50 Creative, detailed ways to leave your Avon (or other home-based business) brochures, samples, and business cards with potential customers! You can also download this as a FREE e-book here!
Hi! My name is Birdie, and I sell Avon…
I sell Avon door-to-door. Many of my customers work during the day, and with two young boys at home, I can't always make my rounds in the evening when folks are at home. Since sales have been slow lately, I decided to get a little crazy with my brochure distribution efforts. Every Avon Representative I know drops her brochures in the same places I do - schools, the senior center, nail salons. I decided I needed to get creative, get colorful, so that my brochures will stand out from the crowd.
Here are 50 inexpensive ways to bring some attention to YOUR Avon – or Mary Kay, or Tupperware business, or ANY sales business this week. I have added many original taglines that you can “steal” and add to your own fliers! Any of these can be adapted to your particular type of sales business.
At the end of this article, I am including a list of over 100 uses for Avon Skin So Soft – America’s Favorite Bath Oil!
1. Place Avon brochures, samples, and your Avon business card in the vestibules or community rooms of your local churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and other places of worship. Include a flier explaining that you can provide a wonderful Avon fund-raising opportunity. You can add this line to your literature: “Your body is a temple. Show your respect with Avon.”
2. Traveling on vacation or for business? Leave a brochure and samples with your E-rep information and your Avon business card on your hotel nightstand along with your tip for the housekeeping staff. “Avon: Look Great, Make Money: The Best Tip Ever!”
3. Most cities and large towns have a Tourist information center or booth. Drop off a stack of fliers with a list of products a traveler to your town might need. Ideas: Forget sunscreen? Call me for Avon SUN Sport! Traveling? Call me for quality women’s and men’s toiletries!
4. Leave Avon brochures with lipstick samples at the Hostess desk at your local popular restaurants. Attach a sticky note: “Waiting for a table? Freshen up on me!”
5. Bus stops! Train stations! Leave a couple of brochures on the bus or train, too, with the added tagline in big, bold colorful print: “Beauty: Getting there is easy with Avon!”
6. Day care centers are wonderful places to drop some Avon brochures. Sometimes I make a special delivery with colorful helium balloons tied with curly ribbons, an Avon book tied to the end of the ribbon as a weight. Add a cute card with these words: “What about YOU, baby! Moms need care, too!”
7. I found one of my favorite regular customers by dropping off a brochure at the Fire Station! Firefighters use their hands to carry heavy equipment, and often find themselves with rough, scaly skin. This is a great place to demonstrate Moisture Therapy lotion. You can add this line to your fliers or brochures – and circle the lingerie: “Make your woman even hotter than the fire you put out today! Give her Avon! Call for free consultation!”
8. Does your town have a local newspaper? Reporters, advertising layout designers, paper boys and girls, receptionists – everyone who works on the paper - could be a great customer. Leave your brochures with some samples at the front desk. You can even ask the managing editor if you could pay a small fee and slip a business card or flier into each paper prior to delivery. Don’t forget the “Penny Pincher” types of rags and the alternative weekly. A great tagline to add to your flier? “Erase your “Headlines” with Avon Anew Line and Wrinkle Corrector!”
9. Slip a brochure or a homemade flier under the windshield wipers of cars parked at places your customers frequent. For Avon Ladies, that might include outside of grocery stores, craft stores, day care centers, elementary schools. If the weather looks cloudy or wet, you may want to enclose your brochure in a ziplock bag, and add a few samples, along with a card that says “While you’re driving, you auto know, that Avon’s gonna make you glow!”
10. Feed stores, pet stores, boarding kennels, and farm suppliers are a wonderful place to leave a Skin So Soft flier (See the end of this e-Book for over 100 uses of Skin So Soft!) listing all the bath oil’s amazing uses, including as a flea-repellent, a massage oil for your cat, dog, pot-bellied pig, horse, or goat. Your flier can say “Give your pet a new leash on life with Avon Skin So Soft!”
