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 became a consultant and my director did my first order, I had no idea that the products were going to be changing in just a few short months. (The shape of all of the eye shadows and blushes were changing, meaning all new compacts and color lineup. The formulas were not changing.) I was STUCK with this now outdated crap for what seemed like forever. Had I known everything would be changing, I would not have ordered when I did. So yeah, consultants get screwed left and right by the entire MLM con when the product line changes “to keep up with the times.”
And remember when they didn’t even tell us as Directors that TimeWise was being re-formulated? Overnight, everything on our shelves, all of our beauty books and Look books, all samples and demo tubes were irrelevant. Discontinued. People finished trips and cars with the “old” stuff!
When someone lectures us about how Godly MK Inc is and how it’s a company with such a huge heart, that’s one big, expensive example we should give them.
Mary Kay Exec #1: “Hey, Exec #2, isn’t it about time we released a new version of Product X?”
Exec #2: “I dunno, what time is it now?”
And of course, the Kaybot argument is that MK is a business and they want to sell their inventory just like any other business would, so they won’t necessarily tell you too far ahead of time that they’re changing a product.
Yes, I understand that business logic. And I also understand that ANY business that sticks its distributors with obsolete product without telling them beforehand is unethical.
Most manufacturers cooperate with their distributors to help them sell through old stock when they release a new formula. They announce the change as early as possible, have a “last date to order” for the old version, discount the old version to clear it out of the warehouse
Because unannounced forced obsolescence doesn’t keep your distributor network healthy.
Which further supports that, to Mary Kay, consultants are just direct buying customers, not distributors. In fact, they encourage all good customers to just sign up and order direct from them for a discount. Their goal is to clear their warehouse shelves, not their consultomers’ already bought products.
I hope someone joins Mary Kay and buys $50,000 worth of products because they can and not recruit then turn around and sue them for giving them the “free car” or “promotion” how could MK say you can far without recruiting?