The Avon Business for Newbies

The Avon Business for Newbies

By Ken Lord

Copyright 2012 Kenniston W. Lord, Jr.

Smashwords Edition

Avon © and the Avon name are property of the Avon Corporation,

1251 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

PROLOGUE

This book is written for new Avon representatives who think they’d like some sales training and have not been successful to obtain it. Before we begin, please contemplate the following:

Avon is an $11 Billion company, and growing all the time—the largest direct selling company in the world. It has provided unlimited earnings for everyone involved since 1886. It is a company whose worldwide operations span more than one hundred countries, involve more than six million people worldwide, including more than a half-million in this country alone. You are a part of that company and you alone determine what you will obtain from the experience. If you don’t make the effort to make contacts to move the product, then you derive nothing but frustration from the experience, because few customers will come to you. And make no mistake—in any walk of life, nothing happens until a sale is made.

If you can’t make the time necessary to attend a sales or downline meeting when they occur, you fail to gain the knowledge necessary to present your product or opportunity, and because of that you may decide this isn’t for you. With little effort you could make yourself a shooting star, an outstanding salesperson with a stellar future. You can make it first to the President’s Club and beyond. How far you go depends on only one person—YOU! And if you can’t be bothered to join us, you have told us that you know all there is to know—so we could reasonably expect great things from you and save the effort necessary to support you. Sadly, that’s not the way it is. You have contributions to make. We need them. You need us.

Avon is a good company. It’s not a perfect company. Its people work as hard as we do. Sometimes there are service issues, and things don’t always go right. Things get shorted, taken off sale, or arrive broken. But their people make things as right as they can be. They treat their people right. They correct mistakes as quickly as they can. They reward your performance eloquently, with prizes, gifts, and other forms of recognition.

Four letters, A-V-O-N, but a world of good people who have made an outstanding opportunity for growth and reward available to you. Carry the ball as far as you wish—and your coaches, from bottom to top, will stand in the bleachers, screaming about your success. All you have to do is to make the effort. After all, Avon sells four lipsticks every second somewhere in the world. You need to gain a share of that market.

To follow Avon’s business, go to one of these sites: www.Avoncompany.com/investor or www.Avoncompany.com.

A message from a former Avon Star

Hello, I’m Ken Lord. For most of eighteen years I was involved with Avon; the first as an adjunct to the woman who would become my wife, the balance as a representative in my own right. I got into Avon because I needed a job. In 1990, my graduate education had ended and there were no jobs for a person with my qualifications in the education-rich city of Tucson, Arizona. Initially, we signed Mary up; it was a woman’s thing, after all. Later in the book I’ll share why I signed myself up before we married, and will tell what I did to make my dealership a success. I worked intently at it until 1999 when I dropped into a diabetic coma and had to stand my Avon business down for several months until I could recoup physically. For whatever it became after that, it was a pale imitation of the three-hundred-thousand dollar dealership I had built at the time. I continued the business from home and began to write in support of Avon people. What you are about to read here is a rewrite of efforts from the mid-2000s, updated and severely edited.

In 2009, Mary, my wife, died. She had been a tremendous helpmate and we had built an outstanding Avon business together. A person with New England roots, I naturally gravitated back to where my children were. With seventeen years, I began a new Avon business, largely because I wanted to hang on to get the twenty-year plate. I did some consignment work and sustained a small business. In late 2010 I joined Christian Mingle and met a wonderful woman here in Syracuse, New York, coincidentally also named Mary. We were married in March of 2011; I relocated to Syracuse and dropped the business.

I still wanted to be of some help to Avon people, however. They have all been good to me. As electronic readers became more available, it was suggested that I move several of my books to e-book format. As I looked over what I had, the original book I had written, Becoming an Avon Representative, bubbled to the top of the pile. I reasoned that though I am not now an Avon representative, there was still good experience to share and training that I might do among the newbies to the Avon business. It didn’t take long to determine that the book would have to be revised, updated, and made more readable, and for several weeks, I’ve done that. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been as simple as changing present tense verbs to past tense. I have made this significantly different, but there is the possibility that I have inserted incorrect information or omitted something important. If you, when reading this, determine I’ve erred, please communicate with me about it at theavonman@juno.com. Yes, I kept the e-mail address. Thank you. I can update this book at will for several months electronically.

If there was a single deficiency in my Avon experience it was that I’ve not felt that Avon does an adequate job of sales training. I made no secret of that fact. And often I offered to do something about it. Not permitted to do so, I took it on myself to do so within my intellectual capacity.

