As a salesperson, you’ll know that the vending industry is fast paced and dynamic. We’re seeing growth everyday, not just in product variety, but with innovation and customer diversity, with industry experts predicting a strong growth in premium and healthier options, such as high-quality coffee and health food, you can read more about the industry changes here.  

However, this increase in choice also leads to an increase in competitors vying for your customers attention. Your competitors will be upping their game, increasing their product variety, and honing their sales pitches and efforts. How do you compete in this dynamic environment? You change with the times! 

Today, we’re sharing our top tips on how to ensure it’s your pitch that sticks in your customer’s mind, and ultimately wins you that sale! 

Human to human sales 

Whether it’s B2B, or B2C sales, it’s always human to human. You will always be one human being interacting with another. We are all professionals, but the human touch will go a long way. Take the time to get to know your customers, get to know their preferences, and how they prefer to be interacted with. 

Customers overwhelmingly prefer to talk to an individual than a department or company, it’s great to be professional, but avoid being overly corporate. Ensure that all communications sent directly to customers are sent from a named individual within your company. This will not only present a personal face within your company, but it will also increase accountability within the business. If employees are using their own name during customer interactions, they will wish to present the best side of themselves.

Customer relations must be good general human relations. Any staff that regularly communicates with customers should be empathetic, patient, and adaptable. A great way to achieve this, is to employ active listening, paraphrasing your customers concerns, and clarifying what they are saying to you.

You can find more tips on enabling client trust on our blog, here. 

Offer additions

Time is precious, and customers look to cut down ‘legwork’ wherever possible, and will always be grateful if you can help them in this process. Consider what additional items might complement your product, whether it’s branded bottles, or a drip tray, and weave these elements in to your sales pitch. To enhance your sales with complementary products, consider what is logical to show to your customers at which point in the purchase process.

Whilst customers are choosing options, consider offering products that are complementary to the product in question, but not essential. If you stock coffee machines, a water dispenser can be the perfect complement, if you stock water dispensers – the opposite applies! Aim for familiarity at this stage in the process, complementary products are often added without too much thought, so keep the price low and the product simple. The key to achieving success with this method is to make genuine and useful recommendations for products that you know your customers will wish to buy, fostering customer trust, and sales success.

You can read more about the benefits of complementary products, here.

Infusing the knowledge 

The industry changes at an ever-increasing speed, unless you keep up, it’ll leave you behind. Ensure you’re growing consistently, learning as much as you can to stay ahead of the curve so that when you make your pitch, it’s based on a solid foundation of knowledge. sign up to key industry journals, and keep an eye on the latest business news. Keep abreast of what may be affecting your customer’s bottom line, from Brexit to taxation. If you can understand what issues your customers are facing before you’re sat in front of them, you can research how you’re best placed to assist. 

Borg & Overström offer exclusive academy sessions, to equip you with the knowledge to be the best salesperson possible, learn more about our academy sessions here. 

Choose the highest quality products

Enthusiasm is contagious. If you choose products you’re passionate about, and trust in, the customer will trust what you’re selling. Enable this enthusiasm by only offering products that you, yourself, endorse. 

Here at Borg & Overström, we know the value of quality. Each product leaves our Norfolk headquarters only once it has undergone our rigorous quality control check, including pressure and leak testing. We know that your customers insist on hygienic, clean, and pure hydration. That’s why we create our machines with hygiene at the forefront. As well as boasting of a shrouded faucet, ensuring a contamination free dispense system, our water dispensers employ a unique Direct Chill system, utilising advanced cooling technology to ensure water is hygienic and fresh. 

Here at Borg & Overström, we only provide products that go above and beyond industry standards, providing you with complete peace of mind. 

Check in  

Your sales pitch shouldn’t finish when you walk out the door.  Questions and queries will occur to your customers as your sales message permeates in the days and weeks following your discussions. Open a communication channel enabling them to discuss their thoughts by telephoning, or emailing, them on a regular basis to check in. 

Spend time on honing your communication skills, figures of trust communicate clearly and openly. They don’t talk in jargon or metaphor, and check that their conversational partner understands what they are talking about. 50% of any conversation should be listening. Focus fully on what your client is saying in your communications, paraphrase if necessary, to check you understand.

You can read more about how to keep your customers coming back on our blog, here. 

The Borg & Overström academy 

Here at Borg & Overstrom, we’ve evolved over time to keep up with the industry, but we’ve always remained committed to ensuring we offer our customers the best service possible. If you’d like to learn more about how we’ve achieved this, enrol in our academy today. 

Email : [email protected] 

Phone : (+44)01362 695006