contractor success Vending: The Sure-fire Way To Increase Revenue Providing vending services can increase a contractor’s revenue by $100,000 or more. By: Gary Joyner I It all started innocently enough: A member of a cleaning crew was working at a voca-tional school in Ft. Myers, Florida, and saw that the vending machines in the student lounge were very dirty. He wasn’t sure whether or not those machines fell under the scope of cleaning work and decided to call his boss. That simple action ended up adding over $100,000 in annual revenue to that building service contractor (BSC). This may sound far-fetched, but speak-ing from experience, I can tell you it isn’t because that is exactly what happened with my BSC in 2009. When that worker called and asked what he should do, the first thought that came to mind was to look out for our client’s best interests. That led to the employee cleaning the machine, but it also led to an epiphany. If we already had someone in place to make the vending area meet aesthetic standards, why couldn’t that same person service the product inside the machine and, therefore, send the vending money and profits into our company’s bottom line? The biggest impediment to doing this was that successfully navigating the vend-ing world takes a certain level of expertise. Thankfully for us, that was a road I had already been down while serving as a cleaning consultant for several vending machine manufacturers in the 1990s. If cleaning the machines is already covered in your scope of cleaning, why not provide the vending service itself and increase revenues? This prior experience allowed me the ability to inquire with the campus director if she was interested in perusing alternate vending proposals. She said she was not very happy with the current company, and the idea of dealing with one firm for both services was quite appealing. A proposal was delivered to her shortly after that led to an immediate go-ahead to proceed with the combined vending/clean-ing business model. A Hand In The Cookie Jar The next step was to determine the prop-er installation for this 40,475-square-foot facility. There were a variety of ways to go about this, so I contacted Phil Masters, vice presi-dent of national accounts for the Wittern Group located in Des Moines, Iowa — the world’s largest manufacturer and financier of vending machines — to get some direc-tion as to how to proceed. Masters indicated there were three prob-able levels of sales for this particular instal-lation. The lowest level would see approximately $48,000 in annual revenue and a 47 percent gross profit margin; the standard revenue 42 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • July 2011
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