Social Selling To Grow Your Avon Business

Are you now, or have you considered using Social Selling to grow your Avon business?

Social media is for cat videos and being jealous of those amazing vacations your friends are taking right?

Well maybe if you’re not a business owner, but you are an Avon Representative.

That means that social media is a whole different animal.

And it’s another way to help you grow your Avon Business.

Growing your Avon business is pretty simple.

There are only 4 main steps:

1. Prospecting for new customers & recruits.
2. Getting a brochure (either paper or digital) to every customer every campaign.
3. Following up with every customer you gave a brochure to every campaign before you place your order.
4. Take the order, submit it to Avon and deliver to your customer, or send them to your Avon Online Store to place their order

And then Rinse and Repeat.

It’s really that simple. You just do these 4 steps over and over again, and you will have a strong Avon business.

We have our Daily 8 System to help you work on the activities that will help you grow your business.

The Daily 8 system is a proven formula

When followed consistently, the Daily 8 Plan will help you maintain the consistency required to build a thriving team and an exponentially expanding residual income.

Instead of working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, your goal is to capture 8 POINTS a day, 5 days a week for a total of 40 POINTS per week.

Print this sheet and use it to track your weekly points.

Follow this plan consistently for 90-days and teach your team to do the same. At the end of 90 days, REPEAT and then REPEAT again. This is your Daily Method of operation.

The real secret to your Avon Business success is that there is NO SECRET!

It simply takes a simple plan and the dedication and commitment to WORK THE PLAN consistently! That’s it!

Click Here to Download the Daily 8 Plan!

Want to be part of our Daily 8 Challenge?

Click here to log your Weekly Numbers.

And be sure to join our Online Beauty Biz Facebook Group for all the fun!

Learn more about Automating Your Follow-Ups To help you with the Daily 8 Challenge.

Everyone is welcome! Whether you’re on our Avon team or not, we welcome you & invite you to join in. 🙂

 

Today We’ll Talk About How Social Selling Can Help You Grow Your Avon Business

Social media is a channel that we can use to connect and interact with our audience.

We can use it to build our authority and credibility.

We can use it as a place to post valuable content and information for our followers.

Ultimately, it’s where we can find and close new customers for our businesses, and at incredible speeds.

With social media, it’s possible to take a prospect from a completely cold lead to a signed-up customer or new team member in under 24 hours.

That’s not something you see with cold calling, cold email, or physical networking events.

Effective use of social media is an easy, direct, and repeatable process that will allow you to make however much money you need and as fast as you need it.

Facebook and LinkedIn The Social Selling Powerhouses

Facebook and LinkedIn are without a doubt two of the most powerful social media platforms when it comes to getting customers and connecting with your audience.

Facebook alone has over 2.7 billion users!

Of course, you still have Instagram and TikTok, which are very powerful.

But for right now, we’ll focus on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook

Facebook is the biggest and most widespread social media network in the world.

Facebook is extremely user-friendly, and you have a much more diverse range of users than LinkedIn.

Facebook is the most powerful advertising platform right now.

Facebook groups are some of the most powerful tools that you can use to get in front of your audience.

There’s a Facebook group for just about anything you can imagine: basket weaving, golf, fancy cars, and marketing, just to name a few.

The trick is to get inside of these groups and become known as a credible expert in your field.

You can do this by posting in these groups or by commenting on the posts of others.

The goal is to be so helpful that anytime someone in these groups would need Avon, skincare, or even household cleansers, they think of you first.

We’ll get more into this further in this post.

On top of that, there’s a lot of content being posted to Facebook and the algorithm can make it a little trickier to have your content seen.

Overall, though, Facebook is an immensely powerful platform for prospecting.

Between Facebook and LinkedIn, it may work better for you to try prospecting on Facebook first.

It’s simpler and a lot more straightforward. Plus, people are much more likely to respond to you on Facebook.

And, since our Avon business is mostly a Business to Consumer type of business, consider directing more attention to Facebook than anything else.

Facebook is where your consumer audience is going to congregate.

If you are looking to target businesses (for a fundraiser, for example), LinkedIn might be the perfect place for you.

So, let’s talk about it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform that was designed for business professionals.

The tone and overall feeling of LinkedIn is much different than Facebook.

You won’t find a lot of birthday party pics or drama on LinkedIn.

Almost all of the content you see will be about business and different aspects of business, like sales, marketing, product launches, and similar topics.

LinkedIn used to be a place where you create a resume, apply for a job here or there, and then forget all about it.