On the Internet are several Avon-related discussion groups. On them, several Avon reps learn from each other, swapping fluff, seeking product, and in general trading quips and comments. Unfortunately, as well, there was an inordinate amount of griping. With motivational pieces, I attempted to overcome much of the latter, only to discover that many folks felt they had to gripe. I felt it was a huge waste of effort and resource.

As my first post to one of those groups, I forwarded what would ultimately become a chapter in this book—Sales Versus Order Taking. That prompted questions that opened topics that are laid out in the balance of the book. As the teacher in me began to blossom, the author of more than two decades decided to emerge. After awhile, requests to post on other loops were made—and honored. New loops were backfilled with segments that had gone by. By the time I was half through, two things became apparent: (1) while there was much literature on the subject, nobody had ever adapted it to our market and (2) there was a strong interest to handle it fully. The original effort was well supported.

Since I first wrote this book, Avon has done a lot about training—if you’re willing to sit for hours before the Internet screen. There are courses on beauty, courses on makeup, courses on products, and even a few selling tips. The concerns that caused me to first write this book have not been alleviated, however, so I’m updating it and offering it on Smashbooks.com.

This book has been assembled for electronic readers in standard e-book formats. Because of that, pagination, indentation, and tabulation normally used in a printed book must be removed. Things that should be indented now appear on the left margin, and first line indentation has been changed to block format. Going at it page by page on an electronic reader will not be less confusing, but by the same token, some flexibility of a printed book has been lost.

Kenniston W. Lord, Jr.

For 18 years, Ken the Avon Man

Chapter 1: It Begins With Recruiting

I’m the Recruit-ER

An Internet loop moderator posted this message: For those out there who are successful recruiters, what advice and/or help can you give those of us starting recruiting? What prospecting tips can you give us? What do you say to a recruiting prospect? We are covering a lot on sales on the loop, but we are lacking recruiting information. Any help from the experienced recruiters would be appreciated.

This was my response: I can highly recommend the book: 17 Secrets of the Master Prospectors, by John Kalench. I found it to be tremendous help.

One sentence from his first chapter typified how I approached recruiting. Kalench in essence makes the statement that you can educate yourself forever about how to prospect, and never do it. You can talk to yourself, talk to others, watch others function, and many other things, but until you try, you won't learn what it is all about. He has what he terms a bias for action, and while he says that any action is better than no action, what he feels works best is: B I G A C T I O N.

Big action can take many forms. You can talk to everyone. That's big action, but it isn't going to happen. You can be selective, and if you're too selective, that's not big action. How I interpreted big action was this:

I placed several good-sized ads into the weekly paper—not the daily. The daily paper gets glanced at and thrown out. The weekly hangs around for a few days. It isn't inexpensive, but it does pay. I did something else—I created an image for myself: Ken the Avon Man. If you say only: Call Alice, at 111-1111, you've lost the opportunity to differentiate yourself.

I talked to more than the usual number of people. Avon emphasizes the power of three daily contacts; I did the power of five, and perhaps more. I didn't necessarily make them the same, but sought various groups of people to get the brochure or discuss recruiting. I saturated with books, but not with recruiting conversation. The same was true when standing outside the market. If I could get a name and phone number, OK. If not, I left them a way to find me. And I had those calls. If you’re new and haven’t heard what the power of three is yet, ask your District manager. Part of the reason this worked was that I used the brochure to do some recruiting, with invitation labels on the front and a letter of invitation on the inside.

When knocking on the door: Hi, I'm Ken, and I'm your friendly neighborhood Avon Lady. Now for me that worked, obviously, but I followed it up with Do you find it unusual for a man to be selling Avon? You can bet that I got a yes usually, except where some try to appear broadminded. I told them how I got started, and that broke the ice on a jovial note.

Then, it was I'm here today to share with you a way you can make as much extra money as you wish without considerable effort. Have you all the money you need? Or if I saw that the person is surrounded by cherubim, it might have been this: If I could show you a way to easily make some significant extra money without much effort and still stay home and care for your children, would that interest you? I can honestly testify to sales and money I made in the years I did it. Other testimonials are available from the heavy hitters.

Assuming the door hasn't been slammed in my face, I might then ask Have you a little time for me to show how that would be possible? If the kids are screaming or the TV is blaring, I try to establish another time when it is more convenient.

