Vending Operators Cause Their Own Service Calls

Vending operators cause their own service calls by the actions or in-actions of the route man:

  1. Without a well planned and timed service schedule (or route scheduling system), your machines will run out of product… and cause a service call.
  2. You leave out of date product in your machines… “I bought the product and it’s stale.”
  3. You open the door to your machine. Do you open the door of every machine at every stop even when if it’s only making enough money to open the machine every other stop? (Here’s an alternative) Every time you open the door of the machine, there is a possibility for something to go wrong in the machine. Mechanical and electronic things break over time with use.
  4. You open the door, but you forget to lock it when you leave.
  5. If you open the door make sure you close it, lock it and make sure it accepts money with a coin and bill test before you leave.

What service issues do you deal with? (Share them and any questions you have in the comments below)

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Episode Transcript:

Vending Operators Cause Their Own Service Calls  Tom Shivers: I’m Tom with the Vending Business Show, here again with Larry Towner of Service Group International. He’s a vending business consultant and we’ve been discussing some interesting topics lately. What are we going to talk about today, Larry?

Larry Towner: Today I think we’re going to talk about, I know we’re going to talk about Vending Operators Cause their Own Service Calls, and you think it doesn’t happen, but it does.

Tom Shivers: So you’re saying vending operators are causing service calls?

Larry Towner: Yeah, they cause their own service calls, and between an operator and/or a route man, you get service calls that are caused by the actions or inactions that you take, I guess I want to say, so let’s start off with one of my favorites. It’s always the one I usually do.

Larry Towner: It’s called poor planning or a lack of a good schedule. You pretty much know if you don’t have a great schedule out there, you don’t plan your time well. You’re going to get service calls if your machines run out of product. This is a very simple thing, but you’d be amazed how many people don’t have a good route scheduling system so they run out of product or whatever, but they don’t show up at their accounts on a regular basis, so that’s really one of the first reasons why you can cause service calls into your own accounts.

Larry Towner: Another one of my favorites is you leave out-of-date product in your machines. Nothing will generate a service call faster than somebody saying, “I bought the product and it’s stale,” because I’m going to guarantee you, they’re going to call you when that’s the case. “I lost my last 50 cents forever that I ever had in my whole life. You need to come pay me back or send me the money.” Yeah. I would if you’ll send me a self-addressed stamped envelope, so that’s one of the things.

Larry Towner: Here’s a third one. This is one that’s going to surprise a lot of people, and you’ll laugh at this one, Tom. Big reason why you cause your own service calls, you open the door to the machine. Now, that’s sounds funny. You have to open the door to the machine to service it, right, and that’s true, but I guess the question is is do you open the door every time you go to an account or not on every machine. We’ve discussed this in a past show about it gets back to your scheduling and your route things, but if you don’t generate a certain amount out of that machine, like let’s say you’ve got a drink machine and a snack machine. The drink machine generates plenty of money out of it and the snack machine generates enough money for you to open the machine every two weeks, open the machine every two weeks. Don’t open it every week, because every time you open that door, here’s what happens, right? First off, the computer disables because you take the power off, or almost all machines, the interlock switch comes on and the power goes out on the machine. Well, every time you do that, you open the possibility for something to go wrong in the machine. It’s just the way mechanical stuff works. It’s mechanical, electronics, whatever it is. That’s how stuff happens.

Larry Towner: The other thing that you do is there’s cables between the door and the machine. Well, every time you move those cables, you cause to have the potential for pinching a cable or cutting a cable or, shoot man, wire breaks, just after a while, it work hardens and breaks. Anyway, so it sounds funny, but opening the door is one of the reasons why you cause your own service calls.

Larry Towner: Fourth reason why you cause your own service calls, and this has to do with opening that dad gum door again. This is a big problem. You open the door, but you forget to lock it when you leave. If you’ve been in the vending business for a while, you’ve gotten calls where hey, you left the door open, and unless somebody knows how to, on some of the doors, unless somebody knows how to operate it, they’ll lock the door, but they’ll leave the door open, so they might try to help you out, but generally if they say the door’s open, you need to go do it.

