Are you Holiday Ready?

I originally made this video in October 2015. Here are some pointers for capitalizing on holidays with your direct selling business.

1. Share the products your company has to offer for the holidays! Most companies have something for all of the major holidays not just the fall/early winter holidays I mentioned in the video.
2. Think gifts! Who do you know that will need to purchase gifts for these holidays?
3. Think standing out! How can you make yourself stand out as a consultant? What can you offer your customers? Custom gift baskets? Wrapping? Special delivery?
4. Share personal stories! What are you getting your own family and loved ones for the holiday? What are you using personally?
5. Videos and pictures do a great way of sharing these products with potential buyers!
6. What do you have on hand? Focus on selling these products first because you need to make that money back.
7. Take advantage of craft fairs and other shows of that type. High seasons for these fairs is the Fall October-December and the Spring around Easter March-May. Yard sales are great for summer months June-September just remember that people expect cost to be lower at yard sales.

What now?

Read more about selling at Craft Fairs

Read more about selling at Yard Sales

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Tip Tuesday: Samples Sell

Take note. Samples Sell. People LOVE to try before they buy! Especially with cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, home fragrance, and food products people want to know that they will like the product. Something that sets direct sales consultants apart from other companies and even sometimes representatives apart from other representatives is samples. When people can try before they buy they are more likely to like the product and buy it. If you aren’t doing it with samples, then do it with demonstration products. If you are on the fence about investing in samples and demos then hopefully this video and short post will convince you otherwise. Thanks for watching/reading!

Tip Tuesday: The Power of Follow-Up

In direct sales it is important to follow-up with your leads. Leads can be potential customers or potential business partners. It is important to find a way you can follow-up with these leads and stay in touch so that they come to you should they ever change their mind. There is a difference in following up and pestering the person or following up and spamming the person. One way you can follow-up is to mail brochures to your customer list. Most customers will not buy every campaign, however if they do not have a brochure then they are less likely to buy from you. In Avon, we have new brochures every two weeks. You will have customers that buy every month, every few months, and some that only buy once or twice a year, but bottom line they can’t order from you if they don’t have  a brochure with your information. Customers like to see what items we have to offer at certain times of the year and new items are constantly coming out for our customers to purchase. Not everyone wants to look online, so mailing brochures can be a good way to gain customers and maintain those that you aren’t seeing on a consistent basis. Of course the phone, text, email, and social media can all be used to follow up as well. It is good practice to follow up and contact your leads list every once in awhile to see if you can do anything for them. There are many other videos and articles out there on the importance of following up and I just wanted to put out there that I do agree that follow up is important no matter how you choose to do it or how often you do it.

For more tips like this one you can visit my Tip Tuesday category, Representative center, and New Representative center.

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Tip Tuesday: Start With Who Do You Know

Build Your Who Do You Know List FROGS:

Make a list of these people whether you think they will be interested or not. You may be surprised by how many names you can come up with. Avon recommends challenging yourself to come up with 50 names to start.

• Friends
• Relatives
• Organizations–clubs, school, work, etc.
• Geography–Neighbors–places you go (grocery store, bank, post office, etc)
• Social Media Connections

I bet you if you made a list of your network in all of these points of contact, you’d be surprised how many names you can actually come up with. You can do the list at any point in your business. The key once you’ve made the list is to start contacting people to let them know you are an Avon Rep (or in whatever business you are in). Some will, some won’t, oh well onto the next! Good motto to remember when people tell you they are not interested. Just because they are not interested at first does not mean they will never be interested. Being in business for five years I have come to realize this a few different times.

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How do you spend your weekends? Do you work your business?

How do you spend your weekends? Are you in direct sales? Then, your weekends can be a prime time to work your business. I know for me I spend most weekends working my business, in fact it is the most time that I have to work the business. I usually do vendor shows on the weekends during peak season and then I also use that time to try to grow my online presence. During the week, I do not always have time to write up a blog post or schedule social media posts, so on the weekend is my prime time to do those things.

Tips for working your business on the weekends:

• Hold parties (home or online)
• Meet with clients you can’t reach during the week
• Work on your online marketing
• Vendor Shows
• Yard Sales
• Prospecting time looking for new clients and representatives/consultants

Here is a video that I made talking about this topic on Periscope and the replay is on my YouTube channel. If you are on Periscope (Live Streaming Video App) you can follow me @amandabeautytip.

Direct Selling Tip: Yard Sale Events

Below the tips is a video I did at one of the recent yard sales I took part in (October 2015). Yard sales are great for getting your information out to potential customers and/or recruits for your direct selling business. In that sense Yard Sales will always be successful even if you don’t sell any products on the spot that day. Plus, you never know who could come back around at a later time because they still have your information. The Yard Sales I’ve done were community sales that you paid money towards the cause (2 were schools, 2 were churches) for a table and then you kept all profits made at the table. I went this route because I do not have somewhere to host my own Yard Sale.

Tips:

• Advertise your Yard Sale (if having your own)—Avon Independent Sales Reps have a sign available on YourAvon–campaign tools–planning tools as of the posting of this blog. Make sure your advertisements fit policy for the direct selling company you represent.
• Have inexpensive products on hand–2 for $1 deals are great!
• Bundle products together in a package deal
• Sell products for as little as you can and still make a profit (Sale prices)
• Give out FREE samples with your information if you are able
• Have about 20 books on hand or more if you know for sure there will be heavy traffic
• Have your own Yard Sale so you don’t spend money on the space
• If you don’t have somewhere to hold a Yard Sale, like me, then you can find ones in your community. The most I’ve ever spent for a Yard Sale was $25 for a space. Some space fees might be tax deductible as a donation to the organization, so check on that when filing taxes with a professional tax preparer.
• Know the season you are selling in so you can have seasonally appropriate products on hand.
• DO get follow-up information for people if you can. One way to do this is to offer a free raffle and use survey cards that ask for contact information. For Avon Independent Sales Reps, there are cards available in the same place as the Yard Sale sign as of this post date. You can also try asking people that take your information for their information. One way to do this is to say you like to remind customers of your order date and then ask what is the best way to contact them.
• Do not have A LOT of product to sell. I still have products from the first Yard Sale that I bought to sell at that Yard Sale.
• It’s hard to tell you what to have on hand as you never know what customers will be looking for, so it’s best to stick to the inexpensive idea and any inventory you need to get off your hands. Also, you know the popular products of your brand that everyone likes, so you can have some of those on hand for on the spot sales. As an Avon Independent Sales Representative, people at the Yard Sales I’ve been a part of have asked about Moisture Therapy, sunscreen, BugGuard, and Skin So Soft Oil. The sunscreen and BugGuard are for spring/summer sales not really fall. People have also asked about the deodorants and lip balms (these are definitely good to have as they don’t cost too much to stock).
• If you don’t have the money to stock inventory, sell normal Yard Sale items and just have your information on hand to give out like your brochures and business cards and maybe sample packs. If you go this route, have a separate area to promote your business (a good place is next to where you are sitting and where people will pay you for their items).

I will continue to use the Yard Sale idea to get the word out about my direct selling business as it is an easy way to reach a lot of people at one time.