Culture & Manipulation

Pam Shaw on Money, Recruiting, & Manipulation (Part 3)

The third part of the notes from a conference call with Mary Kay national sales director Pam Shaw.We could call this one “Why you must recruit and frontload” or “Everyone is just a number.” This falls right in line with the Mary Kay way – everyone is a number and if they’re not ordering, move on.

Now let’s move into variables.

1. Unit size – if yours is small you absolutely want to be looking at these other growth areas, but if you’re increasing your unit size like I said on-the-grow to a hundred and beyond in increments of 25 every 90 days. If your unit size is large it’s a variable for you. It’s already an advantage for you. And so if you do these other things then keep the base of your unit size large and growing, it’s a variable that’s an advantage.

Before I go to the second variable I want to talk to you about a Sales Director named Kim who was a Million Dollar Director, a mother of 3, and was Queen of Sharing.  Kim shared her report with me so what I want to share with you is what Kim’s report looked like as I go to the second variable.

2. Personal Court of Recruiting. This is a variable that when you as the Sales Director do the Personal Court of Recruiting and with strength, it’s a variable that if you do not have a strong unit size or you do not have some of those critical areas going on real strongly, the Personal Court of Recruiting will show up as a variable that makes you stronger. Let me explain.

If we go back to the growth focus area, its critical areas that count, when I’m telling you to add ten or more unit recruits a month, last year Kim’s average adding of new recruits was 18. Her average initial order was $1,092 slightly over the Company average. The new number of agreements they added last year was 213. The number of qualified was 122 which is well over 50 percent. The number of new ordering people was about 40 percent, and the number of base ordering was 42%. So the critical areas that count Kim was fitting my profile in abundance with the new people added – 18 not ten, 213 not 100, and well over the percentages of new ordering and base ordering. Kim started her unit last year at a unit size of 225. And somebody’s going, “Well good grief. She should have done the Million.” She ended it with 364. She grew by 139.

Her other variable Kim did the Personal Court of Sharing. I told you she was Queen. Kim added 51 new personals last year; 41 of them qualified. She earned over $12,000 in personal recruiting commission making her the Queen. When she looked at the personal recruits that she added and the recruits that that group of women added just from her personals, that accounted for $330,000 retail. I hope that those of you with smaller units just heard me. When she added 51 – 41 of them qualified. The recruits that those women added themselves with Senior Consultants and Red Jackets – that produced 330,000 retail. For Kim that was her Million. Her unit on its own would have produced 670,000 retail, but with her new recruiting – her personal recruiting – it hit the Million Dollar Unit Club. Are you all with me? Are you excited? Isn’t that exciting because that’s something you can control.

3. Now car winners and offspring. In the day I used to say when I did $800,000 Unit Club, I could not only find between 80 to 90 Star Consultants in my unit, but I would also be able to find from an $800,000 Unit Club a total of eight cars or offspring Directors that came out of my Unit. Now that is not a science, and that is not a statistic, and that is not written in an education book, but from my experience that’s about what I could find. Now in Kim’s case she had one offspring Sales Director who was also a car winner.

4. My fourth variable is Star Consultant. If I was going for the $500,000 Unit Club, I would shoot for 60 to 65 Star Consultants. If I was going for the Million Dollar Unit Club, I would go for about 110 to 125 Star Consultants so pad that a little bit. Star Consultants is a variable that if you’re strong here, you can over compensate for some of the Unit size, the Personal Court of Recruiting, etc. But if you’re weak, one of these other variables has to take care of it.

So the variables then are (1) unit size, (2) Personal Court of Recruiting, (3) car winners and offsprings, and (4) Star Consultants. But if you’ve got one of those areas where you say, “You know what. I can – I’m great with Stars. I can really increase my number of Star Consultants.” Run with it. And if you say, “You know what? I can do all three of those things, and I must because the growth focus areas I’ve been a little bit behind, but I can create a variable. I can increase what I’m going to accomplish this year with these variables.”

If you grab the variables, unit size – I’m going to increase mine. Personal Court of Sharing – I’m going to nail it. Car winners and offspring – I’m going to promote cars between now and June 30. I have a big car celebration in my home town the beginning of July for everybody who’s earned the use of a Career Car. Feature her, let her bring her family. Have a (indistinguishable) show. It’s going to be a real big deal. We’ll park all the cars out side the hotel. You know, if you get a celebration where you plan a celebration before anybody even earned the use of a Career Car, and then let them know the celebration is going to be about them. It’s kind of like the Kevin Costner movie – the baseball movie – if you build it, they will come. Well it’s your vision. If you build it, they will come.

