For the Avon Lady, a World Beyond Ringing Doorbells

NY Times:

Luz Stella Bongiovi has a job that many people would envy. After 12 years in the same business, she supervises more than 100 employees and logs about 50 hours a week, coming into work at 10 a.m. and often working at home. She has been sent on junkets to Hawaii, Las Vegas and Puerto Rico. Her earnings total nearly $170,000 a year.

Her job title: Avon lady.

The folks at Avon, however, would call her a sales representative, the updated term for the 468,000 people in the company’s work force generating more than 95 percent of sales revenue. But to the public, “Avon lady” has stuck, ever since the company’s sales representatives began ringing doorbells in 1886.

Ms. Bongiovi is an example of how to succeed the old-fashioned way: she started small, worked hard and took advantage of her natural business sense to build a living slowly by selling Avon to her extended network of family, friends and acquaintances. But now, Avon is trying to force itself to step into the future — and bring the sales reps with it, turning its distinctly mid-20th-century sales model into a 21st-century version.

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