Fundraising to Raise Funds

There are many strategies to attract new Avon customers, but I learned about one that could boost my sales and give back to the community.  Did you know that Avon has a fundraising program?  I didn’t until I became a representative!  It turns out that Avon’s fundraising program is easy to organize, profitable for both the representative and the organization, and offers quality products at an affordable price.

Check out the two flyers I used below:

Avon Color Fundraising Flyer

Avon Best of Fundraising Flyer

I asked my high school art teacher if Glen Rock needed any help with fundraising.  I brought in all the full size products that would be featured on the flyer, pitched why my fundraiser would be beneficial to the GRHS Class of 2013, and they accepted!  This was back in October, and as soon as I emailed the PDF file over to the school they got started.

Avon Color Fundraising Flyer

The Rep’s Benefits of an Avon Fundraiser

1.  The Avon rep can potentially make a lot of money with little amount of work involved.  Once the organization has the flyers, all you have to do is fill out the tax exemption forms and wait for your orders to come in.  It’s up to the organization to sell the products!  By registering the fundraiser with Avon, the rep automatically earns 50% commission for the placement in a given campaign.  Of the 50%, the rep decides how much of a cut the organization earns.  Because I was just starting out, I made 20% of total sales and GRHS made 30%.  I hoped the school would make at least $1,500 in sales, which would give me $300 and GRHS $450.  That’s a nice chunk of change!

2.  A rep can gain new customers for the future.  Let’s say the school sold the $1,500 from above.  They could achieve that amount by having 10 students selling to 10 customers with the average sales of $15 per customer.  So here’s the equation: 10 x 10 x 15 =1500.  Not only are you selling to the students, but they are selling to the people they know, so from this example I would gain 100 new customers.  If these customers love Avon, then I’d be in luck and be able to make a lot of money in the future when they order from me again!

3.  Fundraising helps boost sales volume and to reach President’s Club.  Avon’s President’s Recognition Program awards top sellers with many benefits once they reach total sales of $10,100 within a year.  These benefits include guaranteed 40% commission every campaign, free products, ability to order more demo products at a lower cost, etc.  Many women aspire to reach President’s Club every year, and with a fundraiser or two, the goal is easily attainable.  Every campaign invoice shows the rep’s total sales and how much more is needed to reach $10,100.

The Organization’s Benefits of an Avon Fundraiser

1.  The fundraising flyer makes it easy to run the fundraiser.  I remember being a Brownie Scout and going around the neighborhood to sell Girl Scout cookies.  It was a simple form to fill out, and Avon’s fundraising flyers remind me of my youth.  Just add up the quantities and the total amount of money collected, and you’ve got yourself a fundraiser.

2.  The products are well-known.  Avon turned 125 this year, and it still has a fantastic reputation.  The popular products featured on the flyers include Skin So Soft Original Bath Oil, Bubble Delight, Naturals sets, Nailwear Pro, Foot Works, Glimmersticks, and fragrances.  They are of high quality, and comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

3.  The products are cost-effective and affordable.  If you do a t-shirt sale, you might charge the $20 per shirt and the school would only make about $2 each (10%).  With Avon, if we use the GRHS example, if someone buys a Foot Works set for $10 the school gets $3 each (30%).  If I was offering the school a 40% cut, then they would get $4 each.  Also, all the products are full size so you get more for your money while supporting the school.

So how did I do on my first run?  Thanks to the snowstorm on Halloween (homecoming weekend), Thanksgiving, and the teacher’s convention in November, it was tough for the teachers to get the kids to sell.  About $200 was sold, so the school made $60 and I made $40.  Yes, it’s a little frustrating.  I hoped for more sales, but I’m $40 richer during the holiday season, I have new customers, I learned how to file for a tax exemption, and I learned how to start a fundraiser.  The selling part was out of my hands, but next time I want to be more involved to really boost my sales.

A New Business, A New Blog

Hello readers!  Welcome to my new blog!  For those of you who know me, I love to write!  Like any writer, I have bouts of writer’s block some weeks and then at other times there are too many writing ideas that congest my mind in a single day.  It’s hard to keep up with all the sporadic inspiration!