But it’s gone through dramatic overhauls since then, and while you can still apply to tons of jobs on the platform, it’s now much more of a professional and business-centered networking platform.

LinkedIn has a ton of tools at your disposal and some interesting quirks that you’ll need to understand before you can use the platform as your -getting workhorse:

1. Free versus paid. There is a free version of LinkedIn and then there are paid subscription models that allow you more access to the tools of the platform.
   • With the free version, you are limited to only being able to message people that you have connected with (like a friend request on Facebook) and you cannot message them until they have accepted your request.
   • The other major thing that is limited is your searching ability. You are only allowed 30 searches per month from the search bar.
   • For the purpose of prospecting, Sales Navigator would be the most helpful upgrade on LinkedIn, and right now it hovers around $80/month.
   • However, if you’re just starting out or haven’t broken into the multiple 6-figure range, then the free version of LinkedIn should be more than enough.
2. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn has plenty of groups that can be used to find a pool of ideal customers.
3. Groups can be extremely useful. But leveraging a sort of inbound marketing with LinkedIn is especially effective. LinkedIn makes revenue from running ads in the news feeds, so it wants to keep its users on the news feeds as much as possible.
   • This is why LinkedIn is a very rewarding platform to post all of your content on.
   • Unlike Facebook, you can actually post full articles and blogs onto the LinkedIn platform. Long-form content like this can skyrocket your credibility if they are relevant and helpful to your ideal customers.
4. Shelf life of posts. In addition to the long-form content, your posts will have a longer “shelf life,” meaning that your posts will stay visible for a longer period of time than they would on Facebook.

There’s a ton to say about these two social media giants, and we’ll be covering a lot more in this post, but this should give you a great head start and get you thinking about which social media platform might work best for you.

At the end of the day, it may benefit you to give both of them a genuine effort and see which one you’re more comfortable with and which one brings in more results for your business.

The Runner-Ups

While Facebook and LinkedIn are generally the best for getting new customers, there are some other social media platforms that you might wish to consider using for marketing purposes.

These two social media platforms are also very popular:

1. Instagram. Instagram is probably the third most popular social media platform for acquiring new customers. That’s because it’s super easy to search for prospects based on what they love and what their pain points are.
2. Twitter. Some people use Twitter to attract customers. However, its restrictive word count can make it more difficult to use for marketing.

Social media is a great medium to use for getting customers, but what about all of the other methods you’ve probably heard about?

Truth be told, they all have their merits and their downfalls.

Let’s go over these methods and you’ll probably agree that social media is the top dog when it comes to landing high paying customers quickly.

What Sets Social Selling Apart From Other Customer-Getting Systems?

If you ask a hundred different people how they get customers, then you’re pretty likely to get a hundred different answers.

It seems like everybody has a different opinion about what the best way to get customers is.

And there are actually tons of very effective ways!

In fact, most of them work quite well.

If you take a strategy and stick with it, It will most likely land you some customers.

But you’re not looking for “some customers” here.

You want the strategy that is going to be filling up your booked appointment calendar or increasing your sales every single week, the strategy that is going to result in sale after sale, reliably and consistently.

So, let’s look at some of the most common ways that Avon Representatives have gone about attracting customers.

You’ll see some pros and some cons about each method and then we’ll finish off with why social media is likely to be your best bet.

The top things to look for when considering an outreach system are:

• How personable can you make it?
• Can you directly get in front of a live person?
• How scalable is the system?
• Can you build a team around it?
• Will you quickly become the bottleneck for growth?

Cold Calling

Let’s start with the dreaded cold call!

Cold calling is starting to fade a little bit in light of new and more scalable outreach methods, but it does still have some merits.

First and foremost, a cold call is more personable than any of the other outreach methods because the person you are calling can actually hear a human voice and not just read text on a screen.

You can also get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.

If the prospect answers the phone and they are receptive to your call, then you can typically schedule a sales call or a demo in under 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, most of the benefits of a cold call end there.

Now it’s time to talk about the not-so-fun aspects of a cold call.

With cold calling, you’ll call a lot of people before you ever get to talk to even a live person.

Once you do talk to a live person, it’s very likely that they will either hang up on you, tell you that they’re not interested before you can get three words out, or they might even cuss you out.

The real problem with cold calling is that it isn’t very scalable.

You’re only one person and if you don’t hire any appointment setters, then you become the bottleneck to your own business.

You can surely see why cold calling is a tough way to grow your business.

It works very well for some people, but it’s not easy.

Cold Email

Cold email is next on the list, and it’s a great option for certain business models.

What cold calling lacks, email does very well.