Larry Towner: One of the fifth reasons, and this all has to do with opening the door, if you open the door, make sure you close it, number one, make sure you lock it, number two, pull on the door to make sure it’s actually locked, which has always been one of my favorites. I always grab the top corner of the machine and yank on it a little bit, and if it didn’t open, it was good, but before I left every account for a machine that I opened, I coined and bill tested the machines. I made sure that when I shut that door that that machine functioned, at least took money, right, and so … it accepted money, that’s the better thing. It doesn’t take somebody’s money because we don’t want it to take somebody’s money without giving them product, but we make sure that that thing accepts coins and accepts dollar bills because you’d be amazed. Again, when you open those doors and the interlock switches and stuff, and the computers go down, stuff happens. It’s what happens.

Larry Towner: Tom, any questions on that?

Tom Shivers: That’s some great, great tips there. Maybe there’s some questions that people might have about certain service issues that they’ve had that they could add to the comments below.

Larry Towner: Sure.

Tom Shivers: All right.

Larry Towner: [inaudible 00:05:04]

Tom Shivers: Well, yeah, and do subscribe. We have a good time on this show, and we’d like to hear from you, so if you have a question, send it in, and you’ve been watching Vending Operators Cause their own service calls from  the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales.

Vending Business Opportunity Proper Data Gathering

Vending Business Opportunity Proper Data Gathering  Impending events are things that we know are coming in the vending business. This is essentially about data gathering to increase accounts or sales.

When you are working in an account be aware of…

  • Any time there’s a change in management, you want to get in and talk to him/her as soon as they are comfortable in their new office.
  • You also want to take advantage of opportunities when a company is getting ready to move, expand or consolidate.

These opportunites are discovered inside the account by keeping up with what is happening or having someone inform you.

While out running your routes, look for opportunities:

  • Construction trailers with a new building going up
  • Leasing agents
  • Leave a business card in an empty door (when someone is moving in)
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Episode Transcript:

Tom Shivers: Hi, I’m Tom with the Vending Business Show. Here again with Larry Towner. We’re talking about Vending Business Opportunity  Proper Data Gathering impending events or planning for profit opportunities in the vending business. So, what are we going to talk about today Larry?

Larry Towner,: I thought we’d talk about pizza. No, I’m just kidding. We’re going to talk about … We’re going to do what we do. We’re going to talk about the vending business opportunity proper data gathering. We’re going to talk about things that are going to happen in your business that you know are going to happen. There’s a few things that we’ve decided we pretty much know that are going to happen in the vending business. We’ve done this for a little while, just a couple of years if you know what I mean. One of the things we want to talk about is things that happen in your accounts. Essentially this is a lot about data gathering. We’re going to talk about this, is how do you gather your data to get yourself to where you can make profits or make … Increase accounts or increase new sales. Things like that.

Larry Towner,: But one of the big things … There’s three big areas when you’re working in an account that you have to really be aware of. One is if there’s a change in management. Any time there’s a change in management, particularly a general manager or something like that, you’re going to want to make sure you get in and talk to that general manager as soon as he’s comfortable in his office. Don’t wait too long. One of the first things new managers like to do is change the vending business. You want to get in, make friends, give him a honey bun. Watch our video on power of the honey bun. You’ll understand what to do. Get in and make friends, things like that.

Larry Towner,: One of the other things that you have to look at is an opportunity in the vending business is if a company is getting ready to move and … It was always my policy that I had a couple of people in the accounts that kind of fed me information about what was going on in the business. I wanted to know how their business was. Was their business good? Was it bad? You know, were they thinking about moving? Were they thinking about expanding? And moving and expanding are two really good opportunities for you to generate more business. Consolidating, are they consolidating two offices into one? And can you get both of those offices in one place?

Larry Towner,: All of that comes from developing some decent relationships inside the accounts. Just go out and talk to people. They’ll have tons of fun. You just learn. You learn about their business. You learn about what they’re doing. If they’re expanding you’ve got another opportunity to get into a new account. If they’re contracting, maybe they’re consolidating. You’ve got more population in an account you can make more money in that account. All of that sort of thing is developed inside the account.

