E-THOUGHT FOR THURSDAY OCTOBER 29, 2009

Good day fellow vending enthusiast, to day's e-thought is going to be a little ranting a little questioning and a little requesting feedback.
How do you deal or approach a customer that the competition has offered to "buy" their business? This is probably the only arena in which the "family" owned business is over run by the corporate types.
I know you as vendors have seen this many times, the national vending company comes in and offers your customer everything from brand new coffee pots to $7000 cold food machines and the customer only has 50 employees! What the heck? This just infuriates me and they will continue to do this until you eventually lose so many accounts that you can't compete even on a "level" playing field!
It never fails, you start selling a customer product and sure enough you build your inventory up and BAM!! The competition goes in and offer them the world and you get stuck with extra inventory. Actually most of the time if the customer is honorable they end up taking any inventory that you have gathered for them anyway.
I guess my point is this... Why do they do this? Because they can? Because they have nothing else to offer to the customer besides "deals"? Why can't they rest on their Laurels? We all have to!!
Why can't they just offer superb customer service and great products? It may sound like I am whining a little but jeez..It Is truly irritating. And then more times than not, doesn't the customer come back in 6 months to a year anyway?" This is great for the customer but tends to build the stress level up in the company that is working it's butt off to keep their accounts happy.
Why would a company like that even have sales people? If all you are going to do is go in there after your sales people can't do anything and offer the customer the world? In my opinion this does nothing in terms of building long term, meaningful partnerships where we all work together. It does albeit give the competition the continued feeling of being superior and "king of the mountain" which in turn leads to continued crappy service!!!
I guess however the name of the game is getting customers and if you have "deep pockets" why wouldn't you use them? I know this has been a long term practice by the bigger companies all over the world, but I really think that sometimes customers would really miss out on some great innovative and supportive service. How would you put a monetary figure on something like that, or can you?
It has always been my perception that if you are honest and forthcoming with information and you provide the same product whilst providing exceptional communication and customer service, that would be much more advantageous than some kind of short term spiff and crappy service.

Regards

Curt Wokal