The Four Stages of Your Mary Kay Business
Here’s a cool Mary Kay training piece that the sales directors pass around ad nauseum. Someone made up four stages for your Mary Kay career. Below are those stages, with my description of the reality of those stages in italics.
STAGE #1: THE BUILDING STAGE
This is the stage where you are doing the things that are most productive in this business, such as using and sharing the products, showing others the opportunity, attending your Success Meeting, planning your work and working your plan, reading, and learning all that you can about the business. You initiate communication with your Director and set goals on a weekly and monthly basis. You play by the rules – book 5 to hold 3- and always are aware that you are in a learning and building stage and within that, comes hope and excitement.
Let’s be real. This stage is about you just doing whatever your director tells you to. It’s not about learning, because if you learn too much, you might quit Mary Kay right away.
If you ask too many questions, she shuts you down and tells you to not worry about it until later. She tells you to trust her because she knows what she’s doing and she has your best interest at heart. She might even throw a little religion in there to gain your trust. You follow her lead because you believe her.
STAGE #2: THE SHORT-CUT TO NOWHERE STAGE
Even though you have all the tools at your disposal, you start to take shortcuts in working your business – certain that all that you have learned in Stage #1 is not necessary. You booked all your friends, failed to use the proper booking approach with the guests, yet are surprised that you have no bookings. The one facial you had booked cancelled and when you attempted to call another, she said “No”. You will hear yourself saying “I have no leads” or “No one wants to have a facial”. You haven’t picked up your Career Essentials in weeks (Why should you? You skimmed through it once), called your Director (Why should you? She is supposed to read your mind and call you!), gone to a meeting in a month (Why should you? You have nothing to crow about!), and anyway, you’re starting to get a little upset about the product collecting dust on your shelf. You don’t have time to do any of these things. (Why don’t people understand your situation at home, job, etc.?!) You quickly move into Stage #3.
This stage is about you finding out the truth about Mary Kay. Most women don’t want to hold appointments. They don’t want to be bothered with your insincere warm chatting. The little MK gimmicks don’t work because most women won’t fall for them.
So, like almost everyone else in Mary Kay, you’re selling next to nothing. You’re discouraged because you’re in a no-win business, and your friends and family have already made their “pity purchases.” You are failing in Mary Kay, but everyone makes you think you’re the only one. You don’t know it yet, but almost everyone fails in MLM because that’s how the system is set up.
STAGE #3: QUESTIONING STAGE
Once you stop booking and holding classes, as well as attending Success Meetings, studying, etc., (everything in Stage #1), you start to question the effectiveness of the business. Since you lack Personal activity, you start doubting that the business can really provide for you what everyone else says it can – success, freedom, and peace of mind. You start to think that maybe there’s a better system out there or a better Company. After all, why else would you not be making money and advancing? I couldn’t have anything to do with you! The people that stay in this stage long enough will move into Stage #4.
Once you realize that it is next to impossible to book and hold classes with any real consistency, you get really discouraged. You feel like a loser. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you find women who want to try Mary Kay? They bragged about that product flying right off the shelf. You bought inventory because they convinced you that women buy what the eye sees. But no eyes are seeing your stuff!!!
You also realize that “success meetings” are nothing more than a recruiting pep rally. You learn little at the meetings, and you walk away regretting another few hours away from your husband and children. It’s not worth it.
You start talking to other consultants. You’re both saying some things that you know your director would call “negative.” Yet you know they’re true. She’s having trouble finding people to book and hold classes too? So it’s just not you? Well then who is making all that money that they talk about?
STAGE #4: CONDEMNING STAGE
This is when you start to blame the Company, the products and the marketing plan, your Director, your personal situations, because of the lack of personal activity. Most people don’t even realize that they have caused their own demise. Pretty soon, they have convinced themselves that “it’s not for them”, “it doesn’t work”. If this goes unchecked, eventually you will end up jumping ship in search of the next “perfect” opportunity so you can create the same scenario over again. Or worse yet, you’ll remain forever working a job that you hate or living a life of always wanting something more.
The purpose of this is to make you aware that it is necessary to always stay in Stage #1 – The Building Stage – because that is where growth occurs! Our business is a process and so are You! Mary Kay used to say “When you stop growing…you rot!” We all have our setbacks and disappointments, but when you have a goal and are truly working at building a business, the setbacks/disappointments are soon forgotten because you are moving forward!
This is when you decide to search the internet for some answers about Mary Kay, and you find Pink Truth. You start reading the stories of the women there, and you realize you’re not alone. Almost no one is selling this stuff! Those who were “moving up” in their careers ended up with huge credit card debt, accumulated little by little as they placed extra orders to “finish” goals.
This is when it all makes sense. You think back upon the “advice” your sales director gave you, and you start to realize that her number one priority was her commission check and her car.
Your director is pushing you to hold appointments and boost your activity, but when you ask her how many appointments she held, she dodges your question. When you ask her how much product she’s selling, she changes the subject. Could it be that she’s not selling all that much either?
You go back to Pink Truth and read more. The former directors are talking about how little actual product they sold, and how little they actually made, even working “full-time” Mary Kay. Oh wow. You mean it’s all smoke and mirrors?
So how do you get back to Stage #1 if you have gone deep into Stages 2, 3, & 4??!
*Call your Director and schedule a conference call with her.
*Dust off your Career Essentials and spend at least l/2 hour each day reading.
*Attend your very next Success Meeting.
*Set a goal – any goal – large or small – for the week.
*Make a commitment to yourself that you will be a woman of integrity and keep that commitment. Next year at this time, you will be either better or worse than you are right now.
