Glenda Won’t Use My Shop
Written by Parsons Green
Glenda Bohannon is a Mary Kay sales director who has been in the company for 31 long years. In a lengthy post on Facebook, she explains why she won’t be using the My Shop feature when it rolls out on December 17th. (entire post here, my TLDR notes below)
- She estimates she would have $500 less a month in sales through My Shop, because she is able to upsell on orders placed directly with her
- She had two customers order the wrong product. Since she fulfills the orders from her inventory she was able to correct the orders
- She delivers purchases in person, which gives her another opportunity to upsell
- Website orders take away her ability to have a face to face interaction with a customer
- Glenda offers new customers $15 off their first $40 order. She cannot offer this discount on My Shop. (My Shop will allow consultants to offer free shipping on orders over $50 or a % discount but not both)
- Mary Kay is focusing more on profit and loss and not people and love.
- As an independent contractor, she should be able to control how her customers order product from the company
Sara Moore disagrees. Consultants in Germany have been using this June and have been seeing a 10% increase in sales and recruiting. Jeanie Navrkal has been with Mary Kay 41 years. She trusts that Mary Kay will always get it right. She wowed her neighbors at book club with her Mary Kay Mascara and she had 6 orders placed online! For some reason, they were scared to place the orders directly through her and even though they all live within 2 blocks, she will use CDS to fill the orders because she can write off the shipping as a business expense.She has learned to not complain about anything in Mary Kay.
Chrys Zinnecker will let her customers know that if they want to participate in her VIP program they must contact her directly. Mary Kay is making this change because too many consultants were leaving their online orders unresolved – which reflects badly on the company.
Martha Klein has been selling for 31 years. She has the mindset that she will now have two businesses. She will continue to service her current customers but hopes that My Shop will attract newer customers who prefer to shop online. Jana Strunk says Glenda should just train her customers to contact her directly. Glenda unfortunately was burned by guest check out. An order was placed by a scammer and Glenda had to eat the cost.
Susie Stojanovski thinks everyone should stop complaining. Everyone will find a way that works for them.
Glenda just wishes she had a choice. Just give her 24 hours to fulfill the order herself. She needs to be able to upsell.
Teresa Souther puts down her Mary Kay koolaid to share that everyone should just trust the process. Maureen O’Brien Hooker feels that Mary Kay wants to only have an online presence with ZERO sales force. My Shop is not the Mary Kay way. Jenean Hammer-Huber reminds Maureen that Ryan mentioned at Seminar that consultants were the most important part of Mary Kay.
Joni Koontz and Roxanne Dube have been in Mary Kay for 29 and 44 years. They both are dubious about the future of the consultants in Mary Kay.
As Glenda mentions, all consultants are independent contractors. They are not employees or business owners. Mary Kay is making changes that are troubling to the sales force. I wonder what the sales force will look like this time next Christmas?
Visit the
What is not mentioned is how the front-loading of new consultants fits into all of this. And how can a recruiter justify that large inventory order when the company is moving to direct fulfillment? Just watch the recruiting scripts adjust and strain to justify those up-front orders!
I would think front-loading would be a much greater concern than controlling individual order fulfillment. Or maybe they are too afraid to mention this? The ladder-climbing xSDs must be freaking out about these changes.
That was my first thought, maybe the FTC are clamping down on it behind the scenes? Of course it just may be a quick and easy way to delete the sales force as they are not worth it any longer. But yes frontloading is going to be a very, very hard sell now. Unit production, car production, good luck with that. Not that it’s easy or even possible for even the tippy top (like Roya Mattis who lost her Pink Caddy(TM) last month) but it’s even harder if not downright impossible now for even the tippy top of the pyramid let alone those at the bottom.
This right here, DJ. So many sales directors already struggle with meeting monthly minimums. You hit production one month because you get a hot new recruit who orders a full-store inventory and that covers your minimum. But, next month? Lather, rinse, repeat. I would hazard an educated guess that most directors are missing production almost as often as they hit. With this change? Almost all will lose their cars and probably their titles. There’s simply not enough actual selling going on.
It doesn’t. This is affiliate marketing in sheep’s clothing. Without those big initial orders, incomes will plummet and cars will be repo’ed.
Let’s just ponder why people might be afraid to order the old fashioned way: everything Glenda does.
