Basic Vending Sales Presentation number one don’t be late and if you are call and apologize.  Basic Vending Sales Presentation number two  Get there in plenty of time to ride around in the parking lot in order the count the cars for population and to see how many deliver vehicles and other walk in traffic is there.  Basic Vending Sales Presentation number three meet your contact and ask him questions about his current vending service and how he thinks it could be run better.  Basic Vending Sales Presentation number four  Ask to go see the current vending machines.  Most times you can show the contact machines that are dirty or with stale product.   Basic Vending Sales Presentation Number Five  Point out everything that is wrong with the service he now has but be careful not to look like you are bad mouthing too much.  Fine Line. Tell him how your service would be better.  Listen to him and tell him how you could improve what he has.  .

Basic Vending Sales Presentation Have a plan and practice it. Always ask positive leading questions like:

• What do you like about the vending service that you have right now?
• If you had a choice is there anything you would change about your vending company right now?

Listen to these answers and with that you have enough info to make a very professional sales presentation in vending. You’ll want to cater your presentation.

Most of the time you already have the products they want, so by asking questions you will learn what all you need to do there.

Next, you’ll explain how your system works and incorporate in it the things they like right now and that you will fix the things they don’t like right now.

The majority of the complaints about vending is not product but service related, so ask plenty of questions to understand how to cater to that prospect.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Tom: Hi I’m Tom with the Vending Business Show and today we’re talking about  basic vending sales presentation. So, Larry Towner’s here with us, so what is a basic sales presentation look like?

Larry Towner: Well, so we wanted to just go over some of the basic things cause I … let me tell you the genesis of this story. I was sitting in my new job, as it were, and we had a coffee man come in and he was gonna do a sales presentation to us at the shop that I work at. I was like, “Okay. This sounds like fun. I’ve been selling coffee for a little while, selling vending and coffee and doing all of this stuff for a little while.”

Larry Towner: It spurred this idea to come up with how to do the basics of a sales presentation. This guy come in and he had set up an appointment. He had done a cold call and he had set an appointment to come in and talk to us at eight o’clock in the morning.

Larry Towner: Let’s talk about the first thing. Tom, when should you show up at for an eight o’clock appointment? A: at 5:00, B: 8:00, C: 8:05, D: Next week.

Tom: Well I would say B, but …

Larry Towner: I would say that’s A or B. By the time 8:00 rolls around, you better be there and ready to go. Don’t show up late. If you are gonna be late, even if it’s a few minutes, make sure you call and talk to the man or woman or whomever you’re talking to and who you’re presenting to. In this case, we had eight people standing there waiting for this to happen and he was late. It started him off on the wrong foot straight away, so be on time. Number one.

Larry Towner: So number two. Have a plan. Understand what you’re trying to do. Come up and practice this once in a while. When you go in to do a vending presentation, always ask lots of questions, right? So one of the first questions is, and stay positive, what do you like about the vending service that you have right now. Listen, right? Pay attention to what they say, then cater your presentation to what he said right after that. So what do you like, so if there was anything and also again staying positive, ask another question.

Larry Towner: If you had a choice is there anything you would change about your vending company right now, and listen to what he says. Then you can go in and you can say okay, with that, those two questions right there give you enough information to make a very professional sales presentation in vending, because what you’re going to do is cater your thing. If the fella says, you know, we just don’t have the products that we want here. Fella or woman I should say, because many times you’ll make a call to a woman. But, if the person says to you, “You know, we just don’t have the products that we want here”. “Well what kind of products would you like?” Another question right? But again, you want to listen and half the time those products are going to be on your truck anyway, so all you’re really doing is finding out what you’re going to need to do there.

Larry Towner: You’re just asking a series of questions and then you go, “Well here’s how our system works” and you have a pre-prepared statement of how your system works. Now, you’re going to modify that a little bit and incorporate, of course, all the things that they said that they liked about what they have now and you’re going to fix all the problems for the things they don’t like right now. So, if the guy comes in and he says, “Well you know the product, you know if I had to change anything, I’d make sure that the products are in date”. So, when your going down your presentation and you say “Well here’s how our system works”. We come in every two weeks. Well the first thing we do is we open the machine and we check all the dates, and we’ll remove any of the product out of there, that’s out of date or close to date.

Larry Towner: So immediately, you’re doing two things. You’re showing what you do and you’re also showing how you’re going to fix what they don’t like about their situation right now. That’s the basics of a sales presentation. Ask some good qualifying questions, and the two questions that I just asked out there, you want to stay positive. Don’t say what do you not like about your vending company right now?, you don’t want to say that. You want to say if there was anything you would change, what would you change? And, he’ll, he or she, will come out and tell you exactly what it is that they don’t like about the vending company and conversely, what do they like about what they have? Because, of course, to be successful you want to do what they want. We would hope anyway. Do you agree with that Tom?

Tom: That sounds like a great plan Larry.

Larry Towner: It’s really tough. Really tough.

Tom: I’m sure it is. It’s just a matter of getting some new habits going though.

Larry Towner: It is a question of habits, and it’s a little bit of a question of being, of just maintaining a positive spin on it and you don’t need to badger your competition, because they’ve already done that. If you have the opportunity to be in there, there’s something there that’s not right with the customer, and the customer will eventually tell you. You just have to keep asking those questions and if it gets down to it, says you know, because this is the question you’ll get. “His products are just too much money”. Your only answer to that, really is, “Well this is driven largely, you’re in business yourself, if you’re costs exceed your income, what’s that called? It’s called a loss and our company, we need to run at a profit, just like your company. Unfortunately, we don’t control the costs of our products and we don’t control the cost of gas and all of the expenses that go along with this business. The product costs what the product costs.”

Tom: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Larry Towner: That’s the only answer to have in those kinds of situations, but other than that, most of the time if they’re looking to, if you’re there, there’s a reason that you’re there. It’s usually service related, so, anyway.

Tom: Thanks so much Larry. If you want to subscribe to get more vending business tips like this The Basic Vending Sales Presentation, you’ve been watching the Vending Business show a publication of A & M Equipment Sales.

Great Vending Machines that can go in any location is the Dixie Narco 501E and the Automatic Products 113 Snack Machine