It’s extremely scalable and you can get directly in front of a ton of live people.

You can show up directly in the “digital front door” of live people in every industry.

If you want to go the extra mile and pay for an email service, then you can possibly send thousands of emails in a day.

But there are some things to watch out for, namely ending up in the spam box.

Email accounts can get shut down if their emails are marked as spam too much.

This can cause a chain reaction that ends with your internal emails to team members or even current customers going directly to their spam box.

Overall, though, email is a fantastic outreach model.

But it seems to work best with people you’ve already been in contact with.

It’s a great way to stay in touch once you’ve made the connection.

Public Networking Events

Moving on, we have public networking.

Usually a fantastic option, public networking has hit kind of a stall because of the pandemic, and so there really are no networking events happening right now.

However, they can be great when there isn’t a lockdown.

Richard and I still have great success with this, even during Covid.  We just wear our masks and follow Covid procedures.

Just like with cold calling, networking events let you really leverage your personality.

People get to know you and appreciate you for the things that separate you from the competition.

Events like masterminds, seminars, workshops, and more are all places where your ideal customers can gather in person, and if you mingle enough, you can usually walk away with a few customers, some referrals, and a great network of people to cement yourself into the market with.

The drawbacks of networking events are that you might have to travel for these events, they’re generally not a consistent and weekly process you can repeat, and they’re almost never free.

You have to pay to get in and then you have to really put on your extrovert face and mingle with complete strangers while being alone.

Bringing a friend, spouse, or even child can help mitigate some of the overwhelm.

Social Media

Then we get to social media marketing.

This method really takes all of the benefits of the other methods and meshes them all together without all of the drawbacks.

Using social media as your customer-getting system allows you to be as personable as in a cold call.

You can show bits and pieces of your life and really come alive as a genuine person.

You can use audio and videos to even give yourself an extra layer of personality.

While not quite as scalable as cold emailing, social media allows you to have a ton of conversations going at the same time.

If you’re smart and efficient with your time, you can scale social media pretty well.

Finally, It’s called a social media network for a reason.

It’s a giant network of people, and thanks to the group features of Facebook and LinkedIn, you can network with people that would love to buy from you all day long.

The main drawback to social media is that it does require your attention.

If you’re not on the platform, you’re not interacting with potential customers and friends, and you’re not messaging others and getting them on the phone.

That being said, you can spend roughly an hour a day on social media and have some crazy results.

So, in a nutshell, that’s why social media works so well as the primary avenue for revenue generation.

It’s straightforward, simple, and effective.

It combines all of the strengths of the other customer attraction systems without their biggest drawbacks.

How should you portray yourself on social media in order to attract the highest quality customers?

It all starts with your mindset and approaching social media effectively.

Lucky for you, that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about next.

Successful Social Selling Mindset

This is probably going to be the shortest section in this entire post.

It will also probably be the most important section you read.

That’s because if you come to social media with the sole intent of pitching your services, your timeline posts will get zero attention, you’re likely to get banned from groups, and prospects are likely to shun you.

Instead, you want to find people that can either refer you or straight up buy from you and friend them.

You can establish a lot of connections by requesting to be friends with people that like and comment on your posts.

So, first things first, when you approach social media, you’ll want to come to the platform as an expert.

You have a ton of knowledge about your niche, so show it off.

Discussions about posting content in the next section revolve around showing off your knowledge and being a resource.

The attitude you want to convey is that you are already a successful entrepreneur.

Others are repelled by Sales People or Representatives that seem needy and want to pitch to everyone they see.

Come to the table with the mindset of genuinely wanting to help others and you’ll do 100x better.

Be helpful, be an expert, and be a credible authority in the market.

Here are some effective attitudes to cultivate:

• You are 100% a professional and an expert.
• You are there to provide value to people that need your expertise.
• You are not needy, and you don’t need their money.
• You are there to lead people through their problems.

With that being said, let’s get to it! In the next section, you’ll discover exactly what to post, where to post it, and how to interact with others that you want to build a relationship with.

What Content to Post and When (Content Rotation)

Regularly posting content will be the fundamental piece of your social media marketing plan.

It’s important to create content that engages with your audience, displays your expertise, and eventually pushes people to want to buy from you.

You can do this by posting good quality content on your own timeline as well as in relevant groups.

