Isabella Needs Help!
Written by Parsons Green
Isabella is a new consultant and asked for help with her business in the Facebook group Let’s Talk Pink. Like everyone who signs up as a Mary Kay consultant, the problem is finding customers. They tell you it will be easy, but once you’ve gone through your family and friends, good luck finding others.
Let’s check out the responses she received.
Tracy Hanks is not sure why she’s still in Mary Kay, especially since she has thousands in unsold inventory. Jenean Hammer-Huber suggests that Tracy hold a Holiday Open House! Sadly, Tracy has trouble loading Intouch on her computer and doesn’t like strangers in her home.
Fawn Wisnecki cautions consultants to not buy inventory until you have a good client base. She also has a lot of inventory to unload!
Maddi Dorry thinks Isabella should post videos on social media of her using products she loves. Ask friends to help you! Tami Kring wonders where Isabella’s director is? Why isn’t she asking her for help? Jaclyn also suggests talking to her director. Fawn says that some directors don’t want to be bothered!
Faith Marie Kunkle has the helpful tip to set up a table at a craft show. They are cheap. You just need a tablecloth and product. Ann Losurdo then reminds everyone that you can NOT sell at vendor events. She thinks Isabella should focus on nursing homes. She can give out samples and the staff can provide leads for parties. Let men you know that you can help with holiday gifts. You can also offer gift certificates.
Jessie Wangeman shares that she should use a great profile picture so isabella is easily recognized. Share her beauty routine. Ask questions on posts to get responses. Join local groups. Let customers know you can offer a 10 minute “facial”. And most importantly, don’t give up.
Lisa Owen has been in for a year. She recommends using facial boxes. Give out samples everywhere you go. Start a Facebook group and invite everyone you know to join. If you don’t get customer sales, remember that you get a discount on your personal use products!
Kat Rosa thinks that product samples are the way to go. Take a basket with you wherever you go. Let people know you are available for holiday gifting.
Veronica Benavides admits it took her a couple years to get clients. She stays for her personal discount. Ask everyone you know. If they say no, nothing changes. If they say yes you could have a customer for life.
Cecelia Blevins uses the FRANKS method. Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances, Neighbors, Kids Friends Moms, and School Teachers. Think of everyone you’d invite to your wedding.
Lara McGuinness says that Isabella finish all her new consultant training on Intouch. Also wear your name tag everywhere because this will spark conversations.
Pat Arnold wonders if Isabella is getting any help from her director. She thinks that Isabella do warm chatter. Give compliments to anyone and you can offer them a sample. Don’t take nos personally.
Sara Moore has been in Mary Kay for 47 years. She built her business on warm chatter. Any conversation you have in public is an opportunity to share Mary Kay.
Norma Villalpando echoes a lot of the ideas others have shared. Do not be afraid to share the product with older ladies. They have money! She also recommends asking her director. If she’s not helpful, reach out to others!
Racquel Kalm jumps in to thank everyone for the ideas and suggestions. Izzy is in her unit. She’d love to have 10 izzys on her team. She showers Izzy with compliments and calls her every week. Do not assume directors are not involved if a consultant asks for help. Izzy’s director is involved y’all.
Racquel’s and Isabelle’s sales director is Kara Gallup! Racquel recently thanked Kara for a trip she earned.
Kara posted a picture before the trip. I am not sure what the qualifications were but only two of Kara’s downline earned it.
Mary Kay consultants consistently tell consultants that the opportunity cannot be beat. Products fly off the shelf and consultants earn 50% of every sale. Why is it then that consultants mention in Let’s Talk Pink how hard it is to find customers to even try the product??? Discounts and samples are needed for customers to even try the product. If Mary Kay was truly based on the Golden Rule philosophy why isn’t this information shared with consultants before they sign up? Wouldn’t you want to know this before any inventory is ordered?
Visit the
If only they could be honest about this up front. No one is making any real money selling MLM products to outside customers. Generally speaking, folks do not buy MLM products from strangers, so once you exhaust F+F, it’s on to recruiting!
The outside market for these overpriced products is way smaller than the number of sales reps. Due to this oversaturation, the only way to move significant product in MLM is through relentless recruiting and pressuring your downline to significantly over-order (via front-loading and qualifying minimums).
Selling to your downline, not outside customers, is the name of the game in MLMs like Mary Kay!
*SHAKING MY HEAD*
If these new consultants would step back and really think about how the system works, they would never get into it. The MK consultant territory is oversaturted. MK ‘rules’ are outdated. Nobody wants MK!! We can go to Sephora, Ulta and get our stuff. Lots of stuff, too!
Isabella obiously bought too much product and I bet half of the product is already out of date and no one wants to pay full price for it. The best thing she can do is return her stuff and get 90% back.