And then Star Consultants. You know again what you talk about you will bring about in the Mary Kay world. If you start talking about Stars and putting up pictures of Star Consultants on your Unit meeting wall, people will move into the Stars. But these variables you guys, these are controllable pieces that if you start putting attention and energy into and creating a focus for especially the Personal Court of Sharing as what we’re calling it this year, watch out, watch out, watch out. And keep in mind that not only the initial order of your new recruits, but all perspective (indistinguishable) orders count towards your commissions earned for your ranking for the Queen of Recruiting.

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU is simply the same that I’ve given to my Directors – five plus two plus two. Five plus two plus two. Take March, April, May and June. Add five personal recruits March, April, May and June. Five personals – five or more March, April, May and June. Plus two. Put at least two of those five in the same month in their Senior Consultant Pin – Pearls of Sharing. Put two of your five that you’ve just recruited in their Pearls of Sharing Senior Consultant Pin in the very same month. Get two more Seniors from last month’s new people so that now you have four new Senior’s between last month and this month, plus a Gold Medal. So five plus two plus two – your Gold Medal, plus two new Seniors from this month, plus two new Seniors that you – two people that you recruited last month or that were recruited in your unit the last month. Five plus two plus two.

When you do that let me tell you what happens. You’ve got nine new people. If your average order is $1200 – that’s $10,800 in New Consultant production. Let’s just say that your personal team – let’s just say that right now your base is doing only $4,000. When you add that 10,800 to 4,000, that’s $14,800. Probably at least 8,000 of that is going to be your personal team. That’s going to give you $1,040 personal commission; $1,924 Director commission; the five recruits you get the $500 bonus. If three of them are qualified personals, that’s $800, plus your unit volume bonus the $1400. Your commission is $5,164. That’s if your base is only doing $4,000 and you add five plus two plus two. You’re going to get $1800 toward your Cadillac bonus production. Actually no – it’s more than that. It’s double that. Oh my gosh! Its double that – 32. So you’re well on target for Cadillac taking that Cadillac production straight into June.

You guys I’m telling 8 you five plus two plus two. It will absolutely change the complexion of your unit. Affecting growth now five plus two plus two.

Number two – affecting growth now. Check your initial order average and increase it and build it intentionally. If it’s a thousand, try to build it up to $1200. See what you can do to increase the average.

Number three – affecting growth now. Increase your number of Senior Consultants both with your base and with your new.

Number four – affecting growth now. Increase the number of your Red Jackets. You know promote the red jacket. Put it on a mannequin and dress it up the way you want it to look. Talk about the red jacket. Love on the red jacket. Rub the red jacket. Bring your Red Jackets up and, and, and feature them. If they’re not selling right now but they’re in red jackets and you’ve got some dead reds, go ahead and introduce them, but feature at your head table the people who are working and selling and winning the recognition right now this week. Selling the most this week, the most basics, the most guests at unit meetings, the most travel roll-ups, the most TimeWise sets, you know, what ever you want to do, but of course always feature people at your head table who are working now. But if you want more red jackets, you’ve got to feature the red jacket.

Number five – things that you could do to affect growth now – vision cast for car achievers. Career Car winners. Put car posters all over the room. Talk about the car; driving the trophy on wheels. How Mary Kay loved the trophy on wheels.

Number six – affecting growth now. A consistency club program that’s effective. Them ordering wholesale March, April, May and June at a certain level. I would always up my level – 250, 450, 650 and 1000. You’d be amazed what that extra $50 does in terms of consistency in retail. But give them reasons to order and to reinvest appropriately, and of course your education is always teaching them to sell the produce and to move product so that they’re ordering from a selling perspective.

And then number seven – affecting growth now. Star celebrations that reward and celebrate your people. Make sure that you make a big deal out of the Star Consultant program with one getting ready to shut down on March 15 if you haven’t already planned some sort of celebration.

