New Consultants Should Start Recruiting Right Away
You’re a new Mary Kay consultant, and you’re just learning the ropes. You’re excited, but a little scared about all the things you don’t know about your business. Your director is encouraging you to start recruiting. You want to get your feet under you first before you will feel comfortable bringing others into the business.
But your director keeps pushing you about recruiting. She suggests you’re just going to do “practice interviews” or some other innocent sounding thing. She keeps coming at you about recruiting. Why?
- Recruiting is how your director makes her money. New people mean new inventory orders, and that’s where the sales director makes the bulk of her income. Mary Kay Cosmetics encourages large initial inventory orders because that is the single largest amount most consultants will ever order. With tens of thousands MK consultants quitting the company each month, a new supply of orderers is constantly required.
- Your director needs to get you to recruit before you realize what a loser business Mary Kay is. If she lets you wait to see how hard it is to sell the products, you’ll be discouraged, and you won’t want to set others up for the failure you’re experiencing. Eventually you’ll figure out that 99% of people who get involved with MLMs lose money, and if you have scruples, you won’t want to bring others in to lose their money too.
- Your director wants you to recruit before you figure out that you make more money by NOT recruiting. The best target for a potential recruit is someone who likes the Mary Kay products. If a woman is buying products from you, you have the opportunity to make a gross profit of 25% to 50% of the retail amount she buys from you (depending on how much you have to discount the products or give away free products as incentives to buy). If you recruit that customer, you suddenly make only 4% of wholesale on her product purchases. And you’ve also given yourself another competitor, which is especially bad if you have many of the same family members and friends.
- By getting you to recruit, your director has helped you feel successful, and your excitement makes you more likely to order more products and continue on in the business. Even when you are not making any money. You have a couple of recruits, and suddenly your director tells you that you’re “on target” for something, and that you only need to order $xxxx more to get to a higher commission level or qualify for a prize. You’re probably going to place that order, even if you don’t need the products because you want to keep your momentum going. Another order means more commission for the sales director.
After more than 55 years in business, Mary Kay has perfected the bait that is needed to lure people in and get them to order more. They know exactly which kind of “contest” or cheap prize will bring in more orders. The ribbons given out at Career Conference and Seminar cost pennies, but consultants are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on orders to get those silly ribbons.The same thing goes for the star consultant prizes and other trinkets that Mary Kay gives to orderers during special promotions. The company knows exactly which kind of positive reinforcement leads to more orders, and getting you to recruit right away is a brilliant part of the plan.
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Or the “free car.” I “earned” two of them in my MK time. Both of them were repoed by the Company as well. My son (16 yrs) asked me just yesterday if the cars were really free. No, they are not. By the time you get done with the two year lease on your “free” car, you could have purchased a nice pre owned vehicle and the car would be an asset. Especially if you kept your “commissions” rather than take the car. $425 x 12 x 2 = $10,200. Ohhh, but you’ll need to pay for insurance, and repairs, and you’ll have car payments. Ugh, I fell for that hook line and sinker twice. The deception to my family and people close to me about how the car is “free.”
The brain washing is so thick. As Dave Ramsey would say, a good calculator will help you here.
These companies spend billions of dollars to snare us in their traps. Wake up, world!
I am consistently against all belief cult-think and brainwashing. My downvote is only for the last paragraph and the reference/promotion of DR who mixes his belief-cult brainwashing with financial advice. That sounds just like MK, and it is dangerous.
Yeah, I’ve thought the same thing Char about DR. But, I am out of debt free and if I hadn’t had his “cult like” influence to help me power through, I’d be under the influence of our society’s cult, which suggests that spending your life shackled with debt is acceptable. It isn’t to me and I certainly don’t want my children to think debt is acceptable, either.
My debt wasn’t lavish lifestyle debt – it was me as a single mom with NO help from my children’s father in raising them, financially or emotionally. I’ve worked as a school teacher all their lives, and we are certainly aware that education pays poorly (my state is consistently at the bottom of the pay scales nationwide).
I got sucked into the MK sphere because of the “hope” it offered.
MK and debt offer the same things.
Thanks for your feedback, Char.
These questions are meant to be thought provoking, not antagonistic in text tone.
