Does this customer's story sound familiar? Is this customer thinking this is you? What can you do to make her change her mind about ordering from you?

Customer service is all the rage in major corporations these days. The Chief Executive Officer looks at your organization and realizes that daily statistics are important but, then again, without the actual customer, the corporation would cease to exist. So, the push these days in any major company is to service the customer with a zeal and genuine concern for their business in order to retain their business, keep them loyal and get customer referrals. It's no different with a home-based business working as an independent contractor for Avon. No different at all.

Most Avon customers will tell you straight up the good, bad and ugly experiences they've had with their representatives. All customers will admit that most representatives really know their Avon product lines but are disorganized to the point that even a customer's personal check isn't deposited for several weeks or months at a time! Most customers will tell you that the Avon representative is either too liberal when giving samples which creates a lot of confusion over the product line or they have to actually ask for a sample. Even more customers will tell you about the Horror Rep who has no personality and comes at them with dollar signs in their eyes. So, as an Avon representative, you have to wonder what makes the customer go back for more torture tactics and ugly representative attitudes. What makes the customer really want to buy Avon face-to-face from a representative instead of simply ordering online?

An Avon customer is looking for service. Great customer service that's lasting, genuine and welcoming. Service that reminds them of their mom, grandmother, and the warm feeling they get when family and friends come around to have a cup of tea. That's what the customer is looking for with their heart. What they look for with their head is a different story altogether.

A lot of people will tell you that Avon sells itself. It doesn't. A product cannot stand up and throw itself into a customer's eagerly awaiting arms of love and adoration, to be taken back to a loving home, sit quietly on a warm, inviting shelf and live in the lap of luxury the rest of it's bottled-up life. No, the product can't sell itself. That can only be accomplished by the Avon representative who has a genuine concern for the product's ingredients, a customer's reaction to it and a knowledge of the company and product that strikes a deep curiosity from the customer. Product knowledge is a key factor in retaining customers. Why? Well, look at the competition out there. Every department store carries several lines of wrinkle cream, make-up removers, products that reduce puffiness around the eyes, dark circles and redness in the skin. They market these products well and put a hefty price tag on them while putting them in smaller and smaller containers.

Avon will have basically the same type of products, the same type of packaging but at a lesser cost than most department stores. The good Avon representative will read up on the web about it. The excellent Avon representative will not only train herself on the products that are out there, know where to buy them at what cost but will take a field trip to the department store counters and talk with the employees who sell the products. They will ask questions about skin reactions, how to properly use the competition's products and ask all kinds of comparision-type questions to gain more knowledge about the competition. Now a lot of Avon representatives will say this is too much work. But get this....you're customer will have already done the exact same thing and will expect you to tell them why Avon is a better product than the more expensive brand they are using.

Customers are smart cookies. Never underestimate them. And never in a million years pre-judge them.

So now you've convinced the customer to at least try the Avon product of their choice and offer them the 100% money-back guarantee, hoping they don't return the product because, as every good representative knows, it costs money to ship it back to Avon if it's a returnable product. So, be creative! Offer to take back the product they didn't like, use it as a demo and steer them in the direction of a different product to try until they find one they like. This is offering the customer "choices" which isn't something that most new Avon representatives will do because they simply don't know how or haven't been trained to do this. Some never hear from their uplines so I don't find it surprising that they don't know how to really sell the Avon product line or work the business to their advantage. Shying away from an opportunity to shine as a great Avon rep to your customer isn't a good thing to do at all but it's very common. It's done so often that representatives quit after only several campaigns, thinking it's not worth the hassle.

Avon doesn't have to be a hassle if you work it right. Nothing does in this world, really, if you have a working and organized process and really stick with it. Asking questions is your first step because if your upline doesn't know you have questions, how can he/she help you succeed? It's not the upline's responsibility to hound you about scheduling your training if you've missed several appointments or to constantly remind you to pay your Avon bill. It's your responsibility and only you can succeed where others before you have failed. Your second step is to keep your promises. If you make a promise to a customer or to your upline or team, keep it! If you say you will be somewhere at a certain time, move Heaven and Earth to be there! Don't commit unless you mean to follow through but don't dodge a commitment, either. Commitments to your business and to your customers are the difference between earning a few pennies and have a tremendous residual cash flow coming in from commissions and sales. You have to set your mind to being a success.

The third step is follow through. This takes a lot of desire and planning. Get a day planner, write down every task needed to be done in your business, schedule time for the task on your planner, schedule time for your customer but never, ever schedule time for your family. Your family absolutely must come first before any business. So if your family needs you to be somewhere, follow through on your scheduling commitments and call up your customers to let them know you have to re-schedule. They will appreciate the call and you'll retain a customer. And your family will always come first.

Many representatives have many different tactics to being organized and keeping track of their business and their customers. Some have no plan at all and live day-to-day flying by the seat of their pants. This means missed appointments, missed deposits, inaccurate records, forgetting a customer order and generally being so completely frustrated by the whole experience that you throw your hands up after only 3 or 4 campaigns. Some of the simplest ways to keep track of everything is to keep it simple. A complicated system isn't one that you can control easily. Imagine this...put yourself in another rep's place and walk into your office with her eyes. What do you see? Do you see a business that you could just walk into, take over and be successful at or do you see an office that's so completely cluttered with junk, applications, loose paperwork, Avon boxes filled with returns, stacks and stacks of books and folders, Avon product everywhere and you can't use the mouse on the computer because of the clutter around it? De-clutter that mess and get down to the business of organizing, planning, setting and meeting goals and keeping things running as good as Patton ran his troops. Take over your office and show it who the boss really is.

Join Yahoo Groups for organizing your business. Discuss options for keeping customer records, tax information and business contacts. Join in on discussions about marketing your business and what you can do to help your team. Get your team involved with running your business by inviting them over often and getting their opinions and suggestions on how you can set up a great working office that runs like clockwork! You could run this business by yourself but isn't it much more fun and productive to have a few creative minds around to help you out?

All in all, it takes patience, commitment to follow ups and scheduling and a real desire to learn as much about how to better yourself and your Avon business as much as possible. It's not hard with the right attitude and tools! You can do this!