Organizational Tips
Organization – I’ve had multiple customers say, “you’re so organized”, so I think it’s worth taking the time to put everything in its place so that you make appts and cold calls run quickly and smoothly.
• Samples in plastic bins per line to live in your office until needed for appts.
• Car sample bag/box with a top seller or two from each line that lives in your car
• Catalogs in file folder boxes that live in your car
• Catalog binders with each/every catalog & line we have in alphabetical order (I put opening order on the front of the catalog and add order forms/prices/etc in plastic page protectors. These stay in your car.
• Here’s link to the plastic catalog organizers:
https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/451693/Baumgartens-MagazineCatalog-Organizers-9-12-x/
• Here’s a link to the cart I use to carry catalog binders in:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074T8WDJV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
*Additional bin in your car for product giveaways (current product you have duplicates of)
*Additional bin in your office for extra/discontinued product you can giveaway or make sample bags with for current customers who won’t care about getting discontinued product.
• Technology Organization – outlook, saving documents, etc. If the tech side of your business is organized, then your response time and ease at getting info for people will get better. You certainly don’t have to do it this way, but I would highly recommend setting your outlook up with the folders I’ve highlighted in yellow. Under each one you can create sub folders for each customer and each vendor, Marla/Alison, etc.
-Similarly, wherever you save your catalogs, price sheets etc. – have a folder for each vendor and have a folder for credit sheets/resale tax info, and a folder of JG stuff.
I have contact lists set up for each vendor so that when I send out eblasts I just choose the contact group to BCC instead of going through and choosing customers one by one.
Response Time – Response time on emails, calls, texts, etc. is so important in your beginning years so that you can “get away with” taking the weekends off later in your career. I used to work lots of evenings and some on the weekends the first couple of years with this job. The sooner you get a response to a customer AND vendors, the better. You’re building relationships with both so you need to work hard to let them know that you will do things asap for them.
**Set up a system so that the vendor/customer knows you are working on what they’ve requested, but you don’t forget to actually do it. I FLAG an email in outlook so that it shows a red flag after I read an email and respond to it. I don’t CHECK it off until I have completed the task and then it gets moved to that customer or vendor email folder.**
Inventory Reports/Brandwise –
• Play around with your home screen in BW. Might be helpful to put up your top customers, HFC orders and to be shipped orders, or switch to
• something else that helps you stay on top of things.
• Print an inventory report for a customer – start a new order for the
• customer and hit “order history”, then pick the vendor and print the report. Very handy and helpful to suggest orders using these inventory reports.
• Start taking orders on your iPad when with customers so you don’t have to do the work later when you put the order in. Will also be easier to add items to hit specials and not have to go back to the customer the next day to get them to increase an order.
Other things…
• Take photos of product in the store for vendors. Even if you didn’t see the customer, you can get “credit” with the vendor for being out in a store.
• Right after you leave a store – send the customer a quick email to say “hey, thanks for chatting/ordering with me” or “hey, sorry I missed you in the store today. Things look great, but you could do with some more Spongelle, can I put an order together?, etc.”
• Stickers with your picture, name, cell, and email to stick on catalogs
• JG bags to put catalogs in or buy some cheap handle gift bags to staple your business card to when you leave catalogs.
• Get your account list bound into a “book” (preferably the one organized by city) add customers from new account lists and take notes about what they carry, what catalogs you dropped off when you were in the store. Helps to see how many stores are in what town.
