Author: admin

If you had a chance to participate in our recent survey we wanted to say thanks so much for taking the time to respond.  It is very helpful to get your feedback to help make decisions moving forward. You may have seen multiple changes at Alison’s Pantry in recent years. Those were in response to seeing a decrease in order size and reduced frequency of orders from our customers. All of the previous changes and future changes are an attempt to meet your grocery needs in a better way, and your feedback plays an important part of our decision making. In reading all of the survey responses, I wanted to address a few concerns and clarify some misinformation. 1-      You do NOT have to order online to order from Alison’s Pantry.  I’ll be the first to admit that we did a very poor job at explaining how our new website worked. We had many customers comment that they were under the impression that they were being required to order online to purchase our products, but that is not the case. You can still place your order with your sales rep and they still receive a commission on your orders, regardless of whether you order online or directly through your Rep.  I apologize that we did not explain our new online ordering option very well.  We do have a new website that you can place your order on, but that’s only one option you have to order with Alison’s Pantry.  You can still place your order through your rep and pay them at pick-up just like you always have.  So sorry for the confusion. 2-      We have decided NOT to move forward with a preferred customer program. Instead we have decided to adopt a more conservative approach by making small and simple changes over the upcoming months. 3-      Lower prices!  This was by far the #1 response request in our survey.  We will continue to work with our suppliers to lower our prices as best we can.  Hopefully you’ve already seen us lowering the prices on over 500 items and will continue to do more. 4-      We were surprised to see that nearly 50% of respondents are purchasing food for one or two in their household and the #2 response request was smaller pack sizes.  We hear you loud and clear and will do our best to find smaller pack sizes while still maintaining our quality standards.  This sometimes proves difficult because retail items are often much lower quality than the bulk foodservice items that we built this company on. We are working on breaking up some of our favorite items into smaller pack sizes for our customers with smaller families. You’ll find smaller packs of 17 popular products on Catalog #7.Thank you for this helpful feedback. 5-      Many of you have been with us for 20 to 30 years and used to order for a large family.  We are grateful for your continued patronage and, like I said above, we will continue to find smaller pack size items for our empty nested customers.  We are wondering if you love the product and your kids grew up on it, how can we encourage your kids to become Alison’s Pantry customers as well?  Could you help us to connect with your kids who grew up eating food from Alison’s Pantry?  Please email us with any comments or suggestions that could help us connect with your kids who may not be ordering from Alison’s Pantry.  [email protected] Sincerely, Josh and Jesse Kissee

If 50% of American Business is done by word-of-mouth advertising, what’s the word on you? 

Do you want your customers to talk about you and share their Alison’s Pantry catalogs with their friends?  Did you know that customer referrals are the best way to build your business?  Here are some great tips for encouraging your customers to grow your business for you:    

Be Friendly

•  When interacting with a customer, concentrate on the person, not the personality.  Your first job is to help the customer—not yourself.
• Be a friendly person on the inside.  Start with a good attitude.  Be friendly to everyone, not just your customers.
• Answer the phone like everyone on the other end is a friend you haven’t seen in years.

Be Available (no I am not talking for a date)

• Will your answering machine accept messages or is it full?  Does your voice mail say you work with Alison’s Pantry?  Please fix it if it doesn’t.  Clear out your messages so you can accept more.
• Answer your phone, or get back to customers within 24 hours.  Text back.  Call back.  Email back.  Be prompt.  People are not going to trust you with their money if they can’t get a hold of you.

 Be Knowledgeable

• Know and use AP products yourself.
• Attend the webinars each month to learn more about our products and how to use them.  It’s only one hour per month.
• Be enthusiastic about what you love with your customers.  Tell them how much you love a product and be quick to find out information for them on products they have questions about.

Small and simple things make all the difference and as you do those things with your AP business you will see it really grow!

-Julie, RSM

 

 

If you are in business, you need to be on social media. The question is, what is the best way to go about it? So much of what we do today is spent on screens. Who we talk to, what we see and what or who we interact with usually stems around one form or another of social media. Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. If your wondering where to start, here’s a few pointers.