It is impossible that you will be the same.
THE CHOICE OF WHICH IS IN YOUR CONTROL!
This is when you realize you are at the point of no return. You can’t unring a bell. You can’t NOT know what you’ve learned from Pink Truth. You know the truth about Mary Kay – it’s a pyramid scheme in which recruiting and frontloading inventory get you ahead. Is this how you want to spend the rest of your working days?
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Comments (5)
somethingsnotright
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This is the best article I’ve read here yet. I adapted it a little and posted it on my FB page. Hopefully some of the MK ladies who haven’t un-friended and blocked me will read it and see the light!
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MLM Radar Detector
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Stage #1: You sell to all your friends and relatives. Some of them actually buy something. You don’t quite realize that all your friends-of-friends have already been invited, so even if you book a new party no one new is left to call who might become “guests” for that party.
Stage #2: It’s all your fault. “You failed to use the proper booking approach with the guests, yet are surprised that you have no bookings.” You didn’t use the Magic Words. It’s all your fault.
Stage #3: You lack Personal Activity. You’ve run out of Warm Leads. You’ve been thrown out of Starbucks and Target. People you try to chat up in the elevator run as soon as the door opens. Where else are you supposed to get leads? Your SD won’t tell you; if she had a good source she’d be milking it herself. Remember, it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!
Stage #4: You question the training, products, and marketing plan. The Pink Fog momentarily thins. This is not to be permitted! Listen to your director! You caused your own demise! Your lack of Personal Activity is ALL YOUR FAULT! The sooner you accept it, the sooner you’ll place another inventory order.
Stage #5: You finally discover the Mary Kay Solution! All you need to stay in Stage #1 is a constant supply of fresh relatives. Get a divorce and a new husband. Wash-rinse-repeat as often as necessary, just like Mary Kay herself did!
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raisinberry
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Ouch MLM! I think ya got something there…we needed a new circle of family and friends like Mar had.
The reason these trouble shooting pieces are so effective at blame shifting is because they’ re true! Mostly.
New recruits didn’t read the consultant guide or career essentials, didn’t memorize the 4 point recruiting plan, didn’t memorize the 85 second 3 goals close ala Cooper, or did some lame version of it…and mostly didn’t “close” the sale or appointment, and add on. They didn’t “persist” in being persistent because they didn’t want to be that chick that annoys the snot out of people. I have seen the best sellers in this business and they are oblivious to the demanding pushy demeanor they excrete. They think they’re charming, funny, and a little eccentric and surely that is their power, their “skill”.
Mary Kay is about teaching you to be a phony. When you resist that phoniness, it becomes your fault that you don’t succeed. The “normal” woman won’t walk the Target aisles looking for a target…yet she is told to and assured that women love this attention. Untrue. What women are is polite! Most women will give the benefit of the doubt to a well dressed smiling lady handing her a plastic baggy of samples. This in NO WAY means an appointment, with new prospects, and a greater market! But since you won’t even do this “chatting” warm or otherwise, you NOW have a reason to be blamed.
I have really studied this “opportunity” over the years. It works on hooking new women because of this subtle blame shifting that is able to hide the reality. As long as you “didn’t do everything you could have done”…you can continue to blame yourself and compare yourself to another woman who DID do everything.
Only that object of your comparison will never REALLY tell you what she did. You will not find out for example that she had an emotionally ill attention hound in the Unit who buys Queens Court every year. You won’t know that one of her members has a unique cultural audience that only buys from her. You won’t know that of the 3 DIQ’s she had that year, 2 flamed out and she re-inherited 60 people, and you certainly won’t know that her NSD mom stuffed her Unit with “also failed” Units that shot her up to the top 5.
But you will compare and blame yourself at your worst, to the illusion of their “best”…and never even know the con by which you are being victimized. This is one of the ways that Mary Kay escapes responsibility for the fall out of bad training, bad recruiting, bad tactics, and financial abuse of the so called sales force.
YOU could have done more. And you COULD have. You could have worked 24 hours a day. You could have had a table in every bazaar in your state. You could have called the phone book all the way through. You could have walked your neighborhood with 5,000.00 worth of samples. You could ALWAYS have done more, and for this failure you will ALWAYS be responsible.
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Missy
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Raisinberry’s post reminds me of the sayings, “never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides” and “never compare your behind-the-scenes reel to someone else’s highlight reel.”
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raisinberry
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That’s it Missy…but MK Leadership ALWAYS compares. There isn’t a Director reading this now that doesn’t know what I am talking about. Before you even absorbed achieving a goal, the NEXT goal was already being mailed to you, or spoken to you by the upline, under the guise of “not resting on your laurels”. If you paused to relish your achievement, you were going backwards. The whole con is about “striving”, because striving isn’ t thinking, processing, evaluating.
AS long as you DO NOT THINK, you will not go “negative”. It is classic numbing, in the vein of workaholic / codependency that I am sure made sense to Mary Kay Ash, as a NOBLE thing. It is far from it.
It is as destructive to human self esteem as being a druggy or a drunk or addict of any kind. Emotionally sober people do NOT DO what we did chasing recognition, harming our financial futures, failing prey to pressure and influence and needing to “belong”. Mary Kay Directors, tho capitalize on these types of women. These women will “stretch” for the goal completely deluded by the state they are in…and EVERY month end, we all did it.
We were conditioned to do it. “Find a way or make a way”…and it NEVER Mattered how. “The pain goes away when you win”, only it didn’t.
It is tragic how many women were duped into giving their time, money, attention, financial security, dreams and energy chasing this constantly crumbling house of cards.
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