One of the things that I really love about being an Avon Independent Sales Representative is that you are not obligated to pay any hidden fees to Avon aside from your 10 dollar start up fee when you join Avon. This gives you a lot of freedom to run your business and incur overhead costs at your discretion. You can choose how many brochures you choose to purchase during each campaign and you can choose how many samples you want to purchase to distribute to your potential customers.

While we are on the subject of handing out samples, I would like to talk about my noticings with regards to how important it is to give out samples of Avon products along with the brochures that you give out. Today, I had a doctor's appointment and I took my Avon tote bag with brochures and samples with me to give out to the staff at the office. As I stated in a previous post, I recently purchased the Ebook, Secrets to Explode Your Avon Sales by Tracey Edwards. I'm not going to give away the information in the book because I think it is a great tool and she deserves to earn the meager amount that she charges for such great tools and information. I will, however, go on to say that she stresses the importance of giving out samples to potential customers in her book. This seems logical considering that most consumers like to test products before they commit to buying them and women, especially, love to sample beauty products before they purchase these items. On the flip side, however, I guess some Avon Reps keep their sample buying to a minimum in order not to waste too much of their profit.

My position would be one that agrees with Tracey Edwards. So I took her advice and I gave the Office Manager at my doctor's office a handfull of samples along with some brochures. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy she was to receive the product samples! She proceeded to hand them out to the rest of the staff and to pull out the ones for products that she was interested in and dropped them in her purse. She seemed genuinely shocked that I was giving her samples and told me that nobody had ever offered samples of their products when they tried to sell items in the office before. I quickly realized that I had made the right decision by giving out the samples and that it is going to set me apart in the minds of this woman and the rest of the staff. Purchasing these product samples is an investment in my business that will pay off in the long run and I will continue to carry samples in my bag from now on.