11. Tape a brochure or flier to the coin-input slot at your local carwash, along with the list of Skin So Soft uses. This miracle bath oil works great on cars, too! “Make your car a real beauty with Avon’s Skin So Soft – removes nearly everything from your car’s finish!”
12. Stop at all your local libraries and leave your business card or flier inside the front cover of EVERY beauty book and magazine. Don’t forget the cookbooks and romance novels! Any book that a potential customer might open is a great prospect. Leave a brochure and sample or two for the librarian, along with a card that says, “Who wrote the book on beauty? Avon. Every brochure is a New Chapter.”
13. You can find several locations at the gym to drop sales literature. The locker room is a great place to leave Avon samples – especially skin care products. Add these words to your brochure or flier: “After the workout, it’s time to play. Tone up with Avon!”
14. Read the event listings in your local paper. Place Avon brochures and samples in a pretty gift basket and drop it off at the start of each event. Works great for knitting groups, book clubs, wedding and baby showers – any event where your potential customers congregate.
15. Stack your brochures on the folding table of the Laundromat.
16. Hairstylists all have waiting areas where customers sit and read the latest fashion magazines. Why not add your own fashionable Avon brochure to the pile? Don’t forget to stuff a few of your Avon business cards inside! You can stamp them with “Your new look deserves completion. Avon. A thousand choices.”
17. Senior citizen centers are full of women and men who could use a little pampering and care in their life. Bring lots of free samples and brochures, and ask the receptionist if you can leave a stack at her desk for caregivers. You can add a sticky note to the front of your fliers that says “Avon: Since 1886. Not old. Perfected.”
18. The mall has an endless amount of places where you can leave your sales literature – the food court, dressing rooms, restrooms, the information kiosk.
19. Hand an Avon brochure to every clerk when you check out.
20. Leave a brochure for your mail carrier.
21. The community rooms and pool areas of apartment and condo complexes usually have a table and a bulletin board for residents’ use. Pin up your Avon flier, and place your Avon books and cards on the table. Always cover both bases – flier and brochure – when you can.
22. Have a college campus in your town? Leave your Avon brochures and samples in the dormitories, communal eating areas, lecture halls, administrative offices.
23. After you load your groceries in your car, return the grocery cart and leave a brochure in the basket.
24. Movie Theatres! Leave a business card, Avon brochure, samples on your theatre seat, in the restrooms, next to the video games, hand them to the concession workers.
25. Bring plenty of samples and a few brochures to any Bed and Breakfast establishment in your area. Tell the proprietors that you can furnish them with samples for their guests if they place regular orders.
26. Banks! Leave Avon brochures on the table where you fill out your deposit and withdrawal slips.
27. Courtrooms – many people spend hours waiting during trial – why not give them something to read and something to try?
28. Massage therapists and other bodywork professionals can become great customers for skin care products. Drop off brochures and samples for products they would use in their practice.
29. Hospice. I often bring samples and trial-sized products and donate them to the hospice. I never ask for a sale here, but have had grateful family members call me to order more products.
30. Visit every party planner in your city and drop off brochures with cute gift items, sample-sized fun products like seasonal lip balms, and jewelry items circled.
31. Don’t laugh, but plumbers, garbage collectors, and electricians make GREAT Avon customers! When you need your home serviced, prepare a special package for your workman or woman. Include a demo tube of Moisture Therapy hand cream, samples of fragrances, and a complimentary lip balm. It’s hard working with your hands all day, and a little pampering feels so good.
32. Property management companies often have to show rental properties. Bring them the latest Avon brochures where you have highlighted home care items that can help any rental look and smell wonderful.
33. Make care packages for all the teachers in town. Include the latest catalogues and samples, plus a few sample-sized products. Include a flier that explains that you offer a 10 percent “Educator’s Discount.”
34. Leave brochures and samples at the Police Station. You would be amazed at the traffic through any Police Station in the course of one simple day – men and woman filing reports, requesting information, bailing out friends and relatives – all potential customers!
