Small Business Ideas

I work for a specialty after market auto parts retailer. We have no showroom, so around twenty percent of our business comes from the Internet while eighty percent comes from the telephone. We send out catalogs to those who request them or anyone who has placed an order in the last year. We also advertise in the back of automotive magazines.  Needless to say, telephone sales are truly the lifeblood of our business. As of late, however, I’ve been wishing that weren’t the case.

My company’s business phone system has what I would call, the absolute most annoying hold message ever produced. My boss, the owner of the company, is a really nice guy.  Unfortunately, he is a really nice guy with a very pronounced speech impediment. One day he decided that instead of the traditional hold music, he would play a repeating digital loop of him announcing our weekly specials. We are a very busy company. In fact, most days find our sales reps on the phone from the time we get in until the time we leave. As you might guess, with such a high volume of calls, many people are left on hold.

When our customers finally reach a sales rep, I would estimate that about thirty to forty percent of them do an impersonation of my boss… no kidding. The other sixty or seventy percent usually compliment us on the “funny voice” doing our ads. I’ve had a few who were offended by it, thinking we were trying to make fun of those with speech impediments. The thing is, almost everybody has something to say about the hold ads. I even had one customer complete an extensive order while doing his version of “the voice”. Since our boss is a really great guy, my coworkers and I are less than amused on one hand, yet highly entertained on the other. My only problem is that while most of my colleagues are spread out over a huge office, my cubical is right next to the boss’. I have to keep a straight face during some fairly good impressions.

You can find a vending machine supplier for just about any product under the sun that you want to sell through your vending machines. When you are getting started in this business it is best to try to find a unique product that you know customers want to buy. Cold food is one of the hottest items on the market today because people like to get something quick from a vending machine when they don’t have time for a sit down lunch. Cookies are another option that you can keep in mind when looking for a vending machine supplier.

A vending machine supplier usually has a vending machine program from which you can learn the basics of getting started in the vending machine business. In such a program you can learn about the pros and cons of the cold food vending machine or whether or not you should start off with something small, such as a candy vending machine. You can opt for full service when you buy a vending machine. Cold food vending machine suppliers will assume the costs of the machine and servicing for a monthly commission.

You can also buy or rent your cold food vending machine from a distributor and then look for a vending machine supplier for the products that you want to sell. You can even do this yourself if you sell cold sandwiches, for example. It will require more work on your part, but you can make the sandwiches yourself for the vending machine. Cold food sells well where there are places where people often pick up a sandwich from the vending machine as a snack to tide them over until mealtime.

A cold food vending machine has a glass front so that the customers can see the full range of products inside. It is about the size of a refrigerator and needs electricity, so you do need to have a large area available when you want to place this type of vending machine. Cold food that you can look at including in this type of machine includes sandwiches, but there are many other types of cold food that you can buy from a vending machine supplier. These include such things as cookies, donuts, fruit juice, small containers of fruit and even yogurt.

A vending machine supplier sells in bulk. In general, you need to buy cases of the products, so this means you need to have a cooled area in which you store them. When you visit each of the cold food vending machines on your route, you should have a sample of all the products with you so that you can restock the ones that have sold out. It is important to check these vending machines on a regular basis so that the cold food is always fresh and not out of date. This is why it is important to buy your products from a reputable vending machine supplier that has a best before date well in advance of when you make your purchase.