Larry Towner,: We were talking about … We kind of were laughing, Tom and I… We practiced these things beforehand. Believe it or not, we actually practiced before this. We were talking a little bit about, you know, some of the other things that happen when you’re out there in the field. One of the things is, we were kind of talking about one of the great ways to get stuff is … When you’re driving down the road you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to drive down the road and look straight ahead at the rode like this going, do do do. You don’t see anything straight ahead, right?

Larry Towner,: Or, if you sort of pay attention to what’s going on around you, instead of just going … “I’m at my stop, time to go.” If you’re driving down the road and you happen to see a construction trailer with a new building going up, you might have an opportunity if you’re one to go and stop in and ask the guy what’s going on here. The guy in the construction trailer will tell you ’cause he works for the construction company. He doesn’t care. So they’re putting up a new manufacturing facility, whatever it is, right?

Larry Towner,: It’s been our experience in the vending business, between myself and everybody else I know, first in wins. So folks, if you can get in first and you’re not driving down the road going, “Well, I wonder what’s happening.” Tom and I were laughing. We said, “I know if that were me and I were watching this video, I would say, ‘I knew that’s what my drivers were doing. I knew it.'” “Look at the pretty girl.” Right? There you go.

Larry Towner,: Anyway, so these are all things that … Just pay attention. When you’re doing your thing out there, you’re driving around, you’re looking for new business, look for new construction. Look for … talk to leasing agents, you know? They’ve got new buildings they’re putting people in. Gives you an opportunity to get out there and get a new account. They know who they’re trying to sell to. That gets into networking and all that kind of thing, but it’s all still one and the same.

Larry Towner,: Shoot, go up to an empty door and leave a card on the door. You know, I’ve done that too. You know somebody is getting ready to move in. You start sliding business cards into the door. You’d be amazed how well that works. It’s just one of those little things. If the guy says, “Hey, I want a local vending guy. He dropped a card. It’s got to be local.” Which is generally what the case is. Tom, do you have any questions, any comments?

Tom Shivers: Well, I mean, are you … When are you starting your stand up comedy session?

Larry Towner,: I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and tip your wait staff appropriately. They’re working hard for you out there.

Tom Shivers: All right, well, what are we going to be … Are we going to talk about another impending event later I’m sure.

Larry Towner,: We’ve go so many impending events as it were. We know there’s things that are going to happen. We’re going to … One of these days we’re going to talk about December and some strategies to handle the slow times of the year. And then also some of the other strategies that are just yearly things. Folks, all these things we’re working on are things that you can put on a calendar and you can schedule some of these issues out. We know … Most people in the vending business, with the exception of some of the blind vendors and all who have very busy Decembers because of travel, we know that generally December is going to be slow. We are going to discuss some strategies on that in future shows.

Larry Towner,: We’re also going to discuss other types of events like that that we know are coming. As night follows day, December is coming. We also know that there’s other things that happen that we’re going to discuss. That’s what’s coming up in future shows.

Tom Shivers: All right, well, thanks so much Larry. And you’ve been … Of course you want to subscribe to get more comedy hour here. And you’ve been watching Vending Business Opportunity Proper Data Gathering at the Vending Business Show, a publication of A&M Equipment Sales.

Look at our New Vending Machines  https://www.amequipmentsales.com/prodcat/new-vending-machines/

Vending Business Service Scheduling

Vending Business Service Scheduling Your scheduling will determine how profitable you are when servicing accounts that need attending to on a regular basis. Some of the factors that come into play when managing a vending route:

  • Physical location of the machines – the address of the place and their location within the building
  • Can you service multiple accounts from the place where you park the truck at a stop on the route?

Another factor: is it profitable to service all of the machines at a single stop or not?

There are a few ways to run vending business service scheduling efficiently; one way is scheduling by time (every day we’ll service the machines). Another way is to schedule servicing of machines based on profit for that machine.

Servicing all machines at a location can be unprofitable due to the time it takes to service the machine and the potential of creating a service call due to operator mistakes.

Every time you open the machine up, you open the possibility of creating a service call on that machine: the computer resets, validators and changers cycle, wires get moved, things happen. I’ve received calls, “the guy was just here and now the machine doesn’t work.”

You can service three drink machines in an hour vs. one snack machine and one drink machine. You’ll be thinking about these kind of things when you schedule on profit rather than time.

