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

ajs2013

Hi Clairey Louise, just seen your messages so welcome. I agree with I geek, re post even if you have not gotten back the brochures before as I have just done my 4th campaign and into my 5th now and have managed to gain more customers from territory that originally didnt give back the brochures or did not tick my boxes on my notes either. I will keep posting until they tick the boxes or order. When I signed up with my SL she said she would give me enough brochues to cover the amount of addresses I had been given territory and if i needed more just ask as I did not need to buy any for the first TWO campaigns at all. It might be different for each SL but i would see if you could ask for more. I was given 70 properties to canvas and was given 40 brochures of a back catalogue (c11) and 20 of the current campaign (c12) to start with then on the 2nd campaign I was given a further 20 to make 40 (c12) brochures in total and 40 c13 brochures. Maybe my SL was just over generous but worth the ask before you start paying out for brochures you could get for free. Mine managed to give me a good starter kit so was only needing to pay out for stuff after 2 campaigns thru.
Persistance I have found is the key to Avon. Never give up and battle through the hard times. Once you have found your little neiche of customers im sure you will start seeing the rewards. Im still new at this myself only on my 5th campaign but keep going. Keep your goal in sight. Good luck x

inaminute

Hello ladies,
I'm an Avon lady but I lurk a lot and don't often post. AJS2013 I saw on one of your recent posts that you have picked up 22 new customers of FB! How did you do that? I am curious as I've only picked up one new customer in 12 months. Any handy tips would be great if you are willing to share them at all?
Thanks in advance

ajs2013

Hi inaminute, all i have done is set up the fb page and advertised it on facebook sales pages that allow you to advertise businesses. I have done all my local ones (just search at the top the name of your town and normally a list of stuff appears) then done some surrounding area sites on the off chance someone local is looking on them. Just say like and share my page to anyone who could be interested and message me if unsure if i cover their area (i put the immediate town i am willing to cover in a message above my link in the post). I don't think i do anything special to entise people to view or like but had one of my ladies share a status from my page and considering there were only 45 likes on my page at the time that 1 share got over 184 people to view it. The only tip maybe i could give is advertise. I might try advertise in my leisure centre too although i will have to pay but if you think its worth paying then definitely go for it. At least with fb it is free. I am definitely no expert at this and probably had more luck than anything getting the customers i have but one week i might get none then the nxt you get a couple and hopefully it will just continue to rise even if its very slowly. Ensure your customers you have to know your looking for new customers and tell them to recommend you too. Just had one lady tell her neighbour and have now got small order from her but small is better than nothing i say .
I do run offers ocassionally like recommend a friend and get a free gift, i did an insentive scheme of order £20 and get 5% discount order £50 and get £10 and that did well but again maybe more luck than judgement.
Good luck with your page and perservere or try different ways to approach it and see what works for you and your area. Let me know how u get on and what works for you and ill update on anything that works more for me too.

amberemarriott

hi wondedred if anyone can help me just joined and when I go to avon connects it says user has beendisabled what does this mean?

ajs2013

Hi amber, i am having the exact same thing and i joined up back in July. I think it is if you registered as a potential customer to find a rep at any point (i did this 5 yrs ago) it deactivates your account and so far i have not been able to get this re activated even though i have tried several times. All I can suggest is do what i am doing and keep on at your SL or ASM and get them to bug the technical department for an answer and if I find a way to get it resolved i will re post and would love if you find a way please post it too. Good luck as i have been fighting this since July and loosing the will to live.

RRadcliffe

Hello there, I'm new to Avon, just went round my first lot of houses today, not sure how many orders I'll get back though!

This may seem like a silly question, but why is it so imperative that we get our brochures back?

Also, I've spoken to my Area Manager about this but she doesn't know what's gone wrong, but for some reason my account won't let me place an order, clicking on Start my Order just doesn't do anything! Anyone got any ideas? I can order through my area manager thankfully, but why is my site not working?!?!

Thanks

lozza1985

The main reason for getting your brochures back (aside from getting the orders from them!) is so that you can re-use them to deliver to other houses. This is especially important in the beginning, as otherwise you would spend a fortune if you bought a book for every house when not all of them will order. Once you have a regular round of customers you might decide to buy a brochure per customer to save time, so then if you don't get them back you can just leave a note with your contact details saying you'll return another to collect , or that if they want to order anything to get in touch by x date as the brochure won't be collected.

Hi and welcome btw

I found at the weekend that the website was playing up for me, I could get on to enter orders but when I tried to save it kept saying an error had occurred. Keep trying, and maybe try using a different internet browser in case that makes a difference.

I,_Geek

Getting brochures back - this is important if you're going to re-use brochures to reach everyone you need to. I'm not one for scrimping on brochures and order enough to reach everyone on the current campaign (one copy of the brochure per person), accept that I'll lose so many, and still have enough left to give them out again in the next campaign as backorder brochures. I keep reliable people on the current brochure (that way I know I'll get most of the brochures back) and less reliable people on the backorder one. I also re-canvas using backorder ones.

So I might have 50 people to reach with brochure 16 in C16. I order 50 brochures, prep them all and give them all out. I collect 45 of them in and place my order.

In the next campaign I have those 45 copies of brochure 16. I can still use them as backorder books and need to reach 40 people.

I factor in losing brochures after that first campaign to make sure I always have enough back to give them out again in the next campaign. I don't re-use brochures within the same campaign because I prefer to do just one big collection round per campaign. My area's big so I have 3 areas and each one has its own collection night, but I still only visit each street once.

Basically, if there are houses that didn't return your brochures but you've reached everyone you need to and don't need them back to use the next campaign, you don't have to keep going back. Always leave a calling card so people know you tried. On the last attempt leave a note with instructions of how to contact you to place their order, with a clear deadline. You can word and print your own calling cards and notes if you prefer.

inaminute

Hi ajs2013,

Thanks for your feedback on how you run your FB page. I have a FB set up for my Avon but not one that you can 'like', so I'd need to set up another FB account wouldn't I with a new page? Is it a business page that you've set up?
Sounds as though yours is doing really well though! I will keep you posted and let you know how I get on.
Thanks again for your advice.

nicki_2

Well last week I prepared 175-ish books for C16 (my current campaign), so that I could recanvass ALL my roads leaving out empty, abusive, bad customers, student (I never get them back from students:rotfl:) no access, have said no more in the past 12 months. If I had covered every single address I would have needed 300 books :eek: This morning I've been out to collect them, So far I have

• 4 not collected for a reason (holiday/later collection day),
• 2 of my regulars saying 'no more',
• 44 others collected in,
• One I couldn't get access to the book as their dog was in their front garden and I wasn't going to risk it as he was hip high
• 12/40 regular customers didn't leave their book out

So I make that 123 to in theory collect tonight. I know I won't get that many back, but apart from my regulars I won't knock and I'll just put a card through saying "if you wish to place an order contact me by 5pm Monday thanks". Not a huge improvement, but I have 100 books ordered for C17 in the hopes I will need them all. Although looking at figures atm, I might get away with just 60