subject: Vending Locations-how To Choose The Right Vending Locator [print this page] The vending business can be a wonderful business giving you a lot of money and free time. This depends, however, on having quality vending locations for your vending machine equipment. With good vending locations you can make your financial goals a reality.
In this article you will learn.
1)How to choose the right vending locations company.
2)Whether to use telemarketers or direct "in person" salespeople to locate your vending machines.
3)How to protect yourself from unscrupulous and incompetent vending locators.
As a vendor a critical decision you must make is choosing the right vending locators for your equipment.
No doubt some vendors will attempt to locate their own machines, but unless you consider yourself a professional salesperson with a thick skin at facing rejection, this tactic usually fails. This results in a hodgepodge of inferior vending locations at best, and a garage or warehouse filled with costly vending equipment at worst. Like most things in life, it's best to employ an expert.
So this leads to choosing the right vending locators, and a fancy website is not always the best indicator.
A little known secret of vending machine locating is that most locating jobs are sub-contracted out. Meaning, the person you are interviewing to do your vending locating job is just a broker.
This person will farm out the work to someone else you will never meet or speak to until you've paid a large deposit out of pocket on the job. This leaves the vending locating company much less accountable to you regardless of any guarantees or promises they've made. Essentially you are paying for a middle man unnecessarily.
A better approach is to make sure you are dealing directly with the vending locator who will be getting your vending locations. This way you can ask the important questions to protect yourself.
1)Has this person actually owned and operated vending routes, or are they just a salesperson who may have been selling cars last year? And, that's not a knock on a car salesman, but locating vending machines is a tricky business with subtle nuances that can usually be learned only with years of experience.
2)Can this vending locator provide you with a list of recently satisfied customers who you can and should contact? If not, you'd be wise to be cautious and suspicious.
3)Will your vending machines be located by telephone or directly in person?
When I began in vending 16 years ago, like most new vendors, I was working full time at another career intending to build my vending business up from part time. So I employed two vending locating companies, one that used telemarketers, and the other was a direct salesperson.
I can say without a doubt that the telemarketing method was a dismal failure, and I tried this more than once.To begin with, 9 out of 10 of the so called locations given to me by the telemarketing company were undeliverable -- meaning they were refused at the door.
Phone soliciting is a highly impersonal way of doing business. So when you attempt to deliver your vending equipment you'll find the person in authority is often unavailable, has changed their mind, or simply does not even recall agreeing to authorize the vending equipment.But what made matters even worse, is the few vending locations got through telemarketing were scattered all over the county. This made servicing these machines highly inefficient, a hassle due to traffic headaches, and at the price of gasoline today, much less profitable.
To this day I still have a few locations I need to service all by themselves out in the middle of nowhere.
On the other hand, of the vending locations I got from the direct door to door locator, over 90% were deliverable I believe due to face to face human contact. But more importantly, they were centralized to an area allowing me to service many more machines in a day. This made my vending route much more efficient, profitable and with less hassles.
We also suggest you request the right to go with the vending locator when they are locating, but that doesn't mean that you should follow him or her into every business as they are presenting. This just places unnecessary pressure on the sales call. Rather, you should ride along to insure that he or she works in the neighborhoods you feel are desirable and safe.
It is also important, if at all possible, to have your locator deliver the machines immediately upon acceptance. This saves you the trouble of having to come back later, but more importantly, like most selling vending locating is an impulse decision on the part of the merchant. Delivering the machine immediately upon acceptance greatly reduces the risk that the merchant will be unavailable or have changed their mind when you return.
We believe it is also reasonable and prudent to come into the business and meet the owner or manager once the vending locator has secured agreement for your vending location, this also gives you a last right of refusal if you just don't like the location for any reason.
In summary we suggest: a vending locator come directly to you to locate your vending machines, you do not pay any middleman, you locate in person not by telephone, and your vending locator assist in delivering your machines upon getting your vending locations.