When I was a Million Dollar Director and living in Florida, we had quarterly celebrations and they were theme parties and they were fun. We had 50’s parties where they dressed up in 50ths attire. We had a DJ. I remember once where Jerry came as Elvis on roller blades. We had a dance floor. We had so much fun. We have a Wild Wild West party. We’d all dress up and again it was a theme party, and we would have the awards for that theme. Black and white ball in December after the Holidays when the December 15th was over, but we had it in January and it was kind of our New Year launch.

Create fun celebrations for your people. Have one – partner with some other Directors in your local area and create something that’s really fun and special so that now your people not only compete in the small pond for their big award, but when they get in the big pond and they’re a small fish, they have to work a little bit harder and the other Consultants in the area stretch them when they are celebrated with the Consultants in the area.

And then lastly consistency. Your consistency. Your consistency in adding ten or more new Consultants. Your consistency in getting a thousand or more initial order from every new Consultant. Your consistency in adding the 100 more unit agreements per year 40 or more qualified or higher. Setting your mark. Beating Kim’s record of 213 total and 122 qualified.

Consistency in the number of people that order in your unit, and the consistency in the number of new people that order. And then the consistency in the Personal Court of Recruiting, and making sure that you’re allowing that variable to be something that increases your on-the-growth unit size. Consistency on on-the-grow from 100 to 125, 150, 200, 250 etc. Consistency in promoting car achievers and offspring Sales Directors. Consistency in the Star Consultant Program. How many Stars did you have last quarter? How many Stars did you have last March 15th? Increasing that number. How many Stars did you have last June 15th? Knowing that number of Stars and increasing it by 10, 15, 20, but being intentional about that and consistency.

You guys if you would absolutely follow these critical areas that grow and create your own show time advantage, and I’m telling you, you add right now that five plus two plus two and you personally affect that growth and let your unit do the other growth or your on-target, their DIQs do the other growth, but you focus on five plus two plus two from your personals, watch out. You put these with the other growth areas and you will absolutely be unstoppable.

And you know what? I have a great seat at Pearl Seminar. I get a really great seat, and I’ll have a front row view of you as you walk across that Seminar Stage, and I love the celebration. I love watching you walk across stage. I love watching your gowns. I love your hair. I love taking your picture. I love cheering you on. I love getting to present things to you, and I just can’t wait to be on stage with you at Seminar 2006 sharing the Pearl Stage passing to you your very best bar pin, and you get a thousand dollar bonus for beating your Unit Club over last year. or getting you to keep your Cadillac which you get a thousand dollar bonus for – that new Cadillac.

You know wherever Mary Kay is giving it away, you take it. You step into your greatness. And whatever that dream that’s been pounding on your heart this year, the four greatest months of our Seminar Year are the four that we get to live out, and so I encourage you to live them out with every ounce of passion and determination that you can possibly muster up. And I can’t wait to celebrate you at Seminar in July.

10 COMMENTS

  1. All this focus on NEW people and FIRST orders…

    Did you see her anywhere… in all that talk… mention long-term participation? Or re-orders at larger levels? Or even having re-orders?

    If Mary Kay was a sustainable business at the consultant level you’d see awards for long term participation, for lifetime orders, for consistent “sales” growth, for reaching 20 stars, or 10, or even five.

    Do you know what Pam Shaw calls a unit with 50 members who have all been there for over a year, but has little or no recruiting? Stagnant.

    Why don’t we see recognition for long-term activity? Why is the focus only on getting new recruits, first-time orders, a single star? Is it because anything longer term is embarrassingly unattainable?

    Just something to think about…

  2. I love nonsense in the morning with my cup of coffee; don’t you?
    Nonsense and Repetition. Repitition and Nonsense – That’s Pam for you.

    Here’s the thing, as MLMRadar pointed out, all of Pam’s emphasis was on recruiting new people, getting those new people to recruit new people and getting those new people to order, get qualified and increasing the initial orders of all of those new people. No where in that whole diatribe did she mention creating a sustainable business by providing real and tangible business education (for all those new people) which covers the much needed skills of business promotion and maketing, or SALES (let’s not forget we really should sell some of those products we “invested” in). Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. So I guess if it’s not about recruititng and fleecing the new recruits, it’s not important to Pam.

    I am truly sick of Pam right about now. And just who the hell is this ficticious “Kim” she is bragging about?

