I am hoping some of you can please offer me some advice. Our family owns 48, 3 compartment bulk candy/gum machines. We’ve been in the business now for about 10 years. We have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. We do our family vending business on a part time basis.
A week ago I was presented with an offer from an answering service that wanted to know if we would consider partnering with them to offer their service to the business owners where we have our machines placed. They would pay us $100.00 for each company that signs up for their service and a recurring income for as long as the business keeps the service. I did a little research on the company and they are very legitimate and have been in business for a number of years. I am trying to think of all of the reasons to say no, but honestly if all I have to do is hand the business owner the information then I am thinking why not. I know we could use the money.
If you sale business to business or if you have a business relationship with business owners would you consider this type of partnering?
I don’t see anything wrong with it. You just have to remember a few key things:
the way the answering service performs their job will reflect on you, since you recommended them. It sounds like you’re already addressing that issue with your research. I’d recommend checking out references of current customers too.
your sales method needs to be low-key and friendly. A pushy approach is not likely to work and may hurt your relationships with current clients. In fact, the ideal way would be to wait until a current client mentions a need, then suggest the answering service as a solution.
make sure there’s no confusion about your relationship to the answering service or your own services. People can easily be confused. You don’t want them wondering why you do vending machines and answering services.
Do answering services do much business these days except for maybe doctors? It really seems like most businesses use machines. I just don’t think there’d be much demand. Also, all the stuff dracoi said.
I too would be curious as to why one would ever use an answering service today short of it being a life threatening issue like a doctor’s office, or if the business sold a product/service where down time to the customer was an issue and the business owner was willing to service the customer at any hour of the day.
Even then, maybe I’m naive. If I ran such a business, I would have a simple answering machine/voice mail that gave the store hours and if it was some time critical product needing immediate service, I would invite the caller to leave a message or call my cell phone and provide the number in the outgoing message. If the customer can’t reach me via cell phone, then the answering service won’t be able to either, ergo, who would use such a service today?
There are several good reasons for a small business to use an answering service. One is screening calls. If you are a plumber and you give out your cellphone number, you’re going to get calls from sales people, politicians, and credit card companies that can LOWER YOUR RATES NOW while your head is under a sink. An answering service can blow off all of the solicitors and just pass through legitimate calls from people who need a plumber right away.
Hmmmm…it just sounds to me like they are offering you a referral fee, rather than ‘partnering.’ Or, is there something I missed?
In my experience, whenever somebody comes up with any kind of offer, keep your hand on your wallet. Whenever anybody confuses terms such as partnering and referral fee, it means there will be a drama and continual misunderstandings. Keep your hand on your wallet.
I had a friend who went into some sort of arrangement with ‘partners.’ He ended up being the meal ticket for the rest, but he, himself, ended up with about 5 dollars worth of benefit.
Point being, keep your hand on your wallet. Don’t enter into a contract thing.
Best wishes,
hh
Sorry Gary “Wombat” Robson, I still don’t get it. So as a plumber, I am going to shell out extra money just for the convenience of having an answering service screen out a handful of junk calls? Not likely. I can honestly say that working for a small business now, I get maybe one junk call a month. Of course the phone number is listed on the “do not call” registry, which helps.
I see no problem with the referral agreement as long as 1) They issue you a contract with no surprises and no pressure on your part to have to harass your existing customers 2) They do not get to have a list of your customers to harass them on their own.
If you get a sale for them, ensure they cough up the money you’re deserved before you even attempt to make another. As handsomeharry pointed out, these tend to have lots of ‘misunderstandings’. They may claim the customer contacted them on their own without mentioning you and it was a big coincidence, or this sales didn’t count for a commission because of XYZ reason. Or, they’ll pay you once you accumulate a minimum of X sales because they don’t issue commission checks below Y amount. Or, they only issue checks at the end of the year, so sell all you can until then, and they’ll conveniently tell you how many ‘counted’ towards a commission at the end of the year when you settle up. I’ve bitched in another thread about how my previous job lowered my salary and tried to put me on a commission system, which made me instantly leave the job because they all but admitted these kinds of shenanigans would take place. I’ve been told by others who recently left the company and were given the same deal ($3,000 commission for every $100,000 sale) had to wait more than six months to get paid and had tons taken out in taxes since they were treated as ‘bonuses’ on the books.
Do Not Call only applies to residential lines, not business lines. In my experience, even apart from Do Not Call, business lines get a lot more random unwanted phone calls (meaning, calls from people other than existing or potential customers) than residential or cell phone lines do.
First, as sharding pointed out, the Do Not Call registry is for residential lines. At my bookstore, I get multiple solicitor calls per day. Some are from vendors I’ve actually dealt with, others are from people trying to sell me websites, ads, merchant card services, insurance, products for resale, financial services, tax services, Yellow Pages listings, copier supplies, inkjet cartridges, and more. Not to mention calls from wrong numbers, people looking for jobs, and so forth.
It’s not a big deal to grab the phone when I’m at my desk in the store. If I got a call when I was elbow deep in a clogged drain, it would be a problem. You don’t want to ignore real customers with real emergencies, but you don’t want to scramble to pick up the phone and hear someone pitching Internet services.