Once in the door, I can be successful half the time or more. But I don't knock on every door in a complex. I'll hit one or two, then hang bags with a brochure and my letter on the knobs of the other apartments. I’d prefer one person in a community who is willing to talk and work with that community. I don’t wish to create direct competition between two of my downline members. And there are enough apartment complexes around where that can be done. I find both customers and recruits when I drop brochures that contain invitations to join Avon.

And the reaction is …

We make the assumption that the recruits will come to us thick and fast. Tell them all and they will come to our way of seeing things. They should. But the problem is that it isn't obvious. You have to create the vision of sugar plums. Anytime the invitation goes out and you get a phone call, that candidate has come to you. Generally that candidate is by far more interested than anyone you talk to randomly. So the trick is to get the random people as customers and when they come to your house to pick up a product or you make a delivery there, then is the time to draw to their attention that there is much money waiting to be made.

We've all heard: I can't sell anything. That could mean they are too shy. It could mean they lack confidence. It could also mean that they have never had a model. Suppose you were willing to make some customer calls with them. Could you give them a model? Every person who says that sells something daily. It may be a movie she recommends. It may be a restaurant or a product for the children. But it could well be that this person sells herself on failure. Do that enough and it becomes an easy thing to say. It’s a cop-out and both you and she know it. I have, in times past, picked up an object from the table, or from my valise, or from anything handy and said, How would you sell this (item) to you? What I did in this instance was to get the prospect to do a little play-acting. Of course, I praised her, however well she did it. We're after building some confidence here. Remember that if she agrees to start, then falls on her face, she will move out faster than you can imagine. The recruiter’s role, once begun, is to help her become successful.

We would all like to recruit the ball of fire. It would mean that we have to support less, mother hen less, and that the person would be self-starting. We ought to recognize, however, that many people we encounter do not have a history of success. We may be the first to offer them something that could make them successful, and if we are willing to stick with them to help it happen, that interest in the candidate becomes strong and our recruiting efforts become positive in the extreme.

Responses

The one I like is what I call The Mother's Response. They say, I'll think about it. Remember when your mother didn't want to give you something you sought? She said, We'll see. What did you do? Did you shut up and never mention it again? Or did you try to identify some good reason she should get the item for you, even down to all the other kids have one. When I hear I'll think about it, I respond openly with What you've told me is 'No.' Is that what you feel or if I could show you a way you could ease into this comfortably and into a way that will assist you and your family, would you be willing to try? If I went with you to help get started, do you suppose that together you and I could be successful?

I'll have to ask my husband. That's a nice one, and tells me that this woman is not her own woman. I then try to get an appointment when the husband can be present. The response I get out of the husband usually is: If she wants to do it, she should do it. At that point, I try to enlist them as a team. I even had a situation where the man signed up, but the wife is doing the sales work. He does the paperwork. They're both happy with the arrangement and have turned in $300 orders from their first campaign.

There are a lot of Avon people around here. I ask, Really? How many of this brochure (that I gave her) have you? The answer I get is None. Then my response is: Where is the nearest Avon person—let's go find her and determine why she hasn't been servicing you. You know the answer I get: Well, I don't know. To which I respond, You've told me that there's a market right where you live ... work... go to church... shop ... (or whatever applies).

Continuing…

I'm carrying a bag of money. Who wants some? How much would you like? How would you use it if you had it? Are you willing to tell me that somebody else deserves this money more than you? Could you give me a little time to show you how to get some of this money?

I wish I could tell you I achieved Senior Executive Unit Leader. I didn’t, and became frustrated about people who cannot get off their bums to do something that can so easily improve their lives. I am biased for action, however, for it is only action that will make it work.

If you could see yourself as one who carries the answers to somebody else's dream the same way you are working to satisfy your dreams, would that overcome the timidity and make you bold enough to share what you know, what you do, and what you can help them do?

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk. Talk about things you like to do. You got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you going to make a dream come true? A song from South Pacific.

And you’re the Recruit-EE

Ok, new Avon rep—what has this all been about? Why would I share with you, in the first chapter of this book, advice to people who recruited you? There are a couple of reasons:

It’s useful to have a solid idea how to go about recruiting, if you ever have any idea of doing Avon in a big way. This may be starting as a hobby for you. It may be part-time employment. But this could easily contain a future for you—one where you can bring home a paycheck in six figures—to the left of the decimal point!

Avon can become a serious business quickly. If it is your intention to grow a substantial business, then acquiring people to feed orders to you—helpers—will be important. If you choose not to pursue sales leadership, the steps outlined here will hold you in good stead.

