DAY 12 - Preparing the Magazines for Distribution

Today, I am going to prepare the next 40 Campaign 4 Avon magazines for distribution to my local street. I hope to put them out tomorrow.

So for each bag (using zip sandwich/freezer bags bought from the Supermarket), I will need to include:

- The Avon Brochure
- The Customer Order form (which I've already filled out with my name, the campaign number, my telephone number and email address on)
AND
- The slip of paper detailing when I would like the customer to leave the brochure out for collection... Mine reads "Hi, I am your new Avon Rep, please have a look at your magazine and leave the book and order out for me on ........ Thanks Yvonne"

In this bag, I have additionally included a Christmas Specials brochure and a perfume scratch and sniff card.

The bag will look like this when it goes through the customer's door:

DAY 9 - Area Rep Visit

Today my friendly area rep visited me to show me how to put an order online, unfortunately the website was down so we couldn't put my orders on but I know what to do now.

She has left me another 40 magazines for campaign 4 and some more order forms, so I probably will get on and canvas my own street, (which is the nearest of my two areas) with magazines.

She's brought me round a few of the sale brochures too which have some great stuff at great prices. I can see I will have to try not to become a serial AVON buyer myself before I earn any money LOL.

I already saw a couple of gift items and a fantastic foundation cream that turns to powder at very very reasonable prices!

DAY 8 - Surprise Email Order

Oooh, just got up to find one of my 13 "forgot to leave out the brochure" customers has emailed through an order :) Happy Days - only day 8 and I've already managed £56 of my £80 minimum target.

So, setting up the email address and forwarding the mail to my regular email - so the customer emails me at BeautyShopToday@hotmail.co.uk, which looks great, but I don't actually have to DO anything, like login, the mail is just forwarded automatically to my regular account. Took me about 5 minutes to set up and has already proven worthwhile :)

DAY 7 - Redistribuion of magazines

So I popped around to the houses that I had already been to and collected up the magazines, this time 13 houses hadn't put them out, so have a pretty long walk round some time soon to see if they've done it. Might be due to the fact I only gave them two days to have a look - so will need to find the optimum number of days to leave the magazine for - If it's too short, they won't put the magazines out for collection and if it's too long they may choose some items and then change their minds...

Anyway, I quickly changed the slip of paper inside which says what day I will be back to collect them and this time I've given them to some more houses yet uncanvassed and this time they have it until Monday (5 days).

Haven't heard back from my area sales rep about the customer down the road with the issue or about making the orders, I'm guessing that she knows I want to do that and she will call me when she is ready.

I also thought it would be a good idea to Google Adsense this blog and promote it a bit too (for my future fame and fortune! HAHA)

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DAY 5 - First 2 Orders :)

I went back to the collect the first batch of magazines that I had put out and thankfully 26 out of 38 had put them out on the step - so pretty good going. I took them home, dried the snow off of them and put in a new slip saying I will collect them this Thursday and went straight back out to put them out in the other half of the street. ALL GOOD!

From that first collection today, I have managed to take two orders totalling £30.40, so well on my way to reaching the first target of getting over £80, which is what I need to receive in orders before I actually earn any money.

Didn't bother to put any flyers around today as it was FREEZING out!

Got home to find that my area sales rep had been and dropped off some more order forms for me - also all good!

DAY 4 - Flyer Distribution

Got the flyers about the POB (personal website) from the website and downsized it so that I could fit 2 on each piece of A4 - printed them off and distributed them around some of my area. I say some because there were more than 40 flats that I could not gain entry to at all.

One lady said to me before posting that she won't be interested (though politely). Then got collared by a lovely lady who has already had a bad experience with the previous rep and is owed money by Avon. Have agreed to try and chase it up for her and will get back to her later this week.

No orders yet - though didn't expect a breakthrough quite that quick!

It's snowing now, so I hope that doesn't hinder me getting back to the first area that I have put the brochures out to - though I have a bit of a feeling that it might do - it is a drive away in my Mum's village and too far to walk the 6 miles there! hmmm we shall see - and if Im late collecting them, well that is how it is!

I have been making a note of things in the little black calling book, though feel that perhaps a little spreadsheet would be much easier to update.

DAY 1 & 2 - Getting Started

Well, This is DAY 2 of being a representative for a "well known" beauty product... I will have to check if I can indeed mention their name in my blog but until I know that I won't be going against the rules and mentioning A**N to anyone! In fact that is it.. we shall call them A**N until then!

So, I have been unemployed for a while and even when I get a job it is unlikely to pay as much as I would like, so, like many others I decided to DO something. After seeing an advert for A**N Reps on TV, I decided to follow it up and join. I joined online and the very next morning a Sales Rep called me to make a meeting and set me up.

We met on Friday (yesterday), she came over to me, we had a nice coffee and a bit of a chat, she dropped off a heap of catalogues and gave me a few tips to get started. All quite straight forward and she will visit me again next week.

Late that day, after reading some of the info on their webside, I went ahead and put my own personalised website up:
You can View it Here

Apparently with the site, people can order their stuff and the orders will be listed as mine. I got on and printed out a short note to introduce myself, bought a pack of zip sandwich bags with the intention of getting started the next day....

I set up a free email address that coincides with the name Beauty Shop Today, and redirected all that mail to my regular email address, so I shouldn't miss any orders etc.

So, TODAY, Saturday, I got my Mum to assist in putting the catalogues in bags, with order forms, my note, a slip saying which day I will be back for the catalogues... and then proceeded to drop them through peoples letter boxes.

I will go back Tuesday to see how it's getting on....

Though in the meantime I do have quite a large area, so I still have 190 houses that I haven't got enough brochures to send out to and I might use one of their free online flyers, tailor it up with my details and my website address, and then put that through those doors.

I made sure to keep one catalogue and order form for myself to help me deal with any enquiries that come in by email or phone or when I knock back around.

I hope they will put the books outside their houses, but I may knock on a few doors if they don't.

Quite excited to have got started doing SOMETHING! I want to reach my target (that has to be surpassed to make any money at all)... then I will start earning 25% of sales. I expect it to take a while to build up regular and reliable customers - but if I stick with it I think it will be ok!