Mary Kay’s director in qualification (DIQ) process is one of the worst things you can go through as a consultant. It involves scrambling for 1 to 4 months to get enough recruits who order enough products so you can “qualify” to be a sales director. You need to get 30 unit members and get $13,500 in wholesale orders (if you do it in 3 months or less) or $18,000 (if you do it in 4 months).

I would love to see the company’s statistics on the percentage of women that fail to complete DIQ and how many of them try again and again. I know the failure rates are high. (Just ask Heather Daniel Kent who churns the same DIQs over and over.) But corporate would never want us to see those dismal numbers.

Here’s thread in a sales director Facebook group where everyone confesses how many times they had to do DIQ before they met the requirements to become a director. I think these women are the definition of “slow learner.” Well… except for the fact that they didn’t actually learn and kept trying.

Who are the winners when someone tries DIQ over and over? MK Inc., of course. And the sales director, who gets commissions on every one of those orders from the new recruits.

19 COMMENTS

    • If you look at the image on Jan’s site, you see the naming convention of it, and that it was saved in December 2022. I wonder how many of those have fallen off since? Surely if she was doing better than that, they would have updated it?

  1. And Jamie Taylor currently has Cheyenne Redding, Carrie Zuberer and Lauren Wagner all back in DIQ

  2. When a DIQ fails to qualify, anyone recruited by her personal recruits (her second level) used to be placed into the SD’s unit, which was a big incentive for them to sabotage the DIQ to replenish their own numbers. Does this still happen, or does the DIQ’s team and recruits stay intact for her next attempt?

    • That was changed in recent years, to my understanding. So everyone in the pyramid under a DIQ will stay with her, regardless of when they were recruited.

  3. Love how these ladies are confusing “grit and determination” with not recognizing it is a losing situation. I wish they would spill the REAL information and share how much credit card debt they have after years of being a “businesswoman”.

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  4. All of this product ordered and sitting in your basement for a potential 4% 9% or 13% commission.

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  5. This is so sad. All of this fake hierarchy, fake titles, fake positions, fake “business”, bogus opportunity, bogus awards. Combine that with the ridiculously elaborate compensation plan, and these ladies are too busy (or overwhelmed with minutia) to question from the inside what is obvious to folks on the outside.

    Mary Kay shares this with all other product based MLMs: The business goal is to convince consultants (aka customers) to purchase way more product than they can ever use or sell, and then turn around and recruit others to do the same…all at the expense (in time and money) of the consultants.

    So much time and money wasted on this charade, for a system that functions fully with zero dependency on getting actual product into the hands of true outside customers.

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    • “This is so sad. All of this fake hierarchy, fake titles, fake positions, fake “business”, bogus opportunity, bogus awards. Combine that with the ridiculously elaborate compensation plan, and these ladies are too busy (or overwhelmed with minutia) to question from the inside what is obvious to folks on the outside.”

      Thanks Data… that was me… too busy and overwhelmed … then finally I woke up due to the exhaustion of it all. I felt like such a fool then to have fallen for it all. **facepalm**

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  6. I was in mk for 5 years when I finally got into DIQ…had to do it back to back…never made it to Director…kept trying for 4.5 more years. I wish I had quit MK after that first round of DIQ.

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  7. Paula Winton Leggett: “It is difficult to publicly ‘fail’ but much more devastating internally to quit.”

    What utter rubbish. This is the mindset these MLMs use to trap their victims. Why should it be “devastating internally” to quit something that isn’t working? (I’m betting Paula is just quoting something she heard from someone else; likely her upline.)

    Here’s a different motto: “When quitting is the smart choice, smart people quit.” There. Pithy and easy to remember. And a healthier attitude, in my opinion.

    Stop thinking quitting is going to be depressing. Quitting can be liberating, depending on your situation. I know many of the contributors here experienced a great weight lifting off their shoulders when they got the heck out of Mary Kay.

    If it helps, don’t even think of it as quitting. Think of it as cutting your losses. That’s what smart business people do all the time, when the red ink gets too bold.

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    • The message I got in MK was that the worst thing you can do is to quit and give up. You can still be successful as long as you don’t leave. The next class is the one that you’ll sell $1000x. Always about the hope that it will work out. Nice sentiment but it’s not true.

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      • You know who DIDN’T QUIT?

        The Donner Party.

        What did they get? Well, they are remembered today, but for being mostly dead and eaten by the time they were rescued.

        REAL businesses close down divisions, and entire businesses when it’s not working out.

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  8. Rock on, Lazy Gardens!!! You know who else doesn’t quit? Addicts of anything. Who doesn’t quit? Those who abuse other living beings. Who doesn’t quit? Those who don’t believe they are doing anything wrong, such as sociopaths who can’t feel normal human emotions, narcissists who can’t see that they are NOT in fact the center of the universe. And, nope, the Donner Party persevered….

    I do stand by Never Give Up but I also connect it with pursuing goals that have an ultimate positive result. Knowing WHEN TO QUIT – I wish I’d recognized that a lot earlier, many times in my life.

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