If there were guaranteed tricks for finding customers, every IBC would have all the business they can handle, but they don’t. The market is oversaturated, the advice is stale, the system is rigged.
Follow the instructions at the top of the page for returning your inventory, block your director who’s 7 states away, and breathe a sigh of relief.
There is way too much competition in the skincare and cosmetic market for Mary Kay to be a viable business for consultants. It was different for consultants in the 60’s and 70’s and even into the 80’s. But now there are multiple companies in MLM touting safe, natural products, not to mention the multitude of products available at Ulta and Sephora. Other MLM’s like Rodan and Fields and Seint have gone to affiliate marketing and with the new My Shop website in Mary Kay, I think they are also headed in that direction. None of the aforementioned companies were around in the 60’s. Mary Kay Cosmetics is a dinosaur headed for the tar pits.
It is despicable how these women prey upon nursing home and assisted living residents. Whether they are trying to sell to them or using them as pawns for “donations” (unloading old Satin Hands,) it is absolutely disgusting.
IMHO, it comes off as financial abuse (if selling to them), elder abuse (emotionally taking advantage of a vulnerable population), and straight up unethical. It’s gross. Definitely glad I got out.
I should have included if they were trying to sell and/or recruit them.
I remember asking my sales director the same questions and was met with a push to get a vendor booth and warm chat but most importantly try to sell them on what their order meant to me.
It’s such a disservice to these women because in the real business world the objective is to meet a specific need for the consumer — not focus just on your brand and company. It’s another reason why no one takes IBCs seriously and there’s barely a customer pool. Who wants to hear about all their challenges and goals all the time while they offer very little benefits? Everyone has their own as well. It’s almost like a never ending GoFundMe for no true or worthwhile cause to support.
So Tracy Hanks is sitting on thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory she can’t sell, to the point that she wonders why she is still in MK, but then she goes and orders more. What. The. Heck.
I wonder why Racquel felt the need to jump into this thread and be aggressivly positive about their director? Maybe she feels guilty that her recruit isn’t thriving with this “opportunity” and is passively aggressivly shushing her. I mean, how dare she go to this outide group (beyond her unit) to ask for help! At least that’s the tone of how I read Racquel’s response.
I got the impression that Racquel jumped in because so many other people in the thread were asking why Isabelle’s director wasn’t helping. Racquel was probably taking some heat.
The women with all that inventory to unload are so screwed. Do they ever look at Ebay? Even that stuff, sold for pennies on the dollar, doesn’t get sold too often.
The advice that’s being given is sad because it’s so useless. I have to wonder why the women who sign up for this MK gig aren’t doing a google search first. My thought is that they’re being signed up by friends or someone they know personally so they will feel bad if they say no – they just take that person’s word for it. (Had they done a Google search I would bet that PT would have been one of the top results.)
I’m almost 100% certain that Jesse Wangeman MK had Chat GPT or Google AI write that cheerful, bullet-point list for her.
My sister is an artisan vendor at the most popular farmer’s markets in this area. There is a wait list at all of them and one of the first rules in the agreements is no MLMs or commercial products. From what I’ve heard, craft shows at least in this area – the tables are pricey so it’s not economically feasible for a MK consultant to get in, even if they were allowed to do so.
If they’re being reduced to begging nursing homes to let them throw parties…I’m not an expert on nursing home rules, but I doubt they can just waltz in there with their MK stuff, set up in the recreation area or what have you and start selling, but I guess if the staff allows all that Adopt a Grandparent crap to go on then who knows. I highly doubt, however, that the residents are going to have enough spare funds to spring on anything other than a small pity purchase. It’s all in the *hope* that maybe, just maybe, they can warm chat one of the employees into doing a party or signing up. Which is nuts because the employees can see that if you’re reduced to holding parties at nursing homes, then how is this a great opportunity?
And if I have the timeframe correct this all happened in November, before the launch of My Shop and I bet they were totally unaware of the potential negative effects it will have on their ability to move their thousands of dollars worth of stockpiled inventory.
WAIIIIIT A MINUTE!
If they have a table at a vendor event, they can’t sell the product off the table?! What is the freaking point then?! It’s literally a setup to fail.
They are supposed to demo the product and collect names and book facials.
Yep, my aunt tried to buy something at a Scentsy booth at a local food fair and couldn’t. And my aunt is an Olympic-level wheedler and nag. Predictably, the Scentsy rep tried to get her to hold a party but thankfully she didn’t.
It was probaby 8’x8′ and wall to wall with different items, no two alike. You could smell it way before you could see it, and most people were avoiding it like the plague. I can’t even guess what the rep’s storage area must look and SMELL like.