Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Christmas with your family and friends and that you have been snug and warm through these cold, dark winter days. Maybe you've been dreaming about how nice it would be to be somewhere warmer like the beach on this stationary. I've been doing some dreaming about what I want to do with my Avon business in 2013 and I hope you've given that some thought too. I have to say that I had some reservations about where I was headed with Avon because of some of the things that happened to me during this "Training Leader" program but after considering what I have put into my business for the last 8 years I decided that I was going to continue building my business in spite of some of corporate actions or lack thereof. I believe that you can overcome setbacks but you can't ever succeed if you quit.

I'm going to share my personal Avon business goals and some goals that I have for working with the team. I hope that I will be able to get to know more of you this coming year and learn about your hopes and dreams for your Avon business and your life. So here goes:

My Goals for My Avon Sales business in 2013:

I'm going to make Honor Society this year ($20200) for the first time in my Avon Career and I'm excited about that. I plan to start right now to get my sales up to Rose Circle level ($1462/campaign or $38,000) for the next cycle that starts in Campaign 8 in 2013. My average sales per campaign this quarter (from C-20 to C-1) were $530 with the average of 14 customers making my average order about $38. Using that as my base for achieving $1462 I will need about 40 people to order every campaign. That means increasing my customers by 26 per campaign.

(If you would like to figure out these averages and how to plan to increase your business to your desired level please get in touch with me because I have access to the data that will make it easy to do.)

My strategies for increasing customers will be to get more brochures into the hands of more customers and potential customers; to continue meeting new customers at a monthly indoor flea market, to ask and reward my current customers for referrals. I've revived my customer blog too. You can see it here:http://21stcenturyavonlady.blogspot.com/

I will also take advantage of any programs Avon offers to earn double or triple dollars.

My Goals for my Avon Leadership Business for 2013:

My overall goal for my leadership business is to achieve Executive Unit Leader in 2013. To achieve that I need to have $300 per campaign personal sales—I'm already doing that. Next I need to have 20 team orders per campaign. Our team is already exceeding that. The average is 49 orders per campaign. Here's where it gets tricky: team sales need to be $17,500 and average team sales per campaign are $8819. To reach EUL level team sales need to double. Plus there needs to e 4 titled sales leaders on the team that means 4 Unit Leaders or higher ranks. There is one person on our team who is working to build a team and I will be providing whatever support she needs to reach that goal.

My strategies for increasing team sales and developing 4 titled leaders will be to recruit more people for the team. I personally plan to recruit 14 people every quarter throughout 2013 and help each member of our leadership team recruit 14 new representatives for their team. A tall order I know but any and all activity in this area will take me closer to my goal. I have already asked some of you who have recruited in the past or are strong in sales if you would like to take your Avon business to the next level and no one was ready to commit to that level of business building yet. There is an open invitation for any team member who is ready to start leadership at any time for any reason to get in touch with me and I will help you make a realistic action plan to reach whatever goal you want to set for yourself.

I will also be holding opportunity meetings every other Monday starting January 7th in Council Bluffs for representatives to bring their prospects and customers to learn more about Avon. For team members who live a distance from Council Bluffs call me if you'd like to schedule a meeting, open house, product party or any other type of Avon event to build your sales and leadership business.

I'm starting a team blog as well you will be able to view it at this web address: http://happynews4bteam.blogspot.com/

I know this is probably longer than anyone has time to read but I really wanted to start the New Year off with a good of example of how to make a realistic plan to achieve your Avon goals if you want to. (I have a great goal planning sheet. Email me at be_an_avonlady@cox.net and I will send you a copy.) If you've made it this far you are probably a great candidate for an Avon leadership business.

Here are some other things that I want to do for the Bee Team in 2013.

1.Communicate with you in the way that you prefer to be communicated with. I feel like that a lot of the communication we get from Avon corporate and the district is not very timely- I don't know about you but I don't get too excited about being informed that I'm #1 in sales for Campaign 1 when I'm already taking orders for Campaign 3. So if I do recognition for sales it will be based on on-time orders and sent out when you are still delivering those orders. Just know that it won't be based on when Avon officially closes a campaign. For example we start selling for Campaign 2 on 12/28 but Avon doesn't officially close reports for that campaign until 1/18. But we started selling for campaign 3 on 1/12. Anyway in my opinion to be worthwhile it needs to be much more timely! So for Campaign 1 our top sellers were

#1Barb McQuitty $424

#2 Joy Greenslade $392

#3 Diana Andreasen $340

#4 Debra Thomsen $308

#5 Laura Allen $215

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For Campaign 1 there were 67 team members and 33 on time orders!!!! Big Thanks to all who ordered! Campaign 1 is always difficult for some because of the holidays but it's easier to keep your business momentum going when you place an order every campaign than to try to build up steam again when you don't...

2.Team Contests and Clubs: Here's the first one! Be this first to join the $500 club. To qualify all you have to do is have $500 in sales in a campaign!!! Your reward? $200 in commission from Avon. What will you do with your $200?

3.Share business building tips

4.Share motivating and inspiring books and videos

5.Hold quarterly team meetings in various locations in the district

Happy New Year Everyone! Believe and Achieve in 2013!