MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. - United Vending Group recently held the latest in its ongoing series of training sessions for individuals looking for information on ways to serve the booming small-site market profitably. The three-day session drew participants from all parts of the country. It was conducted by UVG founders Ed Klein, United Snack Group (Minneapolis) and Bob Purdy, LOBO VENDING (Mondovi, Wisc.).

"Small-location vending is probably the most untapped market still remaining in the vending industry," Purdy noted. Full-line vendors concentrate their efforts on accounts with populations of 100 and up, leaving smaller sites open for a variety of service options. Mini-vending is one of them.

Klein, whose organization is a national franchiser of snack box operations with 21 branches in 12 states, saw vending as a logical extension of his business and now has more than 500 locations equipped with small-site machines. "We've learned from our own operation, as well as from starting up associated vending companies, just how extensive this market is," Klein told V/T. "As of September 1993, over 95 percent of all U.S. businesses had fewer than 50 employees. Over 600,000 firms had between 20 and 50, and this is the choice part of our market."

While profit potential varies widely with the circumstances of each account, Klein's experience suggests that a minimum of 20 people is usually necessary for success with small-site vending, and 30 is a more prudent lower limit. Operators interested in prospecting this market can obtain a number of useful tools to help them do it, such as a publication called County Business Patterns, published for each state and featuring county-by-county tabulations of businesses by number of employees and type of enterprise. This makes it easy to exclude business that are not prospects, to lay out compact territories, and to concentrate sales efforts on qualified prospects.

A number of companies also offer to compile and sell lists of various kinds, and some of these are more useful than others. Learning the ins and outs of developing valuable sales resources of this kind is one of the prime objectives of the United Vending Group training sessions.

Also emphasized is efficient operation, since keeping costs under control is absolutely essential to success in small-location vending (as, indeed, in most type of business). Central here is good recruiting of in-house telephone sales personnel and setting them to work within a structure designed to maximize productivity by making use of effective scripts.

Equal care is needed in retaining field sales personnel, once the operator has built the business through is or her own sales efforts to a point at which additional help is needed. The UVG faculty offers comprehensive information on professionally-prepared psychological-profile tests, classroom instruction and field training for sales personnel were explored in depth, with role-playing exercises as appropriate.

One participant in the session, Merle Rietz of Liberty Snacks (Allentown, Penna.) noted that he is looking for ways to expand his three-state, 5,000-location honor-box snack business into small-site vending. "With current accounts adding employees and new businesses starting up in my markets, the use of small-location equipment makes good business sense, to overcome the shrinkage that's associated with the honor snack business," Rietz noted. "The equipment line of LOBO VENDING, and the operational assistance that UVG offers - as well as the strong leasing program available through them - are the elements I'm looking for to enable me to become established in this unique market."

Purdy, a pioneer in the development and marketing of small-location vending equipment, sees this segment of the workplace service market continuing to grow. Vendors who develop the proper management skills, and who are supported by the right equipment and service, will thrive well into the next century, he predicts.

"From the response of our previous training session participants, UVG will continue to meet the demands of vendors looking to grasp the opportunities and meet the challenges of the fast-growing small-site vending market," he believes. Information on upcoming training sessions, and on other UVG programs, may be had by calling the organization at (800) 279-6633