35. Skating rinks and bowling alleys! Leave brochures and samples in the café area as well as the places where parents watch their children.
36. Every sports season hold Avon opportunity! Attend the local soccer, baseball, basketball, and football games. Parents come out in droves to watch their children play – and you can hand them a brochure and sample.
37. City pool in the summer, and indoor pools in the winter. Perfect location to leave sunscreen samples.
38. Dance studios, yoga studios, Pilates studios – all exercise locations.
39. Airport waiting areas are great places to leave more “reading material” and skin care samples. Leave your youravon.com e-Rep information so that any traveler can order from you from anywhere in the world.
40. Campgrounds – drop off Avon brochures and samples or demo products of SUN Sport sunscreen and Bug Guard insect-repellent.
41. Most churches have social events such as potluck dinners, lectures, Bingo, rummage sales, etc. Bring your brochures and samples to these events. You can either ask if there is a place for you to leave them for others to enjoy, or you can mingle with the crowd and hand them out one by one.
42. Leave recruiting brochures and sales brochures at the local Unemployment office. You can arrive early in the morning when most folks arrive to check the job openings and hand them out in person, too.
43. Have a fishing hole or lake in your area? Drop by on a sunny Saturday morning and give the fishermen and women Avon brochures and discount coupons for SUN Sport sunscreen and Bug Guard insect-repellent.
44. Golf Courses – another great place to leave that sunscreen and bug-repellent! Some fancier courses have powder rooms for the ladies. Drop your Avon brochures here.
45. Hostels – a terrific place to leave those little free Avon samples. Most hostel travelers could use a freshen up, and will be thankful for the free treat. You would be surprised how many of them are working men and women looking for ways to save on travel costs. After leaving samples in the Santa Fe hostel, I received over 10 orders for items folks left at home or lost along the way, such as deodorants, shampoos, and fragrances.
46. Landscape workers have been some of my most loyal customers. One you demonstrate one of Avon’s amazing hand creams – or leave a handful of free Avon samples – they are hooked! Everyone – men and women – wants to have soft, touchable hands. In addition to landscape workers, visit the landfill (more thirty, calloused hands!), masonry workers, the cemetery (don’t laugh – these guy work hard digging those graves!), and the road crews picking up trash and mowing the city parks. Most of these folks have never had anyone give them this kind of gentle attention. You’ll be amazed at how grateful your new friends will be.
47. Housecleaning services usually use fairly harsh chemicals and bleaches to clean their clients’ homes. Why not drop by their sales office and drop off a flier describing the many uses of Skin So Soft, along with a small discount coupon?
48. Visit the Welcome Wagon office in your town. Give them a box of your Avon brochures along with a “Welcome to town, let me be your Avon Rep” letter. Stuff each brochure with at least ten good samples, and include a New Customer discount coupon. These will be distributed to every newcomer to your area!
49. Bring Avon business cards with a free sample taped to the back to Rock concerts. Stamp them with: “Rock and Roll on some Avon deodorant, baby!” Opera? For a night attending Bizet’s “Les Pêcheurs de Perles,” stamp them with “Throw on some Avon Pearlesque jewels!” Country concert? Stamp your cards with “Get your Dolly on with Avon!”
50. Vintner’s and wine tasting events are a great place to subtly hand other attendees one of your Avon business cards. One the back, hand-write “Red or White? Avon has all your colors.”
100 + Uses for Skin So Soft
Personal Uses
SSS is a bath oil and after shower moisturizer.
SSS can be used to remove make-up. Just apply to a cotton ball and rub into your skin.
SSS is a wonderful tanning oil – but be careful you don’t burn yourself.
SSS is a hot oil treatment to soften cuticles.
Pour a little SSS in the water when you soak your feet to help moisturize your feet and relax you.
SSS is a great massage oil for tired muscles.
SSS cleans off tape marks from bandages on skin.