We know not all MLMers lose money. If you were personally a net-winner and debt-free from Mary Kay, would your opinion of MK be different? Would you still support MK if you were making the big bucks and could pay cash for everything?
Do you think offering hope and promising paradise are different?
As a single mom supporting your children, and as an adult woman who might get pregnant because, ya know, adult woman, would you be okay with getting fired from the job that was helping you support your existing children?
As far as I’m concerned, he can buy a one-way ticket to Gilead.
Your questions are thought provoking. I was not a top dollar earner, but I didn’t realize that I was part of such a corrupt system. I really believed that I was selling hope, dreams, opportunity, all of it just packaged so pretty in Mary Kay products. I honest to God believed that. So, if I had made it to the top of the pyramid, I would have been fine with it. Until I realized that I was not ok with it because I lost my own belief in it. Then I would not have been able to stay. I know myself pretty well at this point. Does that make sense?
As for getting fired from the job – I’m not sure how to answer it. When I was in the pink fog, MK was not a **job** it was a **mission** and my mission was to enrich women’s lives.
I was super naive. Oh well. I’m happy that I’ve come out the other side not totally cynical and angry at the world. I’m still a glass half full kind of gal. 🤷🏼♀️
As for DR, I’m glad I followed his baby steps to get out of debt. The only money I’ve spent with him was $20 about 20 years ago ($1 per year investment) to buy Total Money Makeover. MK got tens of thousands of my dollars over the years, in addition to so much of my time & energy.
Thank you for answering. It’s my fault for not being more specific, and I think we are in two trains of thought. I’ll add more context just for clarification.
“Cult” I wasn’t referring to the “cult of DR”, but rather his dangerous religious cult beliefs.
One of the examples: He fired a single woman from his company for being pregnant and not married, aka “out of wedlock”. If that’s not bad enough, did she already have kids and was she relying on that job to support them? Are we still using donkeys as transportation and opressing women? He’s a misogynist pig.
My previous reference: Supporting/tauting him is like supporting MK if you had made money. As in, “It made me money so who cares if the rest lose.” Or, “Who cares if he’s firing single pregnant women as long as I got out of debt using his advice?” (Hypothetical scenarios)
I understand better that you were really just mentioning him in passing from 20 years ago instead of deliberately promoting him. I’m sorry, and thank you for elaborating.
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“I really believed that I was selling hope, dreams, opportunity, all of it just packaged so pretty in Mary Kay products. I honest to God believed that. So, if I had made it to the top of the pyramid, I would have been fine with it. Until I realized that I was not ok with it because I lost my own belief in it. Then I would not have been able to stay. I know myself pretty well at this point. Does that make sense?”—
Yes. In MLM, people at the top know how the con game is played. I think you wouldn’t have been okay with the lies – had you gotten there. But you didn’t get there, fortunately, because you eventually figured out the BS before you did – although it took awhile. And during your time in MK, those at the top were lying to you and keeping you in the belief system because that’s how the con game works. This, something you would’ve never done to your downline self. Lol, Imagine a lurker trying to follow that. MLM sucks.
Dave Ramsey promotes some really damaging concepts and mindsets. However, if someone with a finances that are just a mess use his program to get better with money, I can’t deny that something good is happening. But DR is gross.
This is the cold math of MLMs in general “If you recruit a customer, you suddenly make only 4% of wholesale on her product purchases. And you’ve also given yourself another competitor, which is especially bad if you have many of the same family members and friends.” So they create a rewards structure that does not reward selling, just recruiting, and glorify the rewards.
If you sold $300K to real customers you would not become a director, get a car, or reach the “inner circle” … those require recruiting to keep the MLM propped up.
One of my customers attended the same church as me. I invited her to go to a glamour shots type event that my SD had without understanding that these are recruiting events (Pink Truth didn’t exist them to warn me). I honestly thought that the before and after photos were to show off the products. Anyway, my SD recruited my guest (for me) so that I would then be on target for a red jacket. I didn’t want to recruit her! She was buying product from me.
I knew enough at that time that I made more money from her as my customer then as a recruit since I made 0% commission on her order. My SD was the winner in this situation. So not only did I not make any money off of her purchases any more, but she was good friends with my other customers from church. Guess who they bought from?
If any “direct sales” opportunity incentives you to turn your customers into your competition, it’s a pyramid scheme.