-by Scoop
January 6, 2012 — There was a lot of news coverage in 2011 about the 1 and 99%ers, yet the media failed to equally cover the story about the ‘70%ers’ who are out and about again purchasing new cars, homes, jewelry, boats, etc. as did, the ‘70%ers’ back when things turned around during the Great Depression of the 1930’s,
So here’s the scoop. Current data demonstrates that seven (7) out of every ten (10) working adults [...]

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December 30, 2011 —Since I’ve been big (and right) on predictions lately I thought I’d close out 2011 and bring in the New Year with one more prophecy, which is to forecast that starting Monday A.M. on January 2nd 2012 there will be two and only two mindsets rolling into the corporate Timeshare Executive (developers) offices, sales centers and marketing operations throughout our world-wide industry.
So here’s the Scoop. The first group’s mindset is going to be it’s just another ho-hum day and, [...]

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November 4, 2011 — Remember back a few decades when the industry wanted to shed the word ‘timeshare’ and/or ‘timesharing’ and great debates were held industry wide as to what word or theme should be used to replace a ‘tag’ that had by then already been associated with negative perceptions by consumers?
All sorts of catch phrases were tossed around and some stuck, such as vacation ownership, fractional, club(s), private-residence, etc. [...]

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October 21, 2011 — By a “mole” I mean an employee possibly working for the Exchange giant who may have access to confidential information about RCI members and who may be passing that information along (or selling it) to one or more third parties (companies or individuals) who then use the private info to defraud RCI members.

According to one family of RCI members that is what may have [...]

-by Scoop
October 14, 2011 — As many readers are well aware Shari Levitin is a sales training professional with a long record of successes who is rightly admired for her many accomplishments in the timeshare industry. But when a reader stumbled across one of Levitin’s training videos (featuring herself) titled “I Have A Headache” [...]

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October 7, 2011 — Although the following true story has been repeated countless times over many years I’ve decided to pass this one along as timeshare developers rarely hear directly from their owners. And since most developers read ‘Inside The Gate’ perhaps this documented situation will give some developers additional thoughts regarding the plight of many of their very best ‘clients’. [...]

-by Scoop

September 23, 2011 — In the early 1980’s some timeshare developers had an annual household income requirement (for a prospect to tour a sales center) of $25,000. Adjusted for inflation, in 2011 that same household now needs to earn about $59,940.

And thinking about inflation, did you know that an $11,000 ‘week’ back in the early ‘80’s needs to sell today for about $26,400 in order for the reps in 2011 [...]

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September 9, 2011 — For any sales and marketing reps who are seeking a career opportunity in our industry, ‘Inside The Gate’ announced recently in our GateHouse section that we will host, free of charge, selected Video Resumes which will be available to thousands of industry ‘players’ who read our daily online timeshare [...]

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September 2, 2011 — There is an unresolved debate within the halls of the timeshare industry going back decades whereby one side of the argument, without so much as wavering a fraction of an inch, insists that an ‘up is an up’ and as long as a sales guest meets specific qualifications they indeed are a good candidate (aka: prospect) and are fully ‘qualified’ to be a ‘buyer’ (aka: a “tour”). [...]

-by Scoop
August 26, 2011 — I literally woke up in the wee hours one recent morning in near terror and cold sweats, dreaming that I had been the one responsible for, IMPO, the devastating sales numbers reported by Bluegreen Resorts in their most recent ‘public report’ for the 2nd Q 2011.
In that announcement the [...]