Selling Value Cards

One of the programs that the campground has is what they call "Value Cards". They come in 2 varieties - gold and bronze. The gold card is for 30 days and the bronze is for 10 days. The idea is that you prepay your 10 or 30 days camping at a nice discount, you get to use the days over a 2 year period and you can use it at any of the 5 Premier RV Resorts. It is a sweet deal for people that are regular campers. The management has produced a list of about 1,000 names of people that have stayed at least 1 day at one of the Resorts for us to call and try to sell them one of these cards. Of course, Josie has been the one that has to make most of the calls since I sometimes have a problem understanding people on the phone as a result of using hearing aids. Anyway, we quickly discovered that people don't want to be bothered with somebody trying to sell them something (anything) on the telephone - particularly during these poor economic times. Also, many of the names are of people who have stayed maybe 1 night, several years ago, and they don't even remember the campground. We have discovered that it is much easier selling these cards to people checking into the campground. First of all, they have camping on their mind, secondly they know they have to spend money to stay, so why not save some money if they are staying for multiple days or they camp regularly. I have sold a gold card ($695) to a camper who is staying 22 days, and Josie has sold a bronze card ($300) to a camper who is planning to come in multiple times this summer. It has become a pretty easy sale to folks in this category. In addition to that, we each get a small commission on each card we sell.

The day was fairly busy for both of us yesterday. We took many reservations and I also had to spread fertilizer on the grassy areas in the lower half of the park. It would be nice if I could get that kind of exercise everyday. There is a fitness room here but it doesn't have a treadmill. There are several machines in the room, but we haven't been motivated enough to start using them yet. As our weight continues to go in the wrong direction, the fitness room is taking on a whole new meaning for us. Diet and exercise are definitely in our future.

Today is our second long day for the week and I go in a little earlier since I have to deliver the newspapers to all the campers that are staying here on a short term basis - less than a month. That is something I only do on Mondays since one of the other workampers has the responsibility on the other days and I only cover him on his days off, and there is no paper on Sundays. After today, we do our 2 days of 4 hour shifts and then the 1 day of 2 1/2 hours. It is a schedule that is working well for us so far. Until tomorrow...