What is the cost to run the truck for one hour? That’s the cost of a service call.

Ask yourself, how do I get the most money out of those machines on the service schedule? Ask people who are accounting oriented to get an idea of what will work for you.

The benefits of this concept will pay off big when it gets implemented.

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Episode Transcript:

Tom Shivers: Hi, I’m Tom with The Vending Business Show, here again with Larry Towner, the vending business consultant. And today we’re talking about Vending Business Service Scheduling for profit, so what’s that about, Larry?

Larry Towner: Well, let me ask you a question, Tom, because you know I’m big on questions. Do you like to make profits?

Tom Shivers: Oh, yeah.

Larry Towner: Are profits dependent upon being operationally efficient?

Tom Shivers: Most of the time, yes.

Larry Towner: Most. Probably all of the time. But in the vending business, so this topic of conversation we’re gonna talk about is how you set up Vending Business Service Scheduling , for the aspects of the vending business, which largely has to do with your route scheduling, and also your service scheduling to a lesser degree. But they need to be intertwined together, so I’m gonna kind of put them together.

Larry Towner: As you all know, if you’re in the vending business, you’re gonna have a series of vending accounts, as it were, that are gonna need to be serviced on a regular basis. And your scheduling will determine how profitable you are in your endeavors to go out and service these accounts.

Larry Towner: So Tom, just offhand, you’re associated with the vending business to a degree. What do you think are some of the factors that play into running a vending route?

Tom Shivers: Well the location of the machines from where your operation is located. Ah, how far you have-

Larry Towner: It’s the physical location of the machines. Right? And that would include the address of the place. And I’m gonna throw in there also the fact of where are they in the building? There’s a difference between an operation that has machines that are close to the door, say up on the 30th floor of a building is a bit of a difference. So that’s one of the things.

Larry Towner: What other things do you think matter?

Tom Shivers: Just having the capability of servicing a number of accounts on one route with one shot basically.

Larry Towner: At one stop if you want to call it that. Meaning can you service multiple accounts via one place where you park the truck, right?

Tom Shivers: I got it right.

Larry Towner: Yeah. So that’s one of the things. What about the number of machines in an account? Do you think that that matters?

Tom Shivers: Oh yeah. The more you’re servicing in one stop, the better probably.

Larry Towner: Well that’s, the question is, that’s the interesting part. Is that the truth or not? So let’s go through just some of the ideas. These are great ideas, by the way. And these come from a guy that’s been associated with the vending industry, but is not in it. Because Tom’s not technically in the vending business. He’s never run a route. Just so you all out there in the world know that.

Larry Towner: But Tom’s specialty is Internetesio stuff. So if you need to get ahold of him, you can contact these websites and things like that.

Larry Towner: But anyway, let’s go into the operational things. Now when we run our businesses, we want to be efficient in our operations. There’s a couple of different ways to go about it. Some of our people in the vending business schedule by time. Meaning that they’re gonna go in and they’re gonna service these accounts on a very regular basis, be it every day, twice a day, once a week, every two weeks. Things like that. That’s one concept of how to do your scheduling. And it’s an effective concept for an awful lot of people.

Larry Towner: There are other ways to do it. The way that I always did my scheduling was, I based it on the amount of money on a gross sales figure based on a profit figure, that was determined is that’s when I did my scheduling. And I actually broke that down per machine. And as Tom, you said earlier, you want to go in and you want to service as many machines as possible.

Larry Towner: I found in my research when I did all of my stuff and then talking to a lot of people, that there were times that you only might have serviced one machine at a stop because you were gonna take enough money out of that machine to service, to make that stop profitable.

Larry Towner: But the actual act of opening the other machine and servicing that other machine turned that account into an unprofitable stop because the amount of time it took you to actually open the machine and the amount of service calls that were created by opening the machine.

Larry Towner: Tom, why do I say that? Do you have an idea of what I just said? That opening a machine creates a service call?

Tom Shivers: That’s an interesting one, Larry. I’m not sure what you mean there.

