Mary Kay Double Credit (Again)

This month has been ANOTHER opportunity for sales directors to earn “double credit” on all orders placed by their units.

What is double credit, you say? It’s a little trick that fraudulently inflates the amount of “retail sales” an individual or unit reports for the seminar year.

As you may know MLMs and their reps brag about how much their people “sold.” But those numbers aren’t retail sales, even though they lead you to believe they are.  (Look here at former MK sales director Michelle Cunningham falsely stating that her downline sold $10 million in products.) What the people and companies do is look at the wholesale orders placed by distributors and turn that number into the suggested retail value… and voila! They have “retail sales.” Which isn’t retail sales because it would only be retail sales if ALL of those products were sold to third party customers AND if they were sold at full retail pricing (no discounts, no products given away, no products used for demonstrations).

Mary Kay takes the fraud one step further using the double credit trick. During certain months, they will double the orders placed to calculated contest credit. Suppose you’re trying to make the $500,000 unit club, which represents $500k in “retail sales” for the seminar year. Under normal circumstances, you’d need your unit to order $250,000 wholesale to get there (since suggested retail value is 2x wholesale).

In a double credit month, the wholesale value of your orders are doubled. So your unit orders $20,000 wholesale this month. That’s $40,000 at suggested retail value… so Mary Kay will count that as $80,000 (double!) toward your unit club this year. Talk about phony! At the end of the year, the sales director says WE SOLD $500K OF PRODUCTS. No, they didn’t. The most they could have sold was $460k, because there was a bogus $40k retail thrown in there during double credit month. (And again, we know they didn’t sell it all. And we know what they did sell was not at full retail value.)

This scam happens in Mary Kay once or twice a year. It’s done during months when orders are lower than usual in an attempt to get consultants to order more. So when your director is dialing for dollars this month, please know that there is an ulterior motive. She’s going to tell you how you will get so much closer to the court of sales this month. She doesn’t REALLY care about that. She cares about her commission check and the double credit she gets toward unit retail for the year.

 

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14 COMMENTS

  1. I love how you use Michelle Cunningham as an example.. Sorry if I seem to mention her a lot but she is cunning.
    I like how she says, “yeah, my company gives me a free car” Bish, no your “company” MK does not give you a free anything.

    • She almost makes it too easy. If she would just tell the truth about MK and her accomplishments, I’d have nothing to criticize, would I?

      • neither would I Trace. none of her material shows you how to sell products, just how to recruit. And this was while she was still in Mary Kay.
        Oh and she has the NERVE to have an 8 minute ad on Youtube—that’s how I came across her. Watching a video and you know there is usually an intro ad? Hers came and 8 MINUTE long one I was screaming at Alexa to skip ad but it couldn’t. I was so mad. Then I googled her.

    • I always wonder about the husband situation like how much he’s actually privy to regarding the finances or if they wonder what their wife actually does all day. Or, especially during tax time when it becomes pretty clear how much is actually being made in MK or at another one of these ventures. How would a Michelle Cunningham-type spin that one?! It’s not like you can get “double credit” back from the IRS lol.

  2. Once they started Double Credit, they are now locked in, because think about what a drop in “sales” would happen if they did accrue straight wholesale ordering…BUMMER, nobody could “beat” the year before! If anything tells you how bogus MK is, this would have to. Can you imagine Ford Motors doubling sales this month on paper only, and then telling the world about their banner January?

    • In the non-MLM world, there’s a word for overstating your sales figures to qualify for a bonus or make your business seem profitable.

      The word is “FRAUD!”

    • Wait, what? You mean a real business wouldn’t do a fake doubling of sales and then tell the world about it as if it’s true?

    • “Why not quadruple?”

      Your sarcasm is actually reality.

      Technically, if we consider the fact that the real customer is the consultant, a $20 product she buys, that counts as $80, is already quadruple.

      But for fun……….If we did quadruple credit the fake retail price which is double the actual retail price paid, then the number would be octupled and come in at $160 on a $20 product. Yeehaw

    • I’ll give a serious answer to your question…

      Because MK knows EXACTLY how much of a prize/incentive will motivate consultants to order. They give not a tiny bit over the amount that gives them the most when they do a cost/benefit analysis.

      Think of the little junk jewelry corporate gives. They know just how nice (or not) the item has to be to get X percent of consultants to place an order for $Y.

      With double credit, they are giving away for free a tiny portion of the unit bar pin or the court of sales ring. But they know that giving away a tiny portion of that (which probably costs them all of $10), they can get a consultant to order an extra $600 wholesale or get the director to try a little harder when dialing for dollars, resulting in an extra $5,000 unit wholesale.

    • If it would cost MK real money then double credit doesn’t count: commission checks, car quotas to avoid co-pays, unit ordering bonuses…

      Mary Kay herself told her people to give a cheap prize and tons of recognition. So the winners get junk jewelry, or worthless “spit” diamonds, plus a stage walk with bright lights, maybe with a guy in a tux (only for the big winners – tux guys have to be paid), and a photographer to dazzle you with camera flashes (pictures for sale when you step off the stage).

      Even the stage walk is just smoke and mirrors. The bright lights and flashes keep you from noticing that the audience isn’t paying attention. The announcer and loud music mask the missing sound of genuine applause. For all we know, any applause you hear on your stage walk could be just a canned soundtrack.

      Smoke and mirrors. The Mary Kay dream isn’t real.

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