Posting Content in Groups

Try these effective strategies to post content in groups:

1. Find 3-5 quality groups where your ideal customers would hang out. Remember, it’s not where you want to hang out but where your customers want to hang out.
   • For example, if you’re targeting people who are interested in skin care, makeup, etc., you could target groups about skin care, beauty, vegan beauty, makeup, makeup tips… you get the idea. Once inside, comment on posts and answer questions by the group members.
2. Post your own original content. Also, make this content extremely helpful. If we go back to the skin care example, maybe you could write a post what causes wrinkles, and what to do about it.
3. Interact genuinely with everyone who comments on your posts. Always be helpful and inject your personality into your content.

Posting Content on Your Own Timeline

Try these techniques:

1. Batch the content creation process. Sit down and take 3-4 hours a week to create all of the content you’re going to post for the week. This will end up saving you a ton of time and headache in the long run.
2. Limit “offer” posts to once or twice a week. Avoid trying to sell something with every post, or even every day. It generally works better to make posts that are selling a product or service maybe once or twice per week at the most.
   • Split your offers between direct offers and indirect offers:
   • In a direct offer, you simply tell someone about your product and see if they’d like to buy it or get on board with that.
   • For example: “I’m looking to help 5 more people look younger than they ever thought they could. If you’ve been noticing fine lines and wrinkles on your face, then reach out to me and let’s get you started on my premier skin care anti-aging program.”
   • An indirect offer is where you start off a post without mentioning your offer – usually with a story or a helpful tip. Then you transition into a soft CTA (Call To Action).
   • For example, you can start with a case study of one of your previous customers and how you helped them.
   • Then you can say something along the lines of “If you struggle with {whatever problem you solve} like {previous customer name}, then I’d love to see if I can help you. Just message me and we can have a chat.”
3. Also, make posts that are not about selling something. If you make offers once or twice a week, what about the other days of the week? For these days, create posts that build your credibility and show your expertise.

Content Rotation and Schedule

Make posts that give helpful tips and tricks.

A variety of formats and styles will capture your audience’s attention.

For example, suppose skin care is your niche. Consider this schedule:

1. Monday. Make a post on Monday about treatments that help with anti-aging, as well as how to implement a skin care routine.
2. Tuesday. On Tuesday you could share one of your favorite products to show people that you walk the walk and don’t just talk the talk.
3. Wednesday. On Wednesday you can try something called an engagement post. This is where you are actively inviting engagement and interaction from your audience.
   • The most common way of doing this is to ask a question, such as, “Just wanting to do a headcount here – What’s your favorite skin care item? My answer is in the comments.”
4. Thursday and Friday. Thursday and Friday can be days that you do an indirect offer and a direct offer.
5. Weekend. Then on the weekend, you can tell stories and case studies about people you’ve helped.

Here are some more ideas for posts you can write:

• Story posts
• Posts about your lifestyle (be who your customers want to be)
• Pure entertainment posts
• Motivational Quotes
• Objection handling posts
• Future pace your audience
• Rustle their feathers and agitate their pain (works well with offers)
• Expert interview
• A live training session
• A challenge for your audience
• Recent customer wins

2-Step Posts

One of the more complicated types of post is called a 2-step post.

This is basically where you create some sort of guide or product (a lead generation magnet) and then offer this guide to your followers.

You can say something like, “I just created a new guide on 10 Foods That Can Help You Look Younger. Comment ‘foods’ down below if you want a copy.”

Whenever someone comments that they want your lead magnet, you just reply to their comment and let them know that you’ll DM (Direct Message) them.

Then, deliver a ton of value with your lead magnet.

This sets you up to be a super-warm contact to this person!

You can even go a step further and have multiple lead magnets and give each prospect whichever lead magnet will benefit them the most.

This lets you learn a lot about them before you ever come close to offering your services to them.

After a while, writing these posts will become second nature to you.

You’ll become more and more comfortable with your audience and interacting with them will become fun instead of anxiety-inducing.

But at first, it may be a bit uncomfortable to put yourself out there.

The content creation process will also become much more streamlined, and it will take less and less time each week.

Draw Inspiration from Other Posts

Check out other posts on your timeline and in the groups you visit.

Which posts catch your attention and make you want to continue reading?

Determine what makes them so captivating and try to recreate that feeling within your own content.

Ensure that you’re interacting with all of the comments on your posts and then following up with a message.

This leads us to our next section.

Social Selling All Goes Down in the DM’s

Creating content and interacting with others is the groundwork for getting customers.

It starts conversations and gets the ball rolling.

But the real goal is to get an individual in a private messaging conversation with you, where eventually they ask for your products or services.

There are many ways that this can happen and there really is no script to work from.

That’s because human interactions aren’t scripted – they’re organic and therefore your messenger conversations have to be organic as well.

