Everyone at Pink Truth knows that in order for a multi-level marketing scheme like Mary Kay to continue to survive, you need a constant supply of new recruits. The real market for Mary Kay’s “meh” products is consultants, not actual consumers. That’s right. Consultants are the REAL customer.

But the name of the game isn’t a purchase here and there by a consultant. The company (and its pyramid of recruiters) relies very heavily on the frontloading of new recruits. Frontloading is the process of pushing a new recruit to buy a large inventory package as quickly as possible.

We’ve known for a long time that the FIRST order placed by a new consultant is almost always the most they will ever order from Mary Kay. Also, the longer it takes for the recruit to make a decision about the first order, the less they will order. Each day that they delay, the company loses at least a few hundred dollars. (So if you’ve ever wondered why there is such a push to quickly place the order, this is it.)

But now we’ve got some hard numbers, courtesy of Friend of Pink Truth, Jamie Taylor. She did some training for sales directors last week, and we’ve got the recording and transcript. Jamie says “recruiting is a verb,” and her whole session was all about how sales directors have to actively and aggressively recruit and frontload, especially if they are trying to move up to national sales director.

There are some really enlightening statistics that Jamie shares about her national area and the sales directors and units.  You can listen to the most important parts here, but if you wish to avoid hearing Jamie’s annoying baby-talk voice, you can just read the highlights here.

The Verge national area currently has 27 directors. Jamie’s area numbers look like this:

• 30% of the unit will place an order each month
• Those ordering consultants will order an average of $360 wholesale per month (Jamie says this is her area’s number, and she verified that it’s very close to the company-wide figure.)
• If you had a unit of 24 people, then 8 would order, and with the average of $360, you’d be at production of $2,880… which is far short of the required minimum monthly production of $4,500 wholesale.
• You basically need a unit of 50 to ensure you meet monthly minimums, unless you’re recruiting and frontloading.

The truth: You can’t make minimum production with a typical unit size unless you recruit and get the new recruits to buy packages. The ongoing ordering, which is presumably to help fill orders (except for when someone orders products they don’t need in order to finish a goal), is pathetically low. We always knew that the initial inventory orders were what makes the money for the directors and for the corporate beast, but it’s wonderful to hear a national sales director say it out loud.

Then Jamie goes into a story of crying to Pam Shaw about how she wasn’t going to make the top director trip for the seminar year ending 6/30/20. And if she wasn’t going to make national sales director, then she should at least be on the top director trip, because after all she was an executive director!!!

Jamie’s unit was at 120 consultants, and Pam told her that number was not big enough to build a national area or get the production needed to go on the trip. She advised Jamie to have her unit recruit 100 women in the next quarter. So Jamie started tracking this 1/1/20. They were supposed to do 15 new consultants in January, but only got 3. In February, Jamie again wanted 15 new consultants, and again only got 3. It wasn’t fun, and then in March they again got 3 agreements. That was worse than when Jamie was a red jacket and DIQ.

“Oh my gosh, if it is this hard for me to get an agreement, I definitely cannot give up on this now. I cannot give up on this.”

Then from April to June 2020, Jamie’s unit recruited 100 new consultants and she became a national sales director one year later in on July 1, 2021. How? That massive recruiting push in 2020 gave her enough DIQs  to make her area.

It’s a numbers game!

You can listen to the clipped audio that I uploaded for you, and it has a transcript on screen to make it easier. Jamie goes on about how you should “hunt” for new recruits. You have to recruit a large volume, because everything comes from that. You’ll never move up (and you’ll only be treading water) unless your unit recruits a high volume of people.

But Jamie’s descriptor of “HUNTING.” Doesn’t that really show you what Mary Kay is all about? The wolf in sheep’s clothing. Yes, potential Mary Kay consultant, you are the prey. The recruiter is the hunter. And back to the beginning of the recording, the way the director is going to move up in the company is not only by getting those recruits, but by frontloading them with a big initial inventory order.

It’s gross. Frontloading is probably the most unethical thing done in Mary Kay (or any MLM, for that matter). It’s terrible because the recruiters and directors KNOW that the consultant who is making the big initial inventory purchase will not sell much of it to consumers. They justify this by telling themselves “it’s not my fault if she doesn’t do the work to sell the products.”

But that ignores the reality of MLM: Very little product is sold to third party consumers for so many reasons. It doesn’t matter how hard a consultant works, the statistics show that 99% will lose money and they’ll end up with a bunch of products in their basements and garages that will never be sold.

Mary Kay is predatory, and thanks to Jamie Taylor, we have a little more insight into just how bad it is.