know what I mean. And what I mean is gay sex, LOL.
The place she showed me was a little gayboy's dream...beachside condo-style digs done up in the vogue gray and fuchsia color scheme with a motorized hideaway TV set and a big king size bed. She had me dreaming of all the boys on the beach joining me for an evening of frolicking and fun during my one week of every year sucking off every cute guy from New Smyrna to Daytona Beach. Thankfully my mama talked me out of that sale when I got home and told her about it, I had three business days to cancel it and did so by certified mail just to be sure. Had I gone through with it I'd probably be dead of AIDS now.
Anywho, fast forward to my big move down here to the Sunshine State some 10 years later and now to make ends meet I found employment in vacation sales telemarketing, or, simply called "vacation rooms" dotted in sleepy, rundown strip malls all around O-Town.
Free weekend trips, free cruises, cheap theme park tickets, we were hawking it all just to get rubes down to Orlando so they could attend one of our company's timeshare sales pitches. Now these were your true fly by night outfits. I'm sure the high pressure telemarketing techniques that we used just to get them to say yes to the freebie was small potatoes compared to what they would be hit with by Slick Willy, cringy-looking and acting sales reps locking them in and refusing them to let them leave their sales pitch jail cell without signing on the dotted line.
I'll never forget one place which was actually a little bit above the usual boiler room atmosphere (Marriott Vacation Club) with the dude that sat in the cubicle next to me constantly telling every caller that their friend who referred them just finished their week at the timeshare where they had a "blast." I always thought it funny that he never used any other word. Always "blast." He otherwise didn't sound scripted at all, but when you heard him say that same word time and time again, you knew he had practiced this pitch, probably for hours on end, to get it to sound just right. And he made sales too.
Fast forward again to now, more than 20 years from those timeshare telemarketing days, and I certainly knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this deal.
The outfit seemed reputable enough with an incredibly well-reputed name behind it, Hilton. When I got the email offer I wondered why they chose me. Surely the algorithms are out there on all the information harvesting databases that not only am I unemployed, have no assets other than an 11-year-old car and a 55-year-old mobile home. (We won't take into account the IRA. We know Charles Schwab keeps that secret well hidden from prying eyes, right?) Turns out it was simply because of that very short stay a little over a year ago or so that I wrote about here at that Universal Studios area DoubleTree Hotel. DoubleTree is owned by Hilton. That made me qualify for Hilton Honors points and thus put me on their list of potential rubes. So the fisher of rubes becomes the fish.
I had a choice of a few Hilton Vacation Club resorts in the Orlando area to choose from and I chose their Resort closest to SeaWorld. My mandatory sales presentation however would be conducted at Hilton Grand Vacations Club Parc Soleil. Interesting. My dictating software knew exactly how to spell that. Perhaps they're in cahoots with Hilton? Perhaps everything I'm saying right now is secretly being transmitted and recorded on their servers? Perhaps I need to start thinking about wearing a tin foil hat?
So the resort is nice enough. Very timeshare-resort typical. In fact it all kind of reminds me very much of the cruise ships. Pools, recreational activities like bingo, karaoke, and trivia. Restaurants, shops, and excursions, if you will, to the nearby theme park.
But the point of this post is to talk about the presentation.
At first I was a little curious as to how I was going to get there since it wasn't mentioned in the email communication nor at the concierge desk when I checked in. You see, back in 1988, the sales rep actually came and picked me up from that Seaside Hotel that they put my brother and me up in and brought me first to the condo block where the unit was and then to the office where the pitch commenced. But it's a different day and time nowadays. I think they're much more of a grindhouse now. They were even 20 years ago when I was on the phones so that much had changed in just a few years. People are a lot more savvy to timeshare sales and the old traditional reserved block of time for a week's stay at the same location year after year has gone pretty much by the wayside substituted by the concept of floating points that get used to book your stay.