Starting With Comments

Let’s walk through the process of what to do from the comments on your posts and where to take the conversation from there.

You’ll get a variety of different comments on your posts, either on your timeline or on your posts within various groups.

You’ll get some that just agree with you or say that you made a good point. Others will ask questions.

It’s a good idea to respond to all of them but ensure that you always respond to people who ask you questions or those that seem even the smallest bit interested in your services.

If you’re commenting on someone else’s post, be as constructive and helpful as possible.

Moving Into the DM’s

When you move the conversation into Direct Messaging, follow this process:

1. Start by referencing any previous interaction you had (such as the comment they made or the comment you left). This instantly makes you warmer than someone who is reaching out completely cold.
   • For example, you could start out a Direct Message conversation by saying something like, “Hey {name} thanks for the comment about eating a dairy-free diet on my post. Why do you eat dairy-free? Is it a choice or do you have to eat that way because of health reasons?”
2. Then, follow an extremely simple framework: Give them a compliment and ask them a question. This will keep the conversation moving along.
3. Bring your own personality into the conversation and make it dynamic. Be authentic and interesting while keeping the focus on them.
4. Keep the first conversation very light. Just build a friendship with this person.
5. Then let some time pass. This can be a few hours or even a day or two depending on how busy you are.

Getting Back in Touch

Once you reignite the conversation, use the rapport you’ve already built up to move them along to a discovery call.

You can ask more about their problem or what you think you could help them with.

Once you figure out whether or not this person really needs your help, you can move them towards a call.

It’s crucial that you do this in a way that is not “salesy.”

Moving to a Call

In order to move a prospect toward a call, you could try messaging something like, “Hey, I’m creating a new training surrounding healthy fats and how they help with your skin care. It’s not done yet, but I’d love to hop on a call with you and see if any of the information would help you.”

Keep these items in mind:

1. The most important thing about this call is to deliver value to the person and if you can help them further, then you can mention your services and see if they’re interested.
2. Avoid being attached to the outcome of this call. This is called “outcome independence” and it’s going to take a lot of weight off your shoulders and cut down on your stress a ton.
3. If they say NO, that is totally okay. Continue being helpful and treating them like an equal. Being in an equal frame of mind as the person you’re talking to is going to take a lot of those buyer defense walls down.
4. Only give solutions if they give you permission to do so. Otherwise, see if they want to sign up for your Avon Book Text List or if they’d like to receive an Avon brochure in the mail – whatever you are offering to your current customers.

Benchmarks and Automation for DM Conversations

Ideally, you want to message around 10 new people a day, while keeping in touch with all of your previous fruitful conversations.

This can get a bit overwhelming when you really start getting traction and you have 30 or so potential customer-producing conversations happening at the same time.

But keep going.  This is how you can truly build your business by Social Selling.

Looking Forward For Social Selling

Social Selling can overtake and pass up other forms of marketing just by its sheer reach and power.

Complete strangers can interact on a post together and then end up as good friends or your “post partners” can become loyal customers!

Social media combines the personality of cold calling, the scalability and directness of cold email, and the networking capacity of public networking events.

All of this together makes social selling the current king as far as customer attraction is concerned.

This does take a bit of time and can be overwhelming when you have a ton of conversations going on.

However, a team built around your social media can really let some steam off and allow you to focus on other aspects of your business.

Out of all the social media platforms, Facebook and LinkedIn are going to give you the most reach. They are the so-called “powerhouses” of social media marketing, and their features make them perfect for delivering content and starting conversations.

But don’t ignore Instagram and TikTok.  These two platforms are really coming up as a great way to find new customers and recruits as well.

The most advantageous mindset on social media is that of a helpful expert who wants to give and create value.

Posting your sales pitch and being needy will get you shut down extremely fast.

Do your due diligence and success will come.

Post content every day of the week.

Comment and interact with everyone who participates in your posts.

Ensure that you’re also commenting and delivering value on other posts within specific Facebook groups (where your customers are gathered).

Message everyone that you interact with and build a genuine relationship with them.

Offer your expertise.

Move the conversation towards a call (if needed) and if you really believe you can help them with your services, then offer them in a non-salesy way.

My Social Selling Suggestion

I suggest you start with one platform at first and get comfortable with that.

Facebook is a great one to start with.

Then, as you get come experience and confidence, start adding new networks to your prospecting.

That about does it.

But none of this information will matter at all if you don’t implement it.

Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction every single time.

Download this checklist to help you get started.

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EXPECT Success!

By Lynn Huber

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