Falcon Vending's Weekly Vewsletter offering current tips, tricks, and secrets, to help your vending business.

The Gumball Vending Business Report: The ultimate vending newsletter, sponsored by Falcon Vending, with over 30 years of bulk , candy, and gumball vending experience...

11/7/2010

This month marked a new milestone in vending, as the sales of silly bandz reached a peak in September of over 1,000,000 bands sold throughout various vending distribution networks. Nothing similar to this has been seen since back in 2003 when "Homies" became all the rage. Over 4,000,000 homies were sold through bulk vending machines, in over 25,000 machines located throughout the USA and Canada.

11/14/2010

Locations, Locations, Locations
The Guerrilla marketing guide to obtaining new locations

Today, we will highlight a few of the key marketing principals of obtaining new locations. As we all know, the vending business is an extremely competitive, saturated, yet profitable business. The simple fact is , for a fixed investment of x, as long as the equipment can be suitable located, will often pay for itself in only 1 year. That is a secret that most vending operators DO NOT want any one to know. Yet I have just exposed it here. The top, secret way to getting new accounts not being the worlds ultimate salesperson (although that wouldn't hurt). The secret is to be actively approaching what I call.."key accounts(also known as "home run" accounts). These are the accounts that will pay off 5 fold over a typical "average" account. We all know what these are. In gumball vending, it would be a major indoor mall. In full size vending, it would be an exclusive contract for a hospital, or manufacturing facility with 1000 employees. These are the accounts you need to concentrate on. They also are the accounts that ALWAYS already have an existing contract. Of course they do. Anyone lucky enough to snare/bamboozle/bribe or basically kiss major ass to get in, is going to have a standard contract in place. This alone scares away the vast majority of salespeople. This is the secret. You need to keep a database of these accounts and actively approach the "person in charge". As an example; malls owned by Simon properties, the mall manager has the final say on vending equipment. The point is, you need to have "many irons in the fire". You need to stay in regular contact with these contact people. This includes sending them gifts. Yes gifts. A candy basket around Christmas time " happy holidays from xyz vending". Other gifts could be calling offering sporting event or concert tickets. It is important to make SMALL TALK with prospective people to know what THEY LIKE. Ok, so here is the line up

1: Regular contact , small friendly talk, just "checking in"

2: Gifts , and not free pens and a calendar.. no; real gifts tailored to the key person in charge.

3: The promise of the BEST and BRAND NEW EQUIPMENT. This needs to be branded into your contact persons' brain.

4: The opening. Inevitibly, EVERY contract will come up for renewal! Any slips ups by the existing vendor..ie broken machines, poor personality, equipment downtime, product selection, or simply lackadaisical service.... all will be your opening/opportunity to get in. by now , you know when the contracts are "up". 3-4 weeks before , a short check in phone call , to see if "you could use our services" is all it will take! Your gifts, enthusiasm, persistance..combined with some failure on the existing vendors part , easily "opens the door" for a "change"!

5: Success. Using this technique, you will sooner or later capture most, if not all the premium locations in you area.

Next week:

11/21/2010

The secrets on how to KEEP these premium accounts..and build a solid reputation that will even earn REFFERALS! And no, its not just good service....stay tuned....

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