6 Things Mary Kay Recruiters Look For
Did your Mary Kay recruiter tell you she’s looking for 6 characteristics in women for her team? Here’s her script, along with the reality behind it.
Let’s review the characteristics that recruiters look for in potential Mary Kay victims. I always found these things so funny, because generally everyone falls under AT LEAST one of them. And, unfortunately, they’re really all things that are setting you up to fail. That’s right. The recruiter claims it’s something they “look for” in a consultant, but in actuality, these things are only going to help you fail.
1. We look for busy people.
The first quality that I look for is a busy person, because busy people are good time managers and they know how to prioritize and juggle lots of tasks and still maintain a balance.
Busy people are usually the most successful because they are time managers. You know how to prioritize your time. You may not have 10 hours, but you can find 15 minutes three times a day!
Busy people get more done! In Mary Kay, you don’t have to devote huge blocks of time; you can work it in around your other priorities in life.
REALITY: Be prepared to leave your husband and children home without you most nights. You’ll be going to a weekly pep rally (called a sales meeting or unit meeting). You’ll be heading out to do appointments (if you can get any) and to look for fresh meat at malls, church, and other social gatherings. When you’re not doing that, you’ll be attending guest events and other pink brainwashing. If your priorities aren’t Mary Kay, Mary Kay, and Mary Kay you won’t receive much support from your recruiter.
2. We look for people who don’t know a lot of people.
The second quality we look for is someone who thinks she doesn’t know a lot of people. Family and friends are a great place to start. I recommend you quickly move on to what we call real customers; and, if you’re willing to expand your comfort zone just a little bit, I’ll show you how.
REALITY: Come on now! How stupid do you think we are? You don’t really think that we will fall for the line that NOT KNOWING lots of people is HELPFUL in this business? Give me a break!
3. We look for women who aren’t the sales type.
This business is about building relationships, providing quality products and offering valuable services. Mary Kay teaches you to be informative, not pushy. Mary Kay consultants are more like teachers than sales people. In Mary Kay we want you to have a strong reorder business and build relationships. We teach skin care and show our customers how to use our products and then let them make an educated decision. If you’re teachable & trainable, you can be successful in Mary Kay!
REALITY: The entire Mary Kay “business” is built upon selling, selling, and selling. To tell you differently is just plain dishonest. There’s some teaching going on with the products, but it’s often done by a consultant with little to no REAL training on skin care. The bottom line is that in order to succeed you must sell the products, sell the recruiting spiel, and sell large inventory packages.
4. We look for women with more month than money.
If you have more month than money, you are like most consultants starting out. I want someone who has financial goals and can get excited about reducing debt, saving for the future, or having extra money to contribute to the family’s finances.
The beauty of Mary Kay is that it only costs $100 plus tax and shipping for the Starter Kit which equips you to start building your business right away.
REALITY: Your recruiter is looking for women with access to cash. Whether it’s cash in a bank account or cash via a credit card or loan, fast cash is her focus. This cash is needed to sell the large inventory package. Those who don’t have cash might still be recruited, but they shouldn’t pin their hopes on making big money in Mary Kay. You’d be better off getting a real job if you need money.
5. We look for a woman with a family as their priority.
I look for someone who is family oriented because she’ll do a lot more for her family than for herself. Independent Beauty Consultants are motivated by the needs of their families and see their families not as excuses, but as reasons to be successful! I want a person who wants more for her family and will use Mary Kay to help achieve that.
REALITY: They are trying to con you with their fake motto of “faith first, family second, career third.” They know it sounds GREAT, but it won’t really happen once you sign up. See the reality under number one above. You will be leaving your family behind day after day, and not have much income to show for it.
6. We look for decision-makers. (the time isn’t right)
I look for a woman who does not procrastinate and makes a decision. Some feel they need to think about it, and a year later they are in the same situation. You’re probably considering the Mary Kay opportunity at one of three times in your life: You will either be in the middle of a crisis. Or you will be finishing your current crisis. Or you will be about to start a new one!
For women, the crisis atmosphere just never really goes away; and it rarely seems like an ideal time to add something more. Our lives are always happening around us, and we can’t put important things on hold until things are smooth. So waiting a couple of weeks or a month or a year just doesn’t make a difference, does it?
Successful women take advantage of opportunity. They know that the only way to change their futures is to act in the present. There is never a “perfect” time to do anything.
REALITY: They want you to make a decision right now because if you think about it or if you talk to someone you trust, you will start seeing the holes in the story you’ve been given. They have to get you to sign up before you can realize something isn’t right. Then once you’re signed up, they immediately begin to pressure you to buy inventory for the same reason. They don’t want you to think about it and come to the (logical) conclusion that something is wrong.
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This is a brilliantly written article because it gets to the heart of the matter. Deception.
All of these so called characteristics, are actually objections that have been hurled at the sales force for not joining, right? So they took each objection and made it a reason, to block the recruiting prospect from identifying her concerns and what is in the way of her making the decision to join.
She can no longer pick, ” I don’t have enough money…or I don’t know many people….or I know I’m not a sales lady or I am too busy to add anything else to my plate, etc.” That is all this is. The idea that these are needed characteristics is complete fabrication, and as this writer says, would actually HURT your chances of building a cosmetics business.
It’s a sales technique called “overcoming an objection before it’s verbalized”. It gives the sales person the upper hand because they have taken it from your arsenal, and rendered it useless to you.
If you are targeted by a MK or mlm-er that uses this technique, you can simply say, I don’t like the idea of being a Mary Kay Consultant. Since this is vague, she will press. Why don’t you like the idea? Or What about the idea don’t you like?
And you say, ” I don’t like the idea of being a Mary Kay Consultant.” She will press again.
And you repeat.
Finally, when she asks again, you can say, “I don’t like the idea of being a person who has to press and press and press, trying to overcome someone’s objections as if they know better than I do, what I want in my life.”
And then you can watch the jaw dropping silence.
Brava, Raisin! I used that script ad nauseum, because it really did turn just about every objection into a reason to become a consultant.
If someone had given me the response you just wrote, maybe I would have reconsidered what I was doing.
So why do Mary Kay sales directors intentionally recruit women who are not likely to succeed? Answer: it makes their life easier.
(1) Most women who get recruited will place at least one order (commission $ to the SD) but many women who just place one order won’t return it when they quit (SD has no commission chargeback).
(2) Most women who fall for this script have at least one friend who will also fall for the same script. That’s one less person the SD has to find on her own.
Every “not likely to succeed” recruit is one who doesn’t have to come from the coven of ghosts the SD is funding with her own credit cards. Even better for her, some of them will have their own credit cards.
(3) Recruit someone who won’t succeed and get her into DIQ fast. When she fails and quits, her consultants move up to the director. Instant first-line without having to do any work to get them.
Yes, it does make someone’s life easier.
I think this is what my sister’s director plans to do to her.
The recruiter is looking for women with easy access to cash and a lot of it. That’s how they make their money. The rest is just fluff to get the women to think they are doing something bible for their families.
So, I signed up before I knew all the details. I went to the SD’s beautiful home and as she tried to lure me with “prizes” for making a bigger order than I wanted to for inventory, she literally had me call to get the MK credit card and then when they gave me only $1500 line of credit, she had me call to get it increased so she could place an even bigger order for me. Yep…I like the lady, she is sweet, but I work too many hours at my real job to start something like this and the credit card order thing made her look like she was doing it more for her than me…so I will take my $100 loss for the starter kit and remain a customer. PS I HATE dresses!