So yeah, I had to drive myself over to the park Soleil. So now it doesn't know how to spell it, okay. There they had a specific building set up just for these presentations. I go up to the 5th floor as instructed and complete a short survey at a touch screen kiosk. How much do I make? Single, divorced, married, etc? Where do I like to travel to? Do I like exciting vacations or relaxing vacations? You know, the getting to know you stuff. Was any of this information I punched in used during my presentation? Heck no. My rep didn't read any of this I'm sure since, when I met him, and started to talk a little bit about myself, he seemed totally floored and flummoxed, not knowing what direction to go. We'll get a little bit more into this in a minute.
After the survey, I'm directed to a little "café" area which looked like any cheap hotel's free continental breakfast set up with your coffee, juice machines, soda machine and free cookies and muffins. Nothing special. But most importantly, nothing that's going to keep you chewing away as your rep is pensively trying to come up with a strategy to sell you a package that will make them the most commission.
My rep walks over and introduces himself. Of course, as I always do, I immediately forget his name. Thin, youngish, black dude. Doesn't really ask me too much about myself but rambles a bit about who he is. New to area, been to SeaWorld only once, has season ticket to the Orlando Magic, loves his family, has seven brothers, yada yada yada. So basically a dude that has absolutely nothing in common with me. Great.
After this little rapport building session, I'm shuffled off to the video presentation room where I sit with the other rubes, all couples of course. I'm the only single guy. And we watch a cheaply made audio visual representation, comprised mainly of PowerPoint slides, a few with clear typos, ugh, and all featuring John Williams-esque dramatic music.
Our presenter here states that he is a former NFL player, a lover of Jesus, I'm sorry if I am hesitating a bit here but I'm literally laughing and my dictating software is probably wondering what the hell is going on, but it's so true this is how it came across. These are the types of people that do this: either the really greedy or the really deluded. This dude's another thin black guy but this time having at least 20 more years under his belt than my previous guy, and he goes on and on, even showing pictures of his family to us, the school his son attends and the type of vacations he and his family like. We're shown pic after pic. It was like the olden days vacation slide shows.
This had me thinking that this must be the new style of sales technique. You see, back in the dinosaur days when I was in sales, it was all about trying to get to know your buyer so that you can mold your personality to theirs making them like you because you seem to have the same affinities they do. But I think today's buyer is a lot more wary of that. After all it's a lot easier to lie to somebody and say "Oh yeah, I like that too!" or "Oh, you also have this as your interest? Me too!" Now, I think the mentality is to get you, the buyer, to have some kind of empathy with the seller rather than the other way around. This way, it probably comes across more genuine and makes it seem like you as the buyer are choosing to find commonality with the seller. Now this may work for 90% of the rubes out there that, like the seller, love their family, love their friends, love their God, whatever! But does this shit work on me? Um, a big fat nope.
Back in the little cubicle with my sales rep, I get into a bit more about me and basically unmask myself. I reveal who I truly am, frankly, this salesman's worst nightmare.
You see, I have no friends, I have no family, I have no commitments, I have no yearning for the perfect vacation out of my mere two weeks allowed from my prison job on a year to year basis. I have no inclination or hopes to do global travel to outrageously expensive locations like Fiji, Paris, Ibiza or Saint Tropez. I divulge the truth about my traveling habits, namely, that I pride myself on finding the cheapest no-frills accommodations humanly possible. I told him about my dalliances with the Comfort Hotels brand and some of their roach-filled motel rooms. I told him that in the price range I shop for, I do expect bullet holes in the walls sometimes. I do expect all night meth fueled parties in the room next door. I do expect skanky hookers, crackheads and tattoo-faced gang members festooned about the dimly lit parking lot of the hotels I frequent. I had this poor kid scared shitless of me! And since, unfortunately, a lot of this is true, I don't think I came across as a lying cheapskate trying to get the best deal or just somebody making a story up to get out of the presentation quickly. I think he sensed the truth. I wasn't kidding.
Needless to say, even though the "closer" came in and tried to pitch me a "cheap" $9,000 deal where I could have 10 years of "trial" ownership, I then told the story, as we know a very true story, of last year's vacation where I flew to Baltimore and spent 3 days bopping around Washington and Philadelphia all wearing the same clothes each day since I was too cheap to even pay for a carry-on bag. With their jaws hanging open in amazement, or maybe it was horror, they both shook their heads and quickly wrapped it up. I was definitely not a Hilton customer.