Larry Towner: Well I think if you’re in the vending business and you go out and you look at the number of machines you have. And this information comes through the various different organizations, NAMA and things like that. But it also comes from other advisors and other business people too that are in the vending business. Is that every time you open a machine up, you open the possibility for there being a service call on that machine. Because things happen when you open the door. The computer resets. The validaters and changers cycle. It’s just things happen. Wires get moved. And things get pinched. And stuff happens.

Larry Towner: And sometimes if part of your system isn’t to actually test vend the machine before you leave, which by the way takes time, you might create service calls. I can tell you from personal experience, every time a machine door opened, I got a huge number of service calls where, “The guy was just here and now it doesn’t work.”

Larry Towner: And if you’ve not experience that, you will in time. So it requires a test vending period. Anyway, so you can go and you can service one machine, you take your gross amount out. The other machine now, I’m thinking of one account I had in particular. We serviced the account every week. We only serviced the snack machine every two weeks. Because it just didn’t pay to open that machine every single week.

Larry Towner: These are things that, from a profit standpoint, it was, you have to understand how things work. Plus, just servicing that soda machine was bing, bing, bing, in and out. You could be in and out of that machine in 20 minutes. Where to service the snack machine and the soda machine was gonna take him an hour. He could get to the next drink machine and service that one and be gone. He could do three drink machines in an hour versus one snack machine and one drink machine.

Larry Towner: These are the concepts you have to think about when it goes to scheduling, when you schedule on profit. Or on gross. I did it on gross sales. And I used a figure of, I looked at my local HVAC guy, right? The guy running the heating, ventilating and air conditioning truck, the guy that’s out there running. What’s he charge you?

Larry Towner: Tom, what’s an HVAC guy charge you to make a service call to your house?

Tom Shivers: Maybe 300 dollars.

Larry Towner: What’s a service call? Just showing up.

Tom Shivers: A service call is gonna be at least 75 to 100 dollars.

Larry Towner: Yeah. 75 to 100 dollars. That’s essentially his cost to run the truck for an hour. That’s how I did my figures. Anyway, think about this stuff, folks. Put your scheduling into that kind of mode. How do I get the most money out of those machines on the service schedules? Take a hard look at it. Ask people that are accounting oriented. Ask people that are really numbers oriented. They’ll give you an idea of what really works for you.

Larry Towner: It could be just time. It could be just time. If you’re going to a stop every day, it’s just time. You know, if your accounts are big enough that you can go every day, go every day. But gee, and on big, big accounts sometimes you have to go twice a day. What time of the day do you go? When do you get that maximum amount of money out of it? It’s a concept to think about. It boils into a calendar and you get a lot of pre-planning time out of it. And let me tell you, the benefits will pay off big. Big, big, big, big, big. So.

Larry Towner: Questions, Tom?

Tom Shivers: No. That was excellent, Larry. Thanks for sharing that. I know a lot of people are gonna find this very useful. What’s next? What are we gonna look at next?

Larry Towner: Well I thought we would do, in the future I know we’re gonna do a sales and marketing calendar. We’re gonna do, and there’s a difference between a sales and marketing calendar. We’ll probably do a long term calendar. What are some of your long term prospects? And things like that. There’s so many things that we need to integrate into a calendar, that we’ve got, as I say, this is a series. We’ve got a bunch of things. But we’re gonna talk about some sales and some marketing concepts coming up very soon.

Tom Shivers: Alright. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, you’ll want to do that. You been watching The Vending Business Show, a publication of A & M Equipment Sales.

To see some of available equipment go tohttps://www.amequipmentsales.com/prodcat/new-vending-machin

Servicing New Vending Accounts Part One

Servicing  New Vending Accounts Part One  With a new account you aren’t sure how much product you will sell, but over time you will learn. So when you are new think about these things:

  1. How much extra product do you take?
  2. How do you get your product from your vehicle to the machine – hand truck, platform dolly, etc? (drinks are particularly heavy)
  3. What time of day would be best to service the account?

How to get the products into the machine is next in this series.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Servicing  New Vending Accounts Part One  Tom Shivers: I’m Tom with the Vending Business Show, here with Larry Towner again, who is a vending business consultant and has been in the vending business for 20 or more years. Today, we’re talking about Servicing New Vending Accounts Part One what to do when you’ve got an account. Larry, let’s just role play on this one. I’ve just landed a new account, and by the way, it’s at a gym here by that I go to. What do I do now?

