Consultants Will Hold Orders
The key to success as a director in Mary Kay is to suck every last bit of ordering out of consultants. So when changes are coming, directors don’t tell consultants until the last minute. Why? They’re hoping you might place an order for the old stuff, and then you’ll have to order again when the new stuff comes out. Clever, ‘eh?
One of many sad truths in Mary Kay is that the company and its representatives like to withhold information from consultants as long as possible. Why? We want them to order now. It helps our commission checks now. If we tell them about an upcoming special, they may wait to order, and that is bad for us. Here it is, straight from a sales director:
Be reaaaaal careful about releasing this info to consultants TOO EARLY–THEY WILL HOLD ORDERS! You never want to encourage order-holding, something else could happen between now and then and they don’t order!
Get them to order right away. If they don’t, something else may come up and they will change their minds and not order
After 60 years in the business, Mary Kay knows exactly when to announce product changes and specials to get the most ordering out of consultants. Why do you think they wait to announce major product line changes? To get the most orders for the old stuff out of consultants… then when the new stuff comes out, the consultants order again so that they have the products shown in the catalog.
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When I did my initial inventory order way back in the dark ages, I got it and immediately thought my director was a complete idiot! She ordered hundreds of dollars of body care that was about to be discontinued. She convinced me to let her put together my whole order because “she knew what she was doing and what will sell best.” K. Sounds good, I barely knew my ink pen from a mascara wand at that point of my life, so I happily handed over my credit card and let her do her thing.
When I complained about all the soon-to-be-discontinued product in my order, her response was, “Oh, it’s fine. You’ll sell lots of it at your first parties (spoiler: I did not), and whatever is left over, you can just use as hostess gifts.”
Like, ma’am, I did not sign up for this thing to be giving away $30 products as a hostess gift. I need my money back!
It was only AFTER I became a director myself that I understood the game she was playing. She wasn’t an idiot, she was manipulative. Of all the rotten things I did as a director, I can happily say THAT wasn’t one of them. My consultants knew about product changes as soon as I did so they could plan as well as I could!
Frosty, I had the same thing happen to me. I had so many unusable colors of foundation plus newly discontinued products. This from a woman who sold me on the opportunity, in part, because it was a Christian company. There is no doubt in my mind that she did this intentionally to ensure that i had to place another order shortly after my big $3600 wholesale first order, because the common things that were selling… i had almost none of.
Yes! My second month, I ordered almost $1,000 of products on top of the $3,600 inventory order I did. Because the stuff I needed for those first few parties wasn’t in my initial inventory! So scummy.
Very similar here!
It’s infuriating, isn’t it?
I joined right at the time they were changing from silver to black magnetic compacts & lipsticks. The price point i ordered at for my initial order advertised “includes X amount of color products”. Well, they only had like 3 available eye shadow shades and one blush at that time. So my SD loaded me up on TONS of skin care & Satin Hands sets & very little color. So I had to re-order a bunch of color products when the new products came out.
I wish I would have confronted her about that at the time.
I’m glad she didn’t order me a bunch of the old silver compacts & oval eyeshadows & blushes.
All of the oddities in MLM make sense once you realize the downline is the true customer. There is nothing unusual about a salesperson trying to upsell the customer. But in MLM, the products are so grossly overpriced for the quality that the best way to move product is to fool your customers into thinking they are business owners to justify such extreme over-ordering.
Outside sales are really not the point in any MLM. Over-ordering by your own downline is where the big moneymaking potential lies. Churn is your friend…get recruiting!
This scammery can backfire on the directors. Quite a few PTers left precisely because of this and there’s a few anti MLM Redditors that left because of this.
Jewelry purchased at Sam Moon for 25cents.
More likely Temu. They literally get Temu stuff for a few cents an item. Spend thousands get a lead laced trinket worth 5 cents. You’re welcome Hun xoxo 💋😘 that’s how much you’re worth to super executive diamond spaghetti director.
“Super executive Diamond Spaghetti Director” would make a great user name here. 🤣
I too trusted my recruiter, now an emeritus NSD long retired. She loaded me up with colors that no one in my market would wear. I had always suspected she did this on purpose and when I joined PT I learned it was a strategy. Shame on them all.
I saw a post today that said “being rushed by someone is a form of manipulation. This is because urgency bypasses your intuition. When you are rushed, you don’t have the time to check your boundaries, consult your gut feeling, and process the information.”
This is spot on when you think about the recruitment process too. Sales directors use this big time to sell the opportunity and get new consultants to place big orders. It prevents women from thinking critically about their actions and making a sound decision. Blows my mind how they can sleep at night knowing how sneaky they’ve been.
Oh, MK Inc. has internal documents about how quickly recruiters need to get someone to do their initial inventory order. Each day that goes by costs the company $______. I don’t remember the dollar figure, but it was a significant decrease for each day that went by. That’s why they’re always rushing recruits to place the order.
Seeing this makes me cringe at how much I misunderstood the reality of MLMs. I honestly thought the goal was to sell products and I didn’t try to pressure anyone to join. I was going to build slowly.
I wanted to find consultants who wanted to do the business. I didn’t realize it was all about the churn, and obviously my director couldn’t come right out and SAY that. I never got above a consultant level. Never broke even either.