Written by Raisinberry

SEE = Suckering Excellence for Everyone

Directors will remember that training we got from Leadership a few years back about the fact that new Mary Kay recruits experience “fall out” around the 6 to 7 week mark. In Touch was updated to include a tickler system of tasks that kept us “focused” on where orders could come from, and to alert us to that critical 6-7 week window where enthusiasm wanes.

We needed to head it off at the pass by sending out a motivational postcard, tucking that newbie in our back pocket and steering her course through the murky waters of doubt as she depletes her friend/family market.

Likewise, every event that Mary Kay Corp and National Areas orchestrate is designed to reverse that gnawing surge of doubt when the last “prop up” fades to reveal the reality of being a marketer in a product based pyramid.  The S.E.E. event clearly reveals that there is too much time between fall retreats and January Jumpstarts, January Jumpstarts to Career Conference, and Career Conference to Seminar. It has dawned on the powers that be, that if the 6/7week rule applies to the newbies, it probably also applies to the fading hopes and dreams of veteran consultants and Directors as well.

Nationals really do not work too hard at connecting with their down lines. They expect to put on the obligatory meeting at Seminar and Leadership to disseminate their wealth of knowledge, but personal coaching and modeling for the downline is just way to costly an expenditure of time… not one on one and especially not for Directors below the 1st line.

After 7 weeks, if there has been no NSD intervention, the muscle of the MK machine-the Directors, will start to lose their pulling power.  With credit tightening, the methods of the past do not net the same results today and production is ever falling. Mary Kay Corporation needs a bridge to Career Conference to stop the bleeding.

For some reason, it never dawns on them that motivation comes from successful results. Without being able to adjust the “how to’s” of this business, the repetitious training of yesteryear reinforces the problem of lackluster results from the base unit, and no relief from the production mules, the “newbies”. Enter S.E.E. -a chance for Mk Corporate to tie the sales force to themselves in one more motivated stopgap, while they search for answers.

Instead of attacking the real reason why a prop up would be needed, Mary Kay continues to resort to variations on the Ziegfield Follies to emotionally engage and draw in the naïve and willing hearts among the audience. The grandeur and spectacle of events like Seminar have only a short-lived emotional pop that wears off in the weeks that follow.

S.E.E. will be a meat and potato event, with a commercial for Career Conference and Seminar strategically placed to bump registrations. Imagine how much financial output is involved with booking convention centers in major markets? Low attendance will cost big, not just in event financial loses, but in deflated “hamster” energy. Without having any knowledge of what’s planned, I can guess that there will be a huge announcement…tied to Conference or Seminar attendance… an easing of qualifications,  or a great new prize, to leave the teary eyed, and weary soldier, ready to strap on the boots one more time and truly commit to the mission.

What Mary Kay does is not educate or inform. That would require adapting out of the “book sell book recruit” simplicity into more business savvy, market aware instruction. What Mary Kay does is manipulate.  Mary Kay’s money comes from 2 places. New recruit production and career path Hamsters.  This truth is attested to by how many women stand when the telling question comes from the Seminar podium.

“How many of you are attending Seminar for the first time? Stand up!”  The audience shifts and moves like one giant red caterpillar, striped in Suit du jour.

Mary Kay is willing to put on these events for the pop they get to motivate the next generation. If they can keep women coming, they can keep dangling the carrot. For the new recruits and the Hamsters that hunt them, S.E.E. will be the much-needed stopgap, affordably priced, that will create the registration surge that will save this Seminar year. Maybe.

I wonder how much it would cost to leave multi-level marketing behind, and just make a great product affordably priced, that women could retail, and advertise, and use their own God given creativity to market. And then recognize real sales, and real excellence from women who were really successful actually selling the product? And then have them “teach” their real results, and real procedures at an event like SEE. And let’s SEE if all the motivation we ever needed, was truth.