From the 3rd quarter earnings call..
Now let's move to Wyndham Vacation Ownership. The team has been working on a comprehensive initiative to increase and enhance consumer engagement across our brand, beginning with how we sell our products to both potential new purchasers and existing owners. Research confirms that while consumers generally love the time share product, some are put off by the sales process. As the proven innovator in the industry, we are addressing what many believe has historically been a limiting factor in the growth of the time share industry and its mainstream acceptance as a better way to vacation. We feel strongly that our product offering is superior in the marketplace and we're intent on matching that with a superior buying experience.
We believe the time is right to innovate our sales process to ensure we keep our owners engaged and our potential owners eager to engage. As importantly, we want to ensure we're ready to capture the next generation of time share buyers. We're looking at the entire customer experience from check in to post-sale feedback with three simple questions in mind, those that put the customer first, those that lead to the guest having a better experience and those that increase trust in Wyndham.
Again, this is a long-term initiative and we started implementing some of these changes over the past 12 months. Let me remind you of four of these new engagement initiatives, which we've previously discussed. First, I spoke to you earlier this year about moving to "podium presentations", which we internally refer to as our Specialist Presenter Program. These informative group presentations are geared toward both new and existing owners, ensuring that our best salespeople are in front of our customers using a proven uniform method of telling our story and producing sales.
Second, we've taken steps to reduce the occurrence of default by tightening our lending practices. When a consumer defaults on a loan, it's not good for us, but it is also painful to the consumer. Third, for our owners who have benefited from our product for many years, but are no longer actively using
it, we have designed various programs to enable them to gracefully exit their ownership. And finally, we are enhancing and increasing our outreach to new owners to cultivate a new generation of time share owners
I'd also like to point out that cost of sales, which was 16.3% for the quarter, is near an all time low as well. This reflects our continued progress as evolving low cost inventory sources as well as capital efficient ones. 50% of our spending on inventory next year will be on capital-efficient sources, specifically WAAM Just-in-Time and various forms of inventory take-back.
We've bought back inventory from our owners.
Now let's move to Wyndham Vacation Ownership. The team has been working on a comprehensive initiative to increase and enhance consumer engagement across our brand, beginning with how we sell our products to both potential new purchasers and existing owners. Research confirms that while consumers generally love the time share product, some are put off by the sales process. As the proven innovator in the industry, we are addressing what many believe has historically been a limiting factor in the growth of the time share industry and its mainstream acceptance as a better way to vacation. We feel strongly that our product offering is superior in the marketplace and we're intent on matching that with a superior buying experience.
We believe the time is right to innovate our sales process to ensure we keep our owners engaged and our potential owners eager to engage. As importantly, we want to ensure we're ready to capture the next generation of time share buyers. We're looking at the entire customer experience from check in to post-sale feedback with three simple questions in mind, those that put the customer first, those that lead to the guest having a better experience and those that increase trust in Wyndham.
Again, this is a long-term initiative and we started implementing some of these changes over the past 12 months. Let me remind you of four of these new engagement initiatives, which we've previously discussed. First, I spoke to you earlier this year about moving to "podium presentations", which we internally refer to as our Specialist Presenter Program. These informative group presentations are geared toward both new and existing owners, ensuring that our best salespeople are in front of our customers using a proven uniform method of telling our story and producing sales.
Second, we've taken steps to reduce the occurrence of default by tightening our lending practices. When a consumer defaults on a loan, it's not good for us, but it is also painful to the consumer. Third, for our owners who have benefited from our product for many years, but are no longer actively using
it, we have designed various programs to enable them to gracefully exit their ownership. And finally, we are enhancing and increasing our outreach to new owners to cultivate a new generation of time share owners
I'd also like to point out that cost of sales, which was 16.3% for the quarter, is near an all time low as well. This reflects our continued progress as evolving low cost inventory sources as well as capital efficient ones. 50% of our spending on inventory next year will be on capital-efficient sources, specifically WAAM Just-in-Time and various forms of inventory take-back.
We've bought back inventory from our owners.