Have you ever been to a timeshare presentation? If you haven’t, you may not “get it” but the sales strategies will apply, so keep reading. If you have been to a timeshare presentation, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about!

In full disclosure, we absolutely love our timeshare! We bought it ten years ago before we were married (gasp!) and while it wasn’t the most financially responsible decision, we looooove vacationing in beautiful places. We are often enticed to meet with a vacation expert while traveling to learn how to best use our points. While they do share some helpful tips, the primary focus is to sell us on upgrading our current timeshare to reach the next status.

These timeshare salespeople are the real deal, ya’ll. They have the conversation down to a science. I’m always impressed that even though we game-plan going in our “no, no – it’s not in the budget, not right now, no thanks” speech, we always are on the edge of our seats with a little bit of excitement thinking about how we really should take the plunge and upgrade.

This trip was no different, but I did take a different perspective. I let Jeremy politely reject the saleswoman while I carefully took mental notes on her approach. How could I leave every single time thinking that we should really splurge and just upgrade our timeshare?! Umm… because they freakin’ rock at selling. Like, are really good. Here’s a few quick notes on how this relates to being a direct seller. While she might have been selling a $60k timeshare deed, the sales process is pretty much the same in our world.

1 – Relationship-building: She began building relationships from the very beginning of our meeting. She asked questions about our family, our careers and our dream vacations. She opened up and shared about her family and related to us so we were on the same level. If you’ve been around here for a bit, you know that we talk a lot about relationship-building, connecting with customers and even leveraging systems to keep track of our customers.

2 – Treated us like royalty: We were comfortably welcomed and offered a snack and a drink. We were offered a sweet incentive (and childcare!) for listening in for 90-minutes. While we knew we were going to be sold to, they made it easy for us by taking care of our kids, rewarded us for our time with freebies and gave us the VIP treatment. Customers are the heart of any direct sales business. Make sure you’re treating your customers amazingly.  Offer extra perks or incentives and go above and beyond to make it easy for them to place an order.

3 – Offering a solution to our problem: She painted a beautiful picture of traveling more often, staying in luxurious resorts and having more quality time with our family by providing our children experiences like none other. Well, that sure sounds dreamy. She re-framed the sale to be solution-focused – brilliant. What solution can you offer your customers?

All that said, we didn’t upgrade our timeshare (again), but we left thinking about new vacation destinations, happy for some quality family time and will likely splurge on a fancier timeshare sometime in the future. And…. I came up with some fun blog content as an outcome!

What can you do today to implement these best practices when it comes to selling in your direct sales business?