Upsell upsell upsell turn up in person upsell some more!!! Hold a party!!! Sign up!!! Come on, kid, first one’s free (well, 40% off anyway).
The ability to buy what I want and skip the rigmarole? Yes please.
And if you really believe that Mary Kay was ever really about people and love and not the almighty dollar, give me your keys because you’re not safe to be out on the internet alone.
If they had just realized that even if you consider people and love, your bank account is really going to be based on profit and loss.
They’ll still say that people want to take product home from a party and so you’ll need a lot of product on hand. The reality is that everyone could sit with Ms. Consultant with a computer and order it online. No product on hand is ever needed.
I was just at a CAbi party (I know, I know but …wine and friends) but no one took anything home. Everything was going to be delivered. And honestly I order so much Amazon it’s like Christmas because I don’t remember what I ordered when and what it could be.
This seems so obvious watching from outside the pink bubble. Consultants aren’t worth the time or money any more. I also wonder why more current nsd’s aren’t bailing, and why would some still want to become nsds? Seriously, how will unit/area production be made? So many things have been taken away, including the mashed potato bar at seminar, consultant cars, samples of products, and a new director jacket for 2026. Can’t think of any positive additions. This is fascinating to watch.
Thanks PG once again for your detective work! You are amazing!
“Seriously, how will unit/area production be made?”
Maybe the compensation plan will be changed to be more like other MLMs. For example, consultants might be required to meet a monthly Personal Volume (personal purchases) requirement just to be eligible for any commissions, bonuses, etc. If they have a downline, they’ll have a Group Volume requirement. Maybe consultants will sell “monthly subscriptions”, allowing customers to buy at a lower price.
It should be interesting.
I love Cabo clothes. I buy all of mine at my local Clothes Mentor – a national retail resale chain.
NSDs will be fine in the end. They’ll receive their retirement.
It’s the remainder of the sales force that will wake up to an email that is over. And it’s coming soon.
The sad part is watching so many who are brainwashed continously backing the company.
The emperor has no clothes. And they continue to refuse to see it.
Ryan is going to say what Ryan knows these gullible women want to hear.
There’s more going on behind the scenes. Just a matter of time it surfaces.
It was FlavorAid, from what I understand, not even KoolAid, and that sure fits mkrap. I am so sad to see how delusional so many of these women are. You are being eliminated, and not very subtly. Yet, you will insist the company has always had the consultants best interests in mind when they have been living high on the mkrap inventory profits while you have been upselling every person to distraction and counting your pennies to buy gas.
It’s one of those southern gothic tragedies. It’s Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. No heroes. Conveyer belts of villains for over 60 years. Mental illness that has prevented the scales from falling from their eyes for decades and decades.
Rot in hell mary kay ash.
I’ve been thinking about this, only because I used to know Jeanie Navrakl back in the day. She was a perennial nsd wanna be, year after year after year. Her husband was in the armed forces and she was going to be a nsd and he was going to be general or something. Don’t know what happened with his career, but she is still not nsd. Why were her neighbors scared to order directly from her when they live so close and she apparently knows them from her book club?
Sara Moore For some reason, they were scared to place the orders directly through her and even though they all live within 2 blocks
I think we know why they preferred to purchase through the online option, less hassling and badgering to sign up as a member of Sara’s downline.
Sorry, it was Jeanie Navrkal, not Sara Moore.
So snarky to say that her neighbors are “scared.” The feeling is distaste/discomfort, and the action is to sensibly avoid a situation that would cause discomfort. They want to keep their book club a purely social space, not a place where members will be regularly buttonholed and pressured to buy or join MK.
Exactly they just don’t want to be held hostage to an endless stream of high pressure selling, parties and recruitment. Who does?
They are missing the point entirely- if they were truly business owners, none of this would be an issue.
I know that this is completely beside the point, but I am so irrationally irritated by the misuse of the verb “teach” in these posts. “I just TEACH my clients to order through me,” or “make sure to TEACH your customers to take a screenshot.” Pink ladies, that is simply telling your customers something. There’s no transfer of skill, no learning happening. It’s like saying that I’m going to teach my husband that I want pizza for dinner.
“Ryan said the sales force is the most important part of the company.”
You were when you were the ones purchasing a hoarder’s house amount of product. With these changes you still will be but in a bad way: you’re the dead weight that needs to be jettisoned.
“…every other direct sales company is… removing incentives for its sales force…”
Hun, the call is coming from inside the house.