Ordering and Using Preview Products
Did you know that as an Avon Representative you can get new products 4 weeks before they are available to customers. Learn how to order Preview Products and how to use them in building your business
Chris Arnold
Chris Arnold
Let’s take a look at things you want to take into consideration when choosing an order day.
We have a 2 week ordering window for each campaign, you can see when the window for each campaign is on the AvonNow home page by clicking on Campaign Calendar.
The campaign starts on a Wednesday and goes through 2pm P/ 5pm E on the Tuesday 2 weeks later. Any orders billed during that time will count towards your sales for that campaign. You can order from the previous brochure during each campaign as well.
What you want to do is look at that Wednesday to Tuesday 2 weeks later schedule that we have for our campaign and decide when you want to place your order. Some of the things you’ll want to take into consideration are
What day of the week works best for you? Work around your other obligations. Map out your big rocks then look at what day would be a good day for you to finalize and submit your order.
Also look at the other end of that and when is a good day for you to sort and bag up that order and what day or days are best for you to make your deliveries to your customers. Are you seeing your customers at work or a regular activity. Or If you are delivering to customers at their home, what day is the best for you to be doing that.
Once you know which end of the process is more time sensitive, you can use that as your starting point for choosing your order day.
You can find what the typical order turnaround time is for your area by going to Support on AvonNow, then Frequently Asked Questions and then Shippping and Avon’s Distribution Center. Remember the number of days shown is Business days so you’ll need to factor in weekends. Most of the Sunrise Beauty Team is in the Western US so our turn around times are 4-6 business days, or about a week.
You’ll want
to work in a buffer into your schedule for possible shipping delays. Shipping
delays do happen no matter how hard Avon and the shipping companies try to
avoid them. Sometimes weather delays,
broken down trucks or natural disasters or even holidays can slow things
down. If you have an extra day in
between when you expect to receive your order and when you plan to start
delivering you will only have to scramble to get order sorted, not completely
reschedule your deliveries, if your shipment is delayed.
One note about tracking your shipments. For a lot of areas Avon uses a hybrid shipping system where they use a private carrier service to transport the orders from the distribution center in Ohio to a carrier hub closer to your town. Typically UPS or your local delivery company is only in possession of your package for the last day of transit. As a result when you go to track your order the tracking will just show they are waiting for the package, so don’t panic if it’s been a few days and your carrier still doesn’t show an expected delivery date. If your orders are delivered by UPS, be sure to sign up for the free UPS MyChoice program to get alerts about the progress of your packages.
Depending on which is more important for you, the day you place the order or the day you receive the order you can use that as your starting point to choose your order day. Since delivering orders is usually the thing that takes more time and does somewhat need to be worked around your customer’s availability it’s usually that end of the process that determines when you want to order
As an example, I deliver my customer's orders on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so I want to receive my order by Monday so I can sort and bag my orders on Tuesday (and have a buffer day if the order is delayed). Since shipping usually takes 4 business days, once I factor in weekends that puts my order day at the Monday before.
Once you know what day you want to order/deliver then choose whether you’ll order the first week of the campaign or the second week. If a lot of your customers work in the same place, working your orders around their payday can be helpful. Ordering early in the campaign can mean better availability on limited edition items. Ordering at the beginning of the campaign also gives you extra time if you are trying to hit a particular sales goal for that campaign and your regular order was short of that goal, You’ll have time to place an add on order or encourage more online orders to get you to your goal.
You do not have to wait to the last day of the campaign to place your order. I know a lot of representatives, especially those who remember the days when we all had a specific date we had to order on each campaign think that the last day of the campaign is when they have to order but that is the one day of the campaign I don’t recommend choosing as your regular order day. There are so many things that can happen that cause you to be delayed in sending your order such as internet or website outages, any number of household issues that require your attention, you or your kids or your pet may be sick, you had to stay late at work. Whatever it is, if something causes you to miss that 2pm pacific deadline for placing your order it won’t count for the current campaign and that could not only cause you to miss a sales goal for an incentive, it could also cause problems if you have items from the previous campaign on your order since we can only order one campaign back.
One last tip: Tell your customers to get their order to you the day before you want to submit to give yourself time to get things together and help avoid those last minute orders from customers coming in after you have placed your order.
Chris Arnold
Whether you are a brand new representative or an established representative looking to make adjustments in your business one of the most important things you'll want to do is decide how you want to handle getting your customers orders to their doorstep.
There are basically two options:
1. direct delivery from Avon to your customer
2. representative receives product from Avon and delivers to customer
Avon has standard shipping rates that apply to both Representative orders placed through AvonNow and Customer orders placed through the online store (yourAvon.com) *see below
Customers pay the shipping on direct delivery orders placed through our online store if they are less than $60, the representative pays the shipping for the customer on orders over $60.
Representatives pay the shipping on all representative orders placed through AvonNow.
While some representatives do only direct delivery or only representative delivery most representatives offer both options to their customers.
For those customers that you are able and willing to deliver to in person, you can group multiple customer orders plus your personal and supply orders to save on shipping. Most representatives place one bulk order each campaign. You can add an order processing fee to each customer order that you are going to deliver personally to offset your business expenses such as shipping, samples, brochures and gas. The default order processing charge on the invoicing tool on AvonNow is $.75 but most representatives charge between $1 and $3.
Obviously if a customer does not live or work near you, or would not be easy or convenient for you to deliver to then direct delivery will be the only option. Direct delivery is also a great way to save time and gas/wear and tear on your car by not needing to deliver. This is also a great option if your customer does not want to wait until you place/deliver your next bulk order. If the customer is not comfortable going online and placing their order through your online store you can help them with that by talking them through it, or going to your online store and placing the order for them.
$8 for orders up to $149.99
$10 for orders of $150-$299.99
$14 for orders of $300-$499.99
$17 for orders of $500+
Some representatives will offer to include an out of area customer's
order in their bulk order and ship it to the customer themselves. There
are a couple of reasons I don't typically recommend this option. In
most cases the cost of packaging and shipping to the customer is going
to be equal to or more than the shipping on a direct delivery order.
Direct delivery is much faster than waiting until you place your bulk
order, receive the products and then package and ship the products to
the customer. If the package should get lost or damaged in transit to
your customer, you would be responsible for replacing the order. If a
direct deliver order is lost or damaged Avon will ship a replacement at
no charge. Additionally, if the customer should need to return anything,
they would need to ship it back to you so your could then process the
return and send it back to Avon.
Questions? Looking for more information. I'm here to help
Chris Arnold
Sign into your Avon customer account then click on My Profile
Scroll down to communication preferences and click “Edit”
Here you can change the frequency of emails as well as which types of emails you would like to receive. If you are looking for minimal emails I would choose Monthly in the drop down list and only check Special Offers and Promotions so that you can get coupon codes when I send them.
When you’ve made your selections, click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page
Don’t worry if you miss the email about a promo code. As long as you are opted in to receive emails I can add promo codes to your account. Whenever you are ready to order click on “Chris Arnold’s Online Store” at the top of the page and any offers I’ve added to your account will be shown there. If you see an > next to “apply” then you have multiple offers to choose from.
Any questions? Feel free to contact me, I’m happy to help.