~Avon Hints & Tips (Part 8) ~ Please read first post :)

Money_maker

Another one to recommend not stockpiling. Not to buy stock off this old rep either as apart from the core range, most products are discontinued after a few brochures or revamped and relaunched.

Having said that, I have a lot of stock which has mostly been discontinued. I got this from creative ordering or as freebies by one method or another! Mostly these will do for Christmas pressies for my bestie customers. My customer incentives for orders over a certain amount tend tend to be an item up to £1.50 brochure price (perhaps on offer), a selection of samples (this is always very popular) or money off a certain item. I never use discontinued items or clearance as customer is aware of what item they are going to receive and I cannot rely on Avon having the item in stock.

However, I would say 'yes' to the notice board. £6 month is a good investment for advertising.

Money_maker

AJS, there's a link to helpful hints for parties at the start of this thread. HTH.

mrsc040211

I'm thinking of taking on another street (have 3 already) but it has 130 houses on it. What is the best way of starting?
With my previous streets I put a brochure through every door with a printed note saying "hi I'm a new avon rep in your area etc etc and if you don't want to receive a book again tick either not interested or buy elsewhere"
Is there a more efficient way if doing it? I don't fancy doing this for 130 houses! Would putting a flyer through the doors work? Something like text/call me if you want to see a book?

clareweezy

Hi guys I think I remember reading somewhere when I first started with Avon that if you back order from the previous campaign you get charged a fee - is this right?

ajs2013

I took on a 3rd street recently and originally knocked on every door to ask if anyone was interested. I was able to establish who was interested and not and the ones who did not answer i put a note through with the brochure asking people to tick if they were "interested just not this time" or if they would "rather not receive a brochure". Unfortunately out of the 30 odd i did this with not one person ticked the boxes so it was a complete waste of time for me. I am also looking for a better way of re canvassing my streets again and was going to knock on every door and only give them a brochure if they answered and was interested but think your idea of a leaflet might be better. That way they will contact you if they are interested. You just need to get a leaflet that catches their eye and is not put in the recycle bin. It also saves coming back sometimes 3 or 4 times to collect a brochure or never getting them back (had lots of that too recently).
Lozza - also noticed as i was reading through your first post on this thread again last night the bit about facebook pages where you say you cant have AVON in the URL at all. Why is this please as I have searched alot of facebook pages on Avon done by reps and found most do have the name in it. I thought it would help also if people search to find you. I do have a facebook page but if there is an issue with putting AVON in the title then I need to change it before i do some business cards so i don't waste them and have to get new ones done. ty x

ajs2013

clareweezy I have not been charged to my knowledge as I have some customers on the old brochure and some on the new one. The only fee I know about is if your order is under £10 or you order a 2nd delivery after your main order. Only been doing this 7 weeks now so if i have missed something then would be interested to know too.

clareweezy

Thank you, don't know where I read that to then lol xx

lozza1985

Haven't time to fully reply at the minute to everything -

But no if you do your order correctly you can order from both campaigns at the same time and not be charged, it all counts as your regular order. When entering your order, on the first page select the current campaign and regular order (ie not additional), then on the page where you can enter product codes, on the little box next to the box where you type your codes in you'll see the current campaign number - click on that and then you can select the previous campaign number. It means it all goes as a single order that way so you don't get charged and it all counts to you qualifying for your discount.

lozza1985

Not having avon in the URL or email address - this is a legal requirement from avon themselves. It is made more of a deal of for sales leaders, but the same rules also stand for reps - I assume its so that noone confuses us with the real avon website/email address and to avoid legal issues if they get someone doing false advertising etc and misrepresenting avon.

You can have avon in the name of your Facebook page - so long as it isn't the URL (you can change the URL) which is what I did for mine. It still means if someone searches for avon and your name/town etc it shows up even though avon isn't in the website address itself.

I,_Geek

Facebook page URLs - here's the word from Avon: http://www.avon.uk.com/REPSuite/rep_guidelines_own-site.page. You'll need to be logged into the rep suite to see that I think. Scroll down to under the pink box with the "words not to use" and it's in one of the bullet points under there. So that's pretty clear to me but an enormous number of reps don't follow this rule, post their urls on the official Avon forum (monitored by HO employees) and nothing's ever said. I've known of 1 rep who said she was told to change her url. That said, best to play it safe in case they decide to enforce this rule.

Canvassing a new, large street

Personally I'm not so keen on knocking and asking, and then only focusing on those houses. I just don't think I'd have picked up as many customers. Some would have said no because it was a bad time. If you really want to knock on every door, still post books to the ones who aren't in and give people plenty of chances. I've recently worked out some stats about how effective repeated chances were:

- My customer base would be half the size if I only focused on people who ordered straight away.
- It would be down by a third if I'd stopped calling on people who didn't return their first brochure.

I use opt-out notes and get ticks on the 2nd or 3rd brochure when people realise I'm not going away unless they tell me to. I also get customers on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th... brochure.

I'd steer well clear of flyers. They can't be ordered from, don't showcase the products and prices, don't prove your reliability (by calling back on time), get lumped in with junk mail, rely on the customer wanting to/remembering to call you, you learn no important information that you would when calling back (who's not keen, who uses another rep), you have no choice but to keep flyering each house every campaign just in case whereas when you call back for brochures you rule out houses with each campaign. So brochures are more work at first but ultimately they mean you focus on the right people. So yep... as you can tell I don't like flyers!

There's no pressure to do a big street in one go. Split it over a few campaigns if you want.