If you already have a Facebook profile you might as well start there. If not, you will need to create one.  Think of your Facebook profile as your own personal page, it will offer a summary of who you are and what your hobbies, likes and dislikes are. It will share as much as you feel comfortable sharing. Everyone should have a personal profile to begin with. This will allow you to interact with other personal and business pages or groups.  If you’re wondering about a page vs group, here’s the difference.

A Facebook page is like a personal profile; however, it is usually for public figures, businesses, organizations, and other entities to establish a public presence on Facebook. These pages are public to everyone on Facebook, and by liking these pages, you will then receive updates on your feed about them.

If you decide to use a Facebook page you will need to choose which category your page best fits into. The options are local businesses, companies, organizations or institutions, brands or products, artists, bands or public figures, entertainment, and cause or community.

Facebook Groups are designed for people who have common interests to connect in a smaller forum. Groups allow Facebook users to come together and share content that is related to their interests.

When a group is created the creator can choose to make the group public and open for anyone to join, or require admin approval for members to join, or make a group private by invitation only.

A Facebook group is a place for anyone with interests, goals and opinions to connect with other individuals.  When you create a group you can add your customers to the group as long as you are Facebook friends. While anyone can build a Facebook Page; a discussions style forum is not appropriate in Facebook Pages, these profiles are meant for businesses and the likes only. Facebook Pages are great for marketing, but not a suitable place to share interests and opinions.

So why not have both? Here’s a few ideas to help you decide.

• A Facebook page helps to establish your credibility in the business world.
• A Facebook page is a wonderful way to bring awareness to your business group.
• You can link to your group right from your Facebook page
• If you use your Facebook live to do your live videos, then you have greater exposure than if you do it from your group. You can also invite people from your page to join your group.
• Facebook Pages are public, therefore it’s easy to be found when someone is doing a Google search.

It makes so much sense to have both and to use them differently to accent each other. Use your page as your promotional place, then when you get those people to join your group you can teach, share and sell on your group.  You can find more about pages/groups here.

Alison’s Pantry designs beautiful social marketing images that can be used to promote your business regularly. You will find these images here on the pantry academy blog and they also can be accessed through the rep portal dashboard. Any of the sales posts from the team pages or the main Alison’s Pantry business page (not the rep group) can be shared to your pages or groups.  The easiest way to do this is to use the Share at the bottom right of the post and then choose where you want to post it. It you choose Share now, it will post immediately. If you choose Share, it will allow you to choose the location you want to share it and then give the ability to add a comment at the top before sharing.

First the group or page you are sharing from must be public to have the Share button.

 

 

Second, choose Share, then you will have the option to pick where you want to share it.

 

 

 

 

Third, Pick Group or page and then enter the name of the group or page. You will be able to add something to the post, why you like it, or what you want your customers to know about this item. Then POST.

 

 

 

 

Once you master this you can pretty much post anything you want. If you want to post an article, or a product from the website it’s so easy.

 

 

First find the source you want to share, and then move to the top of the page to the web address line. You will want to copy this link into your post. It should populate the item and contents of the article or picture or link in the post. If you have trouble getting the picture that you want to show, you can post the address and go back and save a picture of the item using your snipping tool and then you can add that as a picture. The picture will show and the link will also post and will be easily accessed.

 

If you are interested in saving a post for later reference, you can go to the top of the post to the 3 little dots in the right corner, click on them and it will open a window with an option to save the post. This will save it to your saved posts on your FB. You can access them on the left of the screen under Saved             

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven’t tried doing a Live post, it’s the way of the future, as it allows your customer to interact with you on camera live. They can comment and like and ask questions in real time. You could use this for drawings for contests, unpacking orders and doing demonstrations on products. Live posts work best on pages, as they are always public and more people can see them.  The best live posts are short and sweet ones that get to the point and hold the interest of your customers. Too long you will lose them.

Hopefully you have been inspired to create a group or page or both and start marketing yourself.

Happy posting!

Stacee Izatt RSM