"The ATM industry is saturated!" another ISO told me last week. His seems to be the prevailing thought or impression among ATM industry vendors these days. Do you agree with the saturation perspective?
As an ATM sales trainer, hearing owners and managers repeat the "saturated" line is disappointing. Even more frustrating is hearing managers discussing with their sales people that transaction volume and equipment sales continue to drop. These conversations are doing managers and sales forces in the ATM industry a disservice.
The famous motivational speaker, Earl Nightingale, is often quoted as saying, "We move in the direction of our dominant thoughts."
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Having these "saturated" conversations deflate sales forces, giving them the permission, with a built in endorsement from management for an excuse to fail.
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Damien Fitzgerald
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I have been doing sales training for ATM companies throughout the Unites States and have yet to find an area that is truly saturated. Of course, there are areas where high concentrations of ATMs exist. In those areas, competitors are still finding locations to sell ATMs, more often than they are sitting back watching existing ATMs lose transaction volume.
When a competitor moves into your market and you see transactions per machine decline, the first thing we too often do is blame the competitor. We may think, "How dare this young upstart find the opportunities that we have overlooked?" or "Who does he think he is?" and "I've been in this business for years and he's stealing my business." When you talk to your sales people in the coming weeks, don't have them think about too many ATMs, but rather, not enough ATMs. There still are tremendous ATM growth opportunities in our communities that we are overlooking. Discuss with your sales team some new, potential locations that perhaps have been overlooked, rather than simply have them revisit the same ole places over and over again — c-stores, entertainment clubs and gas stations.
In ATM sales training, we talk to motivated sales people who want to sell more equipment while increasing overall ATM transaction volume. Our sales people need new ideas to replace the old dominant thoughts. Some of your sales people are trying to sell tomorrow's customers with yesterday's techniques and that no longer works.
With proper training, we have found sales managers who have been able to think outside the box and sell ATMs to less traditional locations, such as parking garages, office buildings, tow-truck lots, apartment buildings, health clubs, hospitals, fraternal organizations, churches, rest areas and manufacturing plants. In your area, someone will find new businesses to sell and place ATMs. Either your sales staff will or your competitor will. Long story short, there will be new ATMs near your established ATMs and your transaction volume per location will decrease. That's a fact.
So sell the new locations.
Our business is not saturated, but the traditional locations we've catered to are getting closer to saturation. But there are more opportunities in the future than there have been in the past, if you're willing to take notice and change the way you think about ATM placements and sales.
Fitzgerald is a seasoned sales training consultant who has spent the last eight years in and around the ATM business, giving presentations at conferences such as ATMIA's annual U.S. event. He now owns DTD Marketing, a small marketing and consulting firm, and expects his first book, "A.F.T.O.: Ask for the Order" to publish this summer.
