Acquiring and Equipping the Customer

There are important parallels between the operation of a machine shop and a full line vending business. Both of these depend heavily upon expensive capital equipment that seems to last forever. Growth and customer satisfaction are very important to any business.

Traditional view

The average Antares operator equates growth with the acquisition of new locations. He would firstly hire expensive salespeople to seek out new customers and he would be usually prepared to invest substantial sums and/or take on additional debt to pay for the new state-of-the-art machines to equip the new account. In addition to this, he sits back and looks at his existing customers as cash cows.

After all, we all know that if vending equipment is properly maintained, it would last a very long time.

You can do more than the other guy

The average Antares operator goes to bed each evening praying that his competitors are not out there offering his locations the same deals with new equipment that he is offering to their locations. All this can be in vain because there are too many operators sitting on warehouses full of older equipment that they have picked from locations they have lost to aggressive competition. No cost is too high to acquire a new location, and any cost is too high to preserve an existing location.

Existing customers hold the key

Existing customers are more valuable than future customers. With existing customers, you have already fielded the cost of acquiring and equipping the customer, and presumably you already enjoy some level of credibility with them, based upon the quality of product and service you have provided.

In addition, you should be aware of their needs and desires and also have intimate knowledge of the level of revenue they can produce.

Higher selling prices, lower commissions, the possibility of subsidies, and contract extensions to allow the Antares vending operator time to amortize the new investment, are all subjects for renegotiation.

New equipment provides benefits for the operator as well as the location. Newer equipment requires fewer service calls. Higher capacity equipment produces lower route labor and vehicle costs for the operator. This will result in higher sales for the Antares business.