Resort Insiders Timeshare Articles & Blog

Lead scoring: A qualitative approach to increasing sales efficiency

by Chris Hornbeck, CEO, Resort Insiders
Resort Trades - November 2011

The sales and marketing apparatuses of the vacation ownership industry are, by and large, models of inefficiency, historically relying upon broad-based marketing techniques and using internally agreed-upon sets of qualifications to determine customer suitability. Multitudes of people who may or may not fit said qualifications, which are usually based solely on age, income, and marital status, are led through an elaborate set of sales funnels and marketing processes with the hope that a significant number of "qualified" prospects are retained long enough to reach a sales table. This cumbersome process continually erodes the potential customer base, step-by-step, until a few precious purchasers remain.

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Social Media For Shared Ownership Success (Part 2)

by Chris Hornbeck, CEO, Resort Insiders
RCI^® Ventures

When targeting specific demographic segments with social media, thinking outside the "company box" is a useful strategy being employed by a growing number of marketers. Most social media platforms allow the creation of profiles for non-company-based entities, communities, or interest groups, which gives the marketer the ability to create a wide range of location-based, interest-based, or lifestyle-segmented platforms.

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Social Media For Shared Ownership Success (Part 1)

by Chris Hornbeck, CEO, Resort Insiders
RCI^® Ventures

Over the past few years social media has become a vital tool in the vacation ownership industry, providing developers with a low-cost communication platform that allows for greatly improved member communication, enhanced publicity administration, and promotion of brand identity. While widely used throughout the industry, social networks like Facebook and Twitter are only now being used by resort developers worldwide for their unique engagement abilities in refining the traditional persuasion process, and in sourcing potential customers.

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Is Google hurting your company's sales?

by Chris Hornbeck, CEO, Resort Insiders
Resort Trades M&O - July/August 2011

The field of Online Reputation Management (ORM) is emerging as a crucial business process in many industries, but in none is it as critically important as in vacation ownership, a business where sales interactions rarely conform to the traditional "research before buying" consumer model. The rise of blogs, social media, consumer opinion sites, and the coinciding increase in visibility of individual online consumer complaints have created a unique problem for an industry that relies heavily on post-sale retention and minimal cancellation rates.

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