Larry Towner,: Let’s take a step back and let’s think about a lot of things. You’ve got your machines in there already, you’ve chosen your product, I’m assuming you’ve got your product already, you’ve got your idea of what you’re gonna put in there, it’s already in the machine, so from here on out, we’re looking at of you actually having to service the account. Is that a correct statement?

Tom Shivers: That’s right.

Larry Towner,: Okay. All right. These are things, this is kind of what we like to call this part of planning, because you have to think about what you’re doing. The first thing I wanna say is you have an idea of how much you think you’re gonna sell on any given product, but if you have a new account, and you don’t have a lot of experience, you have to be prepared for when you go in. What we’ll do, eventually accounts get to where you know what they’re gonna need, because you’ve been there so much and the clientele doesn’t basically change that, but when you go in new and when you have no experience, there’s a bunch of things you have to think about.

Larry Towner,: The first thing is, how much extra product do you actually take? Do you take 50 bags of chips in? Do you take in 50 candy bars? Pastries? What do expect to take in there? We always used to go in and do, just as a tip, we would go in and do a little recon beforehand. We would walk into an account and see what’s sold a couple of days before we were getting ready to service it, so that we knew what to bring because it’s different account to account.

Larry Towner,: For the new guy, I’m gonna ask a question. Tom, you’ve never run vending route. How do you get the equipment into the account … or get your product into the account?

Tom Shivers: Probably with a hand truck.

Larry Towner,: Okay. Do you have a hand truck first off?

Tom Shivers: Not yet.

Servicing  New Vending Accounts Part One  Larry Towner,: Not yet. All right. You have a lot of choices when it comes to going out and buying hand trucks and or ways to move your equipment. There’s platform dollies, there’s hand trucks, there’s pallet jacks, things like that. There’s all kinds of things that you’ll see to move product around. Probably the most common is the hand truck, but I do know several vendors that have run very successfully with platform dollies, which is a four wheel dolly with a fold down handle, that you can fold it up and they stack their product up on that. You’re gonna need something to move product, particularly if you’re moving drinks. Drinks are very, very heavy and if you have to move eight to ten cases of drinks, while you can do it by hand, meaning you can take two cases of drinks a time and walk them in there. You’ll certainly … by the way, speaking of your gym membership, you’ll be dropping that, because you’ll get very fit very rapidly.

Larry Towner,: That’s correct. Even if you don’t, you still have to move all that product in there, and if your accounts are good accounts, you’re gonna need to move a pretty good bind of material in. Thinks about how you’re gonna get things from your vehicle into the account. We can go on about vehicles as well, but we’re gonna stick to a single account right now, and just say that somebody’s working out of a car, pick up truck, or a small van, and you’ll be fine running one piece of equipment, I mean one account out of a small vehicle.

Larry Towner,: There’s a concern right away. Tom, when do you think you would wanna be in there servicing that account? These are things you have to think about. What time of day would be the best? Well, there’s a couple of questions. First off is, in the case of your gym, the very first thing you have to think about is when are they open? Right? In your gym’s case, they’re open from when to when?

Tom Shivers: They’re open, I guess, like 6AM until about 10, 11PM, but the thing is, there are a lot people there the very early hours in the morning, and then they’re a lot, the most people there in the evening. Probably the best time is in the afternoons or in the late morning to early afternoons, or something like that.

Larry Towner,: And why would you choose that?

Tom Shivers: There’s fewer people there then.

Larry Towner,: The people do what? They get in your way, don’t they?

Tom Shivers: Of course.

Larry Towner,: Yeah, and so vending is a lot about efficiency. It’s about getting in, getting your machines filled and getting out. We don’t mean that in a negative way, it’s just your time is money, you wanna get in there, you wanna be efficient, super fast, fill your machines quick and get out. Little tricks like that, we’ll probably go into it another show, but there’s a whole way to load a machine so that you are super efficient and you can do more stops in a day. More stops in day, these are more advanced concepts and things like that, and we’ll do a lot of this at the vending shows coming up, but there’s all kinds of things where you need to be very, very fast.

