Acquiring new vending accounts is easy you just need to have a plan.. You can acquire new vending accounts through contacting a large vendor. Large Vending Companies like to send business they don’t want to someone they can trust usually because they have size limitations. Get to those people by contacting their sales people and the principals of the business such as Canteen or ARA.or any large vending company. You can also tell the principal at the vending company that you will help pay a commission to the sales person for acquiring new vending accounts for your company. Find Vending Companies that might not want to work in the areas that you do. Acquiring new vending accounts is easy this way. I would get accounts with multiple locations around the city and I couldn’t service them all because they were too far away to make it profitable. But if I had a local guy over there that I trusted, he would get the business and we would work as a team, it was an easy way to dominate a few industries.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Tom: Hi I’m Tom with the Vending Business Show and today I’ve got the second part of this little clip from this webinar that’s very good, and it talks a little more about Acquiring New Vending Accounts and extended networking. Larry Towner, Joe Nichols, Dan Jordan, vending professionals and sales professionals, you’re gonna like this segment. These three guys are hilarious, when they get together lots of interesting things come out. So let’s get right to it.
Larry Towner: Customer, I also put down here competitors, I got a tremendous amount of business from competitors. I was a small vendor, I did largely smaller accounts, I got large companies like [inaudible 00:01:01] business to someone they can trust because they have size limitations, and they don’t want to necessarily take smaller accounts.
Larry Towner: They don’t like 50 or 100 or less employees, so they were sending me the accounts that were 50 to 100 people, which for me, if they were close to my service area where tremendous accounts were made. How do you get to those people? Contact the sales people directly. Contact the principals of the large businesses, the managers and things like that.
Larry Towner: For those guys in the vending business, I’m talking about people at Canteen, I’m talking about ARA, I’m talking about the guys in the big, big vending companies in your town or city, wherever you live.
Larry Towner: Just strike up a conversation. Talking to your competitors can also be a source of equipment. You can find out things about where they’re buying from, what kind of pricing they’re getting, and all that kind of thing. It all starts by contacting some of your larger competitors that you’re not necessarily competing with.
Larry Towner: Even if you’re a large vendor, you still can do that, and contact the other large vendors and see who’s trading accounts, and who’s doing this, and who’s doing that.
Larry Towner: Joe, what do you have to say about that?
Joe Nichols: Acquiring new vending accounts is easy for a new vendor. I always sent the leads to the new vendors that I knew were gonna do a good job. A lot of these smaller locations… The vendor has a larger location that is affiliated with it, and the vendor must know that the small vendor is gonna do a good job with the account he’s sending you.
Joe Nichols: You always wanna go out there, and if you don’t take the account, you contact a large vendor that you’re not gonna take the account, so he knows about it.
Joe Nichols: Always do what you say you’re gonna do, and do a good job, and you’ll get all the leads you want from the big vendors.
Larry Towner: Correct, correct. All right. Other things are geographic considerations when it comes to competitors. I had great working relationships with several competitors of mine that work in geographically different areas than I did, meaning I worked the north side of Atlanta, I had several people from the east, south, and west side of Atlanta, and I even had one guy who worked the north side of Atlanta, and we would get leads in areas that worked in our geographic area, or our area of operations is I guess what I wanna say.
Larry Towner: We were largely running route on the north side and I would get an account down on the south side. I had couple of competitors, friendly competitors I guess I wanna call them, and I would send them leads. We got tremendous leads from people like that. The ability to… They would get a phone call from somebody, ‘Oh, we’ve got this, we’ve got that.’ Lots of times, I know in my business, I had accounts with multiples locations, where they would have five, ten locations around the city, and I couldn’t service all of them. They were just all too far away to really make any money. I would spend more time driving and then there were service considerations, all of the things that go into running vending business.
Larry Towner: But if I had a local guy over there who I trusted, man, he’d get the business, and we’d work as a team, and it was fantastic, and we dominated a couple industries that way, by working as a team in the geographic areas. And we very rarely walked on each other, occasionally, every once in a while.
Larry Towner: But we would talk and kind of laugh ’cause half the time, we knew it was coming anyway, and things like that, so it really wasn’t a big deal.
Larry Towner: Dan, do you see that? You don’t really do anything like that in your business now, do you? Or do you anything like that?
Dan Jordan: I used to, a lot, and what happens is the smaller guys, they’re real protective about everything. They wanna grab everything. They’re not really paying attention, and they think any account is a good account.
Dan Jordan: The ones that are more established, people that have been around a while, they’re much better with their competition than new people, which is ironic not to be that way. But I have some relationships like that with people, and it’s because I don’t care.
Dan Jordan: At the end of the day, there’s so much business out there. All the stuff we’re talking about right now, and Joe knows this, the reason why people succeed or not succeed in getting new clients is… Those who are succeeding in getting new clients are actively trying to get new clients.
Dan Jordan: The ones that aren’t succeeding are the ones sitting at home thinking about ways to get new clients.
Larry Towner: And the way to get new clients is go call on people.
Dan Jordan: That’s it! I mean, that’s everything we’re talking about right now. We’re talking about either calling them on the phone, or either go visit them in person, either calling someone a competitor, either doing some networking, but you’re actively going out making the effort to do something. Ninety percent of the people are sitting at home, waiting for stuff to happen.
Larry Towner: Yeah. I agree with that one.
Tom: You’ve been watching Acquiring New Vending Accounts from the vending business show, a publication of A&M equipment sales, and if you’d like to get access to the entire webinar, there should be a Subscribe link or button below this video, and you just send your email to me, and I’ll send you the link to the entire webinar.
Some links for smaller locations vending machines you might want to look at the Dixie Narco 276E Can/bottle and the Automatiic products 111
Acquiring New Vending Accounts – How to Get into the Vending Business
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