Vending Machine Placement

Snack and soda vending requires a marketing and sales effort for account placement. The difference between marketing and sales is that marketing determines who your customer is, how much they are expected to buy, how they will get the product, and all other aspects of your business that induce customers to purchase your products. Sales is the act of getting the business: closing the deal, getting the money. The sales function is applied primarily to account placement, and the sales process uses the marketing function to make an offer to a potential account.

Let me illustrate the difference. Marketing for the vending machine business includes decisions about what type of vending machines to place (new, refurbished, as-is), what type of products to offer (snacks, sodas, food, brand name, off brand, etc.), what trucks to use, how to handle maintenance, who answers the telephone and what they say, if the machines accept $5 bills or credit/debit cards, how the route and sales people dress, and so on. Marketing includes every aspect of delivering product to the end user.

On the other hand, sales is the individual act of getting another person to say yes to your vending machine services. Salespeople use marketing tools. When approaching a potential account, a salesperson might include a product list, an operational procedure (if you have technical problems, we will dispatch a repair tech within 4 hours), a route schedule or other marketing tools. These tools do not generate business by themselves 'they require a person to make the customer aware of them. Salespeople ask for business.