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Ferguson said he prefers hiring sales people who don’t have OCS experience; too many OCS sales people are not instructed to emphasize quality over price.
The most important background Ferguson looks for in a prospective OCS salesperson is cold calling experience and customer service experience.

EXPANSION INTO VENDING

Ferguson and Endres learned early on that a lot of customers wanted vending in addition to OCS. They first tried partnering with dedicated vending operators to meet these requests. Unfortunately, the vending operators they worked with did not provide a level of quality they wanted.

In 1995, they expanded into vending. They hired a dedicated vending driver so they could offer vending to those customers who asked for it. They bought, moved and serviced their own equipment and built a base of vending customers from their OCS customer base.

The pair never considered mixing vending and OCS products on the same deliveries. “Vending and coffee should be separate,” Ferguson said.

But the company was never as committed to vending as OCS. Even though the vending business grew to five routes in a 10-year period, Ferguson and Endres never felt vending was as profitable as OCS.

VENDING PRESENTS ITS OWN SET OF ISSUES

Vending customers, they found, were less willing to accept price increases than OCS customers. They found it harder to raise vending prices due to competitive pressure.

In 2005, they switched to a more powerful management software package, which confirmed their suspicions: the vending business was not as profitable as the OCS side.

Ferguson and Endres faced a difficult choice: divest the vending business which was 50 percent of total sales to focus more resources on the OCS business. And risk losing business to customers who wanted both OCS and vending. They nevertheless chose to sell the vending routes and focus on OCS. They sold their vending routes to Fresh Brew Group USA, based in Houston.