How Many Women Can a Unit Recruit Into Mary Kay?

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any product-based pyramid scheme. A company like Mary Kay survives because of new recruits ordering large inventory packages. Sales directors keep their units alive with the new recruits, as the volume of orders from existing consultants generally isn’t sufficient to keep the unit afloat.  Remember how Mary Kay herself said that being a sales director is like filling the bathtub with the drain open. Women leave Mary Kay as fast as they come in.

But recruiting is hard, especially with sites like Pink Truth. In the old days (like when I was recruited), there was very little objective information available about MK. There were no websites offering the real facts. You only knew what your recruiter and sales director told you. My sales director made up numbers about average sales per class, and of course they all made it sound so easy to book and hold classes. Today, resources are available for anyone who bothers to research. That makes it harder to get recruits.

Yet there are superstars in Mary Kay, aren’t there? Of the 14,000 or so sales directors in the U.S., there are some who are hitting huge numbers each month. How many? Take a look below. In July, there were a whopping TEN units in the United States that recruited 20 or more new unit members.

Why aren’t more units doing this? I thought it was so easy? I thought women were dying to become a part of Mary Kay? I thought women were working hard. If they’re working hard, why aren’t they recruiting more? The answer is that this is a losing proposition: You can’t recruit women fast enough to keep a thriving unit if you’re like the vast majority of the sales directors. Sure, there are a couple hundred sales directors whose units do it some months (not consistently), but that leaves about 13,800 sales directors who can’t do it ever.

12 COMMENTS

  1. And now they’ve launched 4 paper face masks for $70 (month’s supply). If you can’t sell, you certainly won’t be recruiting heavily!

    • Selling involves a product, recruiting involves a lie. Its a matter of an individual’s ethics and moral compass really

    • Anyone remember when MK had pre-patterned eyeshadow in the form of those Cracker Jacks snacks box prize tattoo stickers? Designed for women to have fast eyeshadow application they came in multiple packs. I think they lasted for a short time before being discontinued.
      My thoughts on this are that when a company needs to reduce the quantity of useable product by resorting to paper eyeshadows or masks and prices them at hyperinflated rates it’s time for customers to send a message with their pocketbooks by not buying (and I would imagine most MK customers will with this paper mask development) and anyone heavily involved with MK at this stage in their history to seriously begin looking at a way out via other business ventures independently created as well as investments in companies you understand well or real estate-can’t do too badly with real estate for example if you purchase at 20% or more below market, rent property out or even resell at a profit.

    • Are you serious? 4 masks for $70? You can get boxes of masks (10 masks) for about $12 from MyBeautyDiary. Jeez…

  2. It is interesting to see that Candace Doverspike in the Ruby division with numbers that she trains in the city that I live in and she has been so up and down in her career when she first became a director she had six offsprings in one year and then they all quit within the next year and so it’s just kind of funny how she cycles through director so fast!!

    • Was her maiden name Barr? I remember a Candace Barr in a video…super-animated and sweating up a storm. I think she was in CO.

      • Whoops, no, not Barr. Candace Chambers. She has five-year old videos on Vimeo. One was, “Go Director Fast.” Fast forward to April 2017, she has one on YT called, “Go Director Fast.”

    • My Sr hasn’t had more than 5 Offspring in the 20 years since she debuted. She’s lost a ton of Directors.

  3. There’s only so much room at the top of The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Once it’s full, late arrivals are bound to fall off.

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