  3. I’m sure the entire article was riveting, but I stopped here:

    The new number of agreements they added last year was 213.
    The number of qualified was 122 which is well over 50 percent. The number of new ordering people was about 40 percent

    Does anyone even REMOTELY want to defend the idea that Mary Kay is not saturating the landscape? Just how is a person supposed to engage and build a new customer base, when everyone and her brother has been recruited, attempted to be recruited, joined, ordered, not ordered, or washed out. Remember they are preaching this all over the US and now, the world.

    After 50 years, the only ones not familiar with this approach are the young ones, recent college grads who haven’t lived enough to recognize the face and cost of this kind of manipulation…and who further will be told not to hang around those who might be negative, because they “don’t get it” and will “steal your dream”.

    A company that does not care what happens to its entry level ambassador, does not care what conditions its own marketing plan has created, does not care about the desperate financial condition its middle “management” creates as a result of trying to keep purchasing product at qualifying levels, SO THAT, the Family Security Program stays SOLVENT, is using the IBC as an investor who never gets a payoff. You can’t even buy stock!

    The facts are that Mary Kay is a multi-level marketer, desperate to disguise that fact, that makes its money off millions of women’s credit card debt. Nationals are LIVING THE DREAM, getting a commissioned portion of that debt as long as all of you nice ladies keep paying for it. And it is apparently now taking more than half of the sign ups to maintain it.

    Consistency is the key!! No doubt. It’s hard maintaining that Lifestyle if the hamsters take a nap.

  4. Good golly, Miss Molly. Who reads all that crap? It’s interesting that it’s all about the numbers until you dare question the great and mighty Oz. THEN you’re a negative Nellie.

  5. You know, she’s not saying anything remotely profound or original here: Recruit more people and you’ll make more money. That’s IT. Rubbing the Jacket, Fondling the Pearls and seeing who a director can convince to order a bunch of crap. I guess she has to do something to rationalize her ‘love checks’ so penning these rabid diatribes is it. At my J.O.B., I use my talents, my BRAIN and my experience to complete my taskings. I don’t have to harrass, cujole or BEG anyone for anything. I am the master of my success; there are no hypotheticals of finding people, persuading them to order, spending my own money to make a ‘goal’. I get paid through the success of my company, not on the misdirected expenditures of other women. THAT’S really empowering for women, not this antiquated farse of ‘business ownership’. UGH.
    Meanwhile, an REAL executive at M.A.C, Urban Decay or Revlon is working on a new advertising campaign or product launch and not worried one little bit about a ‘court of sharing’ and ‘qualified consultants’.

  6. As a card-carrying sales management consultant this non-sense hurts my brain.

    She keeps referring to variables. What she really means is metrics. To actually watch trends in an organization, you want metrics. You want averages over a PERIOD OF TIME.

    You don’t just randomly decide…welp…here’s the fix for that “variable” we don’t like. Let’s just do “five, plus, two, plus two”. It’s so much more complex than that.

    Smart companies look at the metrics in their sales organizations as symptoms – of bigger issues- training needs, salesforce burnout, territory alignment, declining customer demand, etc.

    This is just rubbish to the nth degree…

  7. hopefully this lady is more chrismatic with her delivery of this long winded yawn fest in person than she is with pen to paper. My brain went into a comafrom sheer boredom after only an 8th way through!
    again it was all about recruiting and nothing about long term viability!
    The Red Jacket was totally creepy–‘love the Red Jacket’…’fondle the Red Jacket, put it on a mannequin….WTF? that is absolutely bizarro

    • Charismatic? That’s an interesting way to describe her.

      Pam Shaw could give narcissism lessons to Narcissus. She’s a walking advertisement for what happens when you use too much botox. Her seminar dresses are fit for a Las Vegas showgirl stage.

      Yeah, she’s charismatic, all right. Just as long as you recognize that the world revolves around her.

      Too bad the Pearl Division has gone bye-bye. Now she’ll have to share her seminar seating area with one of the more established NSDs. (Catfight warning! HHIISSSSSS!)

  8. I’ve never met Pam, but from the videos and scripts I’ve seen, she reminds me very much of my husband’s stepmother. I truly believe the woman (his stepmother, not Pam) has narcissistic personality disorder; everything in life is about what she can squeeze from you. When you’ve stopped being of use to her, she drops you like a hot potato.

    Maybe I should tell her about Mary Kay!

  9. Reading this talk made me feel sick to my stomach. The manipulation. ‘Fondle the red jacket.’ I tried to picture her giving this talk. I’ll have to Google her. The whole thing is disturbing.

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