So here I am, starting a new blog for the Internet world to see.  Throughout the past few years I have (barely) kept up a personal blog, wrote for my journalism class in college, and contributed to a few corporate and school-related blogs all around the World Wide Web.  Though the variety of clips for my digital portfolio is substantial, it is also my downfall.  I like too many things!  My writing did not have a focus or topic, and it was tough to keep a steady stream of posts published when I didn’t know what to write about.

When I started my new Avon business, I found my focus.  Thus, nearly 3 months after handing out my first catalogs to friends, Redheaded Avon Rep is born.  My new “baby” is where I’ll be posting my adventures and misadventures, product reviews, interviews with other Avon Independent Sales Representatives, and any other silly things that relate to my new life as an Avon Rep.  I hope you are entertained by my stories and that you enjoy living vicariously through my writing!

Here is an excerpt from one of my posts on Roses are Hazel, where I introduced my new business:

In late July, I started to bite my nails in between keystrokes on my laptop when writing cover letters to potential employers. It’s a bad habit that comes and goes during times of stress, and a little trick I do to combat my oral fixation on those calcite-containing shells of my fingertips (p.s. the same stuff that is found in caves, but I’ll get to that later) is to just paint my nails. The combination of pretty pigment and disgusting taste prevents me from biting until it chips off by itself.

I never had to buy my own nail polish; it was always given to me. A birthday present here, a stocking stuffer there, and an easy goody bag gift to my slumber party guests in elementary school. My favorite polishes were from Avon, and I’ve had some of these shades for far longer than their intended shelf life. I figured that I should probably buy a few new ones so that I could chuck out the old, and then it hit me. Hmmm…

A quick Google search brought me to Avon’s websites. I new that almost anyone could become a saleswoman, but I was curious about corporate jobs and I wondered where they were located. New York City. Boom! My dreams were getting closer. At the time, however, there were only senior executive positions available; something I can’t exactly pretend I have 5 years experience. Scratch corporate.

Then I thought back to 4 summers ago, when I was a lifeguard right before leaving for college. A fellow guard was selling another brand of beauty products to make a little extra cash, and she was trying to sell to all the red two-piece clad guards I worked with. I remember coming home that day from the camp telling my mom my idea about selling something like Avon at school so that I could meet people in my dorm and keep a steady paycheck. Mom told me to focus on my studies, and I reluctantly did.

But I loved those catalogs. Those bright colors spread across the page, with clever advertising copy written in bold Helvetica. I loved those cheap deals on products that I remember being so great. I loved testing out hand creams and smelling perfume (and men’s cologne) samples. If I saw a stray catalog at the dentist office, I’d browse through it and curse the fact that my name and phone number wasn’t on the back cover.

I never pictured that I would actually be selling Avon after college, but staring at my cracked cuticles and trying not to take my next bite seemed to be the point at which I decided to fill in my name, phone number, and email address to find out more information. I had applied to other jobs that day, but I was a little more excited about hearing back from Avon for my part time job/hobby.

A few days later, a representative came to my house and talked to me about the Avon opportunity and I was sold. I signed up and all of a sudden my world turned into a beautiful one, quite literally. My planet was Avon, the inhabitants were prospective customers, and every thought and inspiration related to my business.

Errands in town became earning opportunities, catalogs became my networking tool, and honest compliments went a long way suggesting new products. It helped me listen to key words to find out what cosmetics concerns my friends wanted to address (“my lips are chapped” or “I hate my under eye circles”). Just the fact that I could help make ladies feel good about themselves really brightened my days.

So back to why I’m thinking of Christmas. I’ve been planning events and parties to optimize my sales strategy in the coming prime gift-giving months of the year, and it’s been busy! I’m feeling out what types of products people want to buy, thinking of ideas to market the event, and telling everyone I know my plans. And if autumn zooms by as fast as summer, which could happen if I’m this focused on my business and job hunting, then I might not realize that Santa Claus has made his UPS delivery every two weeks.

Check out my representative website, where you can purchase from my online Avon store 24/7. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! And if you want to take this wonderful opportunity, just ask me, your friendly neighborhood Redheaded Avon Rep.

http://www.youravon.com/cynthiadagenais