Larry Towner,: At this part, we’re gonna stick to that single kind of account. You’ve got your times narrowed down that you’re gonna go in there in the mid-mornings to mid-afternoons, because that’s the time when they’re the least busiest. In a more traditional business type sense, the times that you wanna be there are in the non-break hour type businesses. If you go into a manufacturing plant, they have a generally predetermined breaks on a specific hour of the days, and those are the times you try to stay out of the break room, because that’s the times when everybody’s coming into the break room.

Larry Towner,: You gotta think about those kinds of things first. You gotta think about the ability of how you’re getting your product from point A to point B. Then you have to think about how do you get the product into the machines. Well, it sounds easy, you just put them in and everything works, but reality of that statement is-

Tom Shivers: Let’s stop this right here.

Larry Towner,: Go ahead.

Tom Shivers: And pick that up in the next one, if we can Larry, where we’ll talk about that part of how to get the products into the machine. Is that all right?

Larry Towner,: Operating success tips from a professional, right?

Tom Shivers: Thanks. You’ve been watching Servicing  New Vending Accounts Part One at the Vending Business Show

Some of our new vending machines  /www.amequipmentsales.com/prodcat/new-vending-machines

Vending Success Secrets

Vending Success Secrets Episode Transcript:
Tom: vending Success Secrets of  Vending Professional is a webinar coming up in the middle of January. Actually, I think it’s January 14th. And joining me to talk about the webinar is [Larry Towner 00:00:08] who is a vending business consultant with Service Group International and Joe Nichols, owner of A and M Equipment Sales.

Tom: So, Larry, why don’t you start by telling us what the webinar’s about.

Larry Towner: Well, the webinar is about,Vending Success Secrets  we’ve got multiple vendors who are gonna be sharing their success secrets with you all out there. And then, we’ll have a whole series of components on operations and sales and marketing, and equipment purchasing, and all the, really, the things that you need to know, along with a large question and answer section.

Tom: Well, who’s this webinar designed for, and who will get the most out of it?

Larry Towner: The person that’s gonna get the most out of this webinar Vending Success Secrets is gonna be somebody that’s looking to run their own business. They want to get away from, perhaps, a job that they might get laid off from, something like that. They’re looking to get ahead. They’re driven by financial independence. They want to get there as quick and as easily as possible. They’re all want to suck our brains dry as it were, and learn a whole lot of things. Joe, what do you think about the people who want to come to this seminar?

Joe NIchols: Well, I think they need to be self starters. They need to be hard working people. Vending is not rocket science. You just got to, you know, you got to have a little bit of common sense and hard work. And some sort of drive. And the harder you work, the more money you can make.

Tom: Now, I know you two guys have been in the vending business for decades, so, but I want to know, how did you create this vending business training that we’ll be getting on the webinar?

Larry Towner: Well, I’ll take … I started the vending business in 1985. I worked for a fellow in the greater Boston area. He was very, very successful. He taught me everything there was to know. I moved to Atlanta for personal reasons, and I was doing very well in the job I had. But, I was looking for some tax advantage. I was looking to be back to being the captain of my own soul, so I started part time out of my garage. I bought a guy’s assets out. I just bought about 13 sets of equipment from him. Went from that to full time, three trucks, three routes, five employees, about 7,000 customers, 135 accounts.

Larry Towner: Basically, I spent a lot of time training employees. I probably forgotten more about the vending industry than most people will know. So, that’s why we decided to do the training. Joe, what about you?

Joe NIchols: Well, I started in ’73. I’ll tell you how long I’ve been in the vending business; Back when I started, they didn’t even have dollar bill validators on the machines. All you could do was be, put change in the machines and pull a handle. So, I’ve seen the vending industry progress, you know, a lot of different ways. You know, everything’s electronic now, but I’ve seen a lot of change, but you know, a guy that’s just starting out can still make a lot of money.

Tom: All right, well, thanks Joe and Larry. You can learn more about Vending Success secrets at Vending Business Show  webinar at amequipmentsales.com. There should be a link around this video somewhere to the registration page, and we will see you …  Vending Business Blogs  Vending Machine Technology

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