Open Mike: Off The Fence

By Mike Wendland, F426141
March 2017

I’m far from being an RV salesman. But sometimes as Jennifer and I visit RV dealerships, shows, and rallies and meet with folks across North America, we feel like ambassadors for the RV lifestyle.

We also like to push people off fences . . . fences of indecision.

RV manufacturers track their website visitors and requests for information from the time someone first asks for information until the time they buy, which could be from 12 to 18 months, according to some estimates. But I think it’s actually longer than that. It’s been my experience that people start dreaming about the RV lifestyle and doing their research long before they contact a manufacturer for more info.

That’s how Jennifer and I were. We had been thinking about it for five years!

And let me say this: We wasted a lot of time. Time we can’t get back. Time we could have been out there actually living our dream instead of, well, dreaming about it.

So, whenever we get a chance, I try to push people off the fence. So it was earlier this year when we visited Sunshine State RVs, a dealership in Gainesville, Florida. We had told people via our blog and podcast that we would be at the dealership on a certain day, and a bunch of folks showed up to meet us and tour our motorhome.

That’s where the ambassador part comes in. People who joined us hailed from New York; Georgia; and, of course, Florida. Some had older motorhomes and were thinking about upgrading. Most, though, were simply shoppers.

One woman sat in our motorhome with Jennifer for almost 45 minutes as her husband and I looked at the various models on display. Jennifer answered questions about things such as washing your hair on the road, when we use paper plates and when we pull out ceramic plates, how many place settings you need, where the bedding is stored.

Her husband and I talked about time — how the older you get, the faster it goes. He had worked hard all his life, built a very successful construction consulting business, almost watched it disappear during the Great Recession, and then, with lots more hard work, built it back to the point where he recently was able to sell it. Now he wants a motorhome, and he wants to jump in with both feet, seeing as much as he can.

He’s 78 and on a fence.

So, I told him the tape measure parable. I’ve shared it in this space before, but it’s the most effective illustration I’ve ever heard for pushing folks off the fence. Maybe you know someone — one-day RV buyer — who needs a nudge.

It goes like this: Put your fingers on a tape measure at the 1-inch mark and go to your age. In the case of the guy I was talking with down in Gainesville, it was 78 inches. That span represents your life, how much of it has passed. Now, with one finger holding the 78-inch mark, ask yourself how long you think you’ll live. To 90? 95? Whatever, put a finger from your other hand on that mark, though there’s no guarantee you’ll have those years. But say you do live that long. Of those 90 or 95 years, how long do you think you’ll be strong and healthy enough to travel? Until you are 85? 87? 89?

Look at the tape measure between 78 and the number you settled on for the upper limits of your health. That’s how much time is left.

I watched that register for my new 78-year-old friend.

“You don’t have a lot of time to waste thinking about buying an RV and making your dreams come true,” I said.

Listening in as I shared that story was a younger guy who came from his home near Orlando to meet us. He’s also a fence-sitter and maybe in his early 40s. He dreams of doing a lot of boondocking, playing golf as he travels, and using a small motorhome as his main vehicle even when home.  He was planning to get off that fence someday and, maybe, buy within a year or two.

But he ran his own tape measure numbers in his head as he heard me telling the story to the older guy.

“Maybe I don’t have all that much time to wait, either,” he said.

“Look,” I said to both of the shoppers. “Here’s my question: What is the worst thing that could happen to you? You follow your dream and decide it isn’t what you wanted, or you suddenly get sick and can’t travel any more. So then you sell the RV. There’s not a major downside here.”

I love a story told to us by Nick Schmidt, the sales manager of Sunshine State RVs, who had also been eavesdropping on my tape measure tale.

Seems Nick once had a customer who came in and bought a brand-new motorhome and immediately took off on his adventure. “For six months he and his wife traveled the country,” Nick said. “They put 10,000 miles on it. I don’t even think they changed the oil or washed it. One day, six months after I sold it to him, he shows up in the lot here. Says, ‘That’s it . . . I’m done.’ He said they did and saw everything on their bucket list, and they had the time of their life. He asked me what I’d give him to buy it back. I wrote him a check right then, and he left smiling, saying it was the best investment he ever made.”

We all laughed as Nick shared his story.

But that’s the thing about this RV life. It’s a dream so many of us have. It’s a dream that can come true. It has for Jennifer and me. And I bet it will for these two guys as well.

I’m far from being an RV salesman. But sometimes as Jennifer and I visit RV dealerships, shows, and rallies and meet with folks across North America, we feel like ambassadors for the RV lifestyle.

We also like to push people off fences . . . fences of indecision.