So here’s what I wish for you to contemplate:

You’re involved in Avon to make some money. Avon offers commissions unlike any employer. Look around. Unless you’re high-tech qualified, you aren’t looking at large salaries. Avon offers you as much money as you are motivated to go get.

You may wish to be a stay-at-home-mom. Avon offers flexibility—working from your home to contact your customers; working while the children are taking a nap or are at school.

Avon offers free training—sales meetings, downline meetings, posts on the Internet. More than a half-million people in this country are doing what you do, on their time, on their terms.

Avon can offer a future—there are sales programs and beauty programs. The training you get during your Avon activities, augmented by reading such as this, will rival any training anywhere—then people are willing to take you under their wings and work with you until you become successful.

So now you know what the person who recruited you was thinking—what motivated him or her to approach you. It now becomes your responsibility to tell others what you have done, to invite them into the fold. And there are several ways to make money doing it. How about it?

Starting Over For The First Time

When I was recruited, it was not because I saw Avon as a good career or wanted to make a little additional money. I didn't want to become a beauty consultant and had no other insight, except that I needed work, had started a swap meet business and was looking for another product line that was well-received and profitable. Avon approached me because I was open to the possibilities. I quickly recognized the value, and they took over my life.

When you were recruited, what was said? Were you led to believe that the product line would sell itself? It will, but for subsistence, not for success.

Did someone tell you that you could do it with your family and friends? These are the mercy purchases you will receive because those close to you wish for you to succeed. You can, but if you wish to grow, you'll have to expand beyond that.

Did you think that you needed a little extra money and this was as good a way as any? It is, but seek little, get little. Expand your thinking to where you will seek a lot! Ask much and much will be granted unto you.

Did you think that selling Avon was enough? Leave that beauty stuff and that leadership stuff to someone else. I don't have time to think, much less build a business that could become a career—and besides, I don't need another career.

What motivated you to become an Avon representative? Write out the details, I told them, timings, initial impressions, and impulses—for unless I misread, what has materialized is not what you imagined. And we should identify what you imagined.

Next, identify where you are along the continuum of motivations. We are each a plural personality. There are at least two distinct personalities, one positive and one negative. There are a few shades between, but your future with Avon, after you sign up, will largely hinge on how you view life.

Look in the mirror. Your house is what you recognize in the mirror, but your two personalities are in there combating on issues that generally are so minor that by themselves, they are nothing, but collectively they can become such an impetus or such a counterweight as to either propel you to success or sap your strength toward failure.

The negative person thinks and moves in an atmosphere of doubt and fear. Often, she brings ill health on herself. She tells herself that she doesn't think she can do much with Avon. She doesn't want to approach people, knock on doors, or extend beyond what is safe. She'll try it, to see if it works. Give her a few brochures and see if people at work will buy from her. This person is looking for a guarantee, and all life guarantees is death and taxes. She's willing to dwell on failure—because of that she becomes herself-fulfilling prophecy. She'll dwell on what she can't do (or, more reasonably, doesn't want to do), and because of that, she won't do. The first Henry Ford said: Whether you think you can, or whether you think you cannot, you're right. To try to succeed and fail may well leave you thinking you cannot. To give up because you didn't succeed almost assuredly guarantees it. If negativity is in control your life, it's easy to think: What's the use? I can't do it. It's easy to give up.

The positive person is dynamic, ever-changing, opportunity seeking, oriented to personal achievement; seeks creative ways to solve problems, provides services to others, and counts her blessings. She is the one who goes the extra mile for her customers, seeks to improve the business she has begun, dreams about the future, and plans to do what will make the dreams come true. Put your positive self in control and you will find ideas stimulating, your energy rising, your outlook optimistic, and the I can do it message you give yourself will accomplish the things in your life that you value.

In The Beginning…

So, you're brand new to Avon, where to begin? You got into Avon because somebody invited you. That person has had a beneficial influence on you, merely through sharing her success. She has told you that there is enough for everyone. She's not keeping it to herself. What are you going to do about it?

The first step, then, is to identify your personal initiative. And at this point you can set yourself up to do as much—or as little—as you wish. If you expect to do as little as you can get by with, you will reap those results. But—decide to do as much as you can, followed by as much as possible, and you will find that there is a short, yet dependable, path to success.

And success is within your reach! All you must do is decide what success means to you. Does it mean money? How much? When? Does it mean being happy in your work? What makes you happy in your work? Does it mean the ability