Order Before the End of the Month!!!
“You have to order before month-end!”
This is the lie they have been telling in Mary Kay for decades. They say you shouldn’t wait until the first of the next month to order because your products might be delayed.
Tell me: If wholesale orders from consultants are filled in the order they are received…. What would be the difference between ordering at 11:59pm on August 31 and ordering at 12:00am on September 1?
The answer: Essentially no difference.
The have always promoted that you’d have “a delay” if you ordered on the first of the month versus the 31st. Sure, the orders on the 31st will be filled before those placed on the 1st of the next month. But how much of a delay could you possibly have?
Don’t be fooled by this ploy.
Why would your director want you to order before the month ends? For her commission check. She’d rather have the commission on your order NOW than wait a month to receive it.
There’s a reason why you should not order at the end of the month, especially if you only place orders occasionally. Mary Kay places value on being “active.” You are active in the month you place your order and two months after that, or three months total. If you place your order on August 31, you’re considered active in August, September, and October. If you order on September 1, you’re considered active in September, October and November. So if you want to be active, then you’d be better off waiting to order until we’re in September.
I personally don’t think being active is a big deal unless you need to be active to continue to receive commission checks OR if you are trying to place your once-a-year order to stay on the books as a MK consultant.
Visit the
Mary Kay could easily, because of computers, make it a 90-day rolling period. But they don’t because the month-end hype is good for Mary Kay’s profits.
So true. There are lots of things Mary Kay could do to make life easier on the consultants…like:
– Eliminate (or significantly reduce the size of) qualifying minimums
– Give the bulk of the sales commission/bonus to the consultant who placed the actual order (instead of giving it all to layers of uninvolved folks in the upline)
– Get rid of the upline entirely. Let consultants sell directly for Mary Kay
– Territorial protection for consultants (eliminating the endless-chain) to reduce/eliminate competition within the sales force
– Reduce the “wholesale” price to be in line with the wholesale price of competitive products to allow consultants room to mark up their prices and remain competitive
If Mary Kay did these things, the entire MK business model would fall apart. Everything in the Mary Kay sales compensation plan is geared toward maximizing consultant orders, which depends heavily on recruiting. Little, if anything, in the Mary Kay plan supports actual sales to end-consumers. The distribution costs alone (aka upline bonuses) push MK “wholesale” prices well above market “retail” for similar quality products, making it nearly impossible to sell MK products even at consultant cost, much less at a margin. Eliminating all the excess bloat associated with up-line commissions would go a long way to bringing prices down into competitive territory, allowing a consultant to actually run a competitive retail business.
The fact that no one can make money in Mary Kay retailing product proves that the Mary Kay sales organization is not in the business of retailing product. The fact that the only people in Mary Kay sales actually turning a true profit have a huge down-line reveals the dependency on recruiting to make money.
Mary Kay does not benefit from sales to the end consumer (unless you consider the consultant the end-consumer!), so they provide no incentives to actually sell the product. In reality, Mary Kay sees their own consultants as their primary customer, which is why none of the changes mentioned above will ever be implemented.
I don’t know if this belongs here, but I’m putting it here anyway.
If MK really cared about sales to consumers, there’d be an easy way to prove it: sell on QVC. QVC sells/has sold tons of cosmetics brands and even has a subchannel dedicated to beauty.
It would be a way for people who used to use the products and liked them, or who are curious but don’t want to be stalked by phone/email/text for the rest of their lives, to get in on the action.
It would get their NEW & IMPROVED!!! and LIMITED EDITION!!! products out in front of zillions of eyes. QVC would take care of all the tedious logistics, and they allow customer comments so people would be able to gush about how awesome all their stuff is.
Folks could see the actual products actually applied to actual models live on camera while a host who’s personable and knowledgeable about the beauty industry does all the heavy selling. Or they could browse online at their leisure. Not to mention the NSDs and top directors could be special guest stars – two hours of free self-aggrandizement and heartwarming tales of Mary Kay herself!!!
The fact that they haven’t gone to QVC or another mass-market retailer suggests that they’re either not as confident in the quality of their products as they pretend to be, or that those on top of the pyramid (you know, Mary Kay Lotsa Lastnames Ash’s family) are totally content with lying and bilking their “sales” force.
I recently bought a MK skin care system 320.00 used it about 4 days… noticed each day I used my skin was getting more n more irritated. So, I asked the MK consultant who sold it to me for a refund, she tried to get me to exchange for other items. I want a refund, iam not happy with the product…..then she says i need to contact the lady who brought me to the presentation 🙄 Why? She was the person who took my money, her name was on my reciet, not the lady who brought me.
Granted the lady who brought me was a new (very new) consultant . She was so new she didn’t know she was one. Cause she was told by this same consultant pay 30.00 you can get your products half price.
I don’t know how this lady would even know she was a consultant… she knew nothing about how MK worked, I do mean nothing.
Anyway, so now I have product I don’t want n the consultant who took my money who’s name is on my reciet doesn’t want to give me back my money. NO, WORRIES! IAM GETTING IT BACK, Just called my bank! JUST SAD… PEOPLE CAN’T LIVE UP TO MK STANDARDS.
THEIR SLOGAN IS ( OR ONE OF THEIR SLOGANS IS….. TREAT OTHERS THE WAY YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE TREATED.
This is my first experience ever with Mary Kay…. n more then likely my last! Sadly to say it could have been different…. if I wasn’t treated the way I was. VERY POOR PEOPLE N BUSSINESS SKILLS, EVEN AFTER 25 YEARS…. WOW!!! NOW THATS 😥 SAD!
If the bank does a “disputed charge” for the product that’s effective.
Othewise, call Mary Kay corporate at 1 (800) 627-9529 … Tell them that the consultant who TOOK YOUR MONEY, who put her name on the receipt, is refusing to give you a refund on the product.
This “get your order in at the end of the month” spiel was one of the things that turned me off. It is totally for director commission. I had bought in to it and felt horrible when I had to explain later to a consultant that she had to order again not in 3 months, but in 2. I’d love to see a post on here about what exactly happens to those who went inactive but still had customers who wanted to order. It’s a well kept secret.
Slightly off-topic but I just wanted to mention:
Mallory james is the daughter to nsd cecilia james. Mallory doesn’t have a pink car yet.
My point is even someone who has a nsd mother can’t succeed in mary kay.
I can’t imagine every month struggling to make sales quotas, how stressful.
Especially if you’re the daughter of a nsd. You are expected to be great just like her mom Cecilia.
It goes to show how hard selling mary kay really is when you are raised and groomed to sell it and still can’t.
“sales quotas“
They don’t have sales quotas, they have ordering quotas.