SSS cleans ink from the skin.
SSS is a famous insect repellent!
SSS helps relieve itching caused by insect bites and dry skin. (And has been said to help the sting of wasp bites.)
SSS cleans heavy oil and grease from the skin.
Painting something? Use SSS to remove paint from your hands instead of turpentine.
SSS sooths light sunburn.
Rub hands with SSS before washing. It helps get them cleaner and stay softer.
Rub SSS on dry, cracked, and bleeding skin. It stops bleeding and heals skin in two or three days.
Put 1 or 2 cap-fulls of SSS in liquid soap and use it for shaving legs and underarms. Helps razor glide over and leaves skin feeling smooth.
SSS removes chewing gum from hair and skin.
SSS takes tar right off the skin without irritation.
SSS helps remove tight rings from fingers.
Animal Uses
SSS is a great insect repellent for your pet.
Mix five parts water, one part SSS and mist on show animals. Brushing it in makes their coats gleam and keeps insects off so the animal doesn't fidget in the show ring.
Mix SSS in pet's bath water. Takes the fleas off them and in between baths, spray them with same mixture described above.
Rub SSS on your hands before and after working with your pets and farm animals. It will remove the strong smells.
Household Uses
Sponge SSS around doors, windows, and on screens to keep crawling bugs out.
SSS removes ring around the collar.
SSS removes scuff marks from patent leather shoes.
SSS is a good wood cleaner and conditioner for natural wood.
SSS removes soap scum from shower doors, shower curtains, windows, and bathroom and kitchen fixtures.
SSS removes lime and hard water deposits from fixtures, tile, shower doors, and windows.
SSS is an oil lubricant for fitting pipe joints that won't slip together.
SSS cleans ink from most vinyl and painted surfaces.
SSS cleans heavy oil and grease from non-porous surfaces.
SSS takes gum off clothing and carpets.
Rub SSS on brass ornaments or figurines to help keep them from turning dark.
Removes crayon from appliances and most painted surfaces.
Wash cupboards with SSS mixed in your cleaning water to keep ants off and out of the cupboards.
Use SSS to discourage hornets from building their nests. After using a hornet killing spray, remove the nest and keep the area sprayed with SSS. They will not rebuild in that area.
Use SSS to clean leather - it will keep it soft and supple.
SSS cleans paintbrushes easily, and leaves them soft as new.
SSS cuts grease and cleans dirt from range hoods and cabinets.
A little SSS drizzled down the sides of 2 glasses or glass bowls stuck together will make them easy to pull apart.
SSS removes lime and hard water deposits from windows.
Automobile Uses
SSS removes tar spots from car finishes without damage to the paint.
Use SSS to clean vinyl dashboards seats and tops. It not only cleans, but it softens to prevent cracking.
After washing your car, use SSS as a tire dressing to keep tires looking like new.
Use SSS to wipe down vinyl surfaces in your car. It removes smoke odors left behind by smokers.
SSS will remove oil and grease stains from car carpets.
Camping Uses
Spray SSS on the outside of the tent, especially near the door & windows and it keeps mosquitoes away!
Beauty Dish: True Underground Adventures of an Avon Lady:
web: http://beautydish.typepad.com
©2007, Birdie Jaworski
Today's Avon Customer Review is from Britta Welson from Duluth, Georgia. Britta send in a rather poignant review of the Avon Bust Sculpt. I want to comment on this some time soon - I know I've touched on it before, but I need to keep reminding anyone who reads this blog that the media does NOT have our best interests at heart, nor do beauty product manufacturers for the most part. Here's Britta's review:
Subtitle: You can't buy my opinion, you can't buy my words, but dang, if I think it would be a fun review, you can 
Want to know what happened when I had to tell an Avon customer's husband he.... smelled?! Sign up for my free newsletter on the right sidebar and find out Monday night! This story will NOT be published to the blog... in order to save my sorry butt! It's THAT good (and funny!)!
I thought the brand-new