Directors Don’t Want Personal Use Consultants
Written by MaryKayExploitsWomen
Many sales directors in Mary Kay are very hesitant about recruiting personal use consultants. Their excuse is that they don’t want to invest all of their time in training personal use consultants if they aren’t going to get out there and “work their businesses.” They want to focus their efforts on those consultants who want to get serious about Mary Kay.
Here are ten reasons why directors shy away from personal use consultants. Granted, this is not a complete list, and more needs to be added, but if you look closely, you’ll see the real reasons behind avoiding personal use consultants. (I’ll give you hint, it’s not about investing more time and training into serious consultants’ success.)
- Personal use consultants are not interested in pursuing the “Pink Dream” which means the MK scripts, lies, and deceptions won’t work here.
- Personal use consultants are far less likely to recruit new consultants.
- Personal use consultants are far less likely to attend meetings regularly, which means fewer chances at new recruits and fewer opportunities to push the order-order-order mentality.
- It is harder to manipulate personal use consultants, especially if they only care about using the product and not about making money.
- You can’t frontload personal use consultants as easily as consultants who are “serious” about their Mary Kay business. They only need so much product, even if they are selling to a couple of friends. No frontloading equals no commission check and no bonuses.
- Personal use consultants are very unlikely to attend Seminar. No Seminar equals no rah-rah equals no additional ordering or recruiting.
- Personal use consultants = no profit for Ms. Director or Ms. National Sales Director. A few $225 to $450 orders a year mean a couple hundred dollars of commission, at best. It’s simply not worth their time.
- Personal use consultants will not buy extra inventory when you need them to, so you’ll have to push more inventory on the rest of your unit, or recruit more “serious” consultants. The whole “be a team player and help us finish our goal” thing just doesn’t usually matter to the personal use consultant.
- Personal use consultants are not likely to host skin care “classes” which reduces your opportunities of recruitment. No recruits means no big orders means no commissions.
- NSDs tell their directors to avoid wasting time on recruiting personal use consultants because it cuts into their quotas. Time is better spent on those who will recruit and frontload.
Of course, any warm body and any order helps the sales director, no matter how insignificant. But directors are taught to “work the numbers” and it simply takes too much time to deal with personal use consultants and there is too little financial reward in it. So the focus must be on those new consultants who will place orders of $1,800 or more.
What other reasons have you seen for shying away from the personal use consultant? Common sense says that those consultants could offer the sales director a small, but consistent base of production throughout the year. But the big orders and the new recruits are much more important. Are directors missing out on an opportunity to have women in their units who are actually happy with what they’re doing with Mary Kay?
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“Common sense says that those consultants could offer the sales director a small, but consistent base of production throughout the year. But the big orders and the new recruits are much more important. Are directors missing out on an opportunity to have women in their units who are actually happy with what they’re doing with Mary Kay?”
Maybe, but it’s an option they’ll never take. A unit based on personal use consultants and their slow and steady ordering would probably make for a stable unit free from the DRAH-MAH and flameouts of faster-paced ones, but that doesn’t earn you the shiny stuff and the applause your upline makes you want.
Wannabe directors are urged to HUSTLE HUSTLE HUSTLE to grow the unit, do DIQ, get the car, make unit club, Queen of Whatever, reach this or that goal by Seminar, blah blah blah. They’re kept running from goal to goal like a pack of grayhounds that can never catch the rabbit no matter how fast they run. They’ve got production quotas to meet and small infrequent orders aren’t going to cut it.
That said, I wish I could be a fly on the wall at the end of the quarter for all the Friday “I’m personal use and my director doesn’t force me to buy inventory!!!!!” huns just to see how not-forcey their director becomes.
I remember my director telling us how to ‘coach’ someone who expressed an interest in personal use only. It was a lot of ‘the product sells itself’ and telling the ‘PU’ (that was how she referred to them) consultant that they could build a small customer base from their family and close friends and they could get their own product for free. I never really understood the consultants/directors who pushed these personal use folks to sign up, because the consultant/director would make more money if they just stayed as customers.
PU 🤣😂
It’s a testimony to the effectiveness of MK’s marketing that consultants have any desire to recruit personal use consultants at all. Here’s what happens (true, lived experience, names changed to protect the guilty):
I recruit Cathy as a personal use consultant. After all, she and her mom are using all the skin care, her aunt uses 6-8 products, mom’s friends are off-and-on customers. Cathy gets all her skin care for free and might even make a few dollars selling, or she may choose to fill those orders at cost so everyone gets a discount. I, the recruiter, used to sell $1800+/quarter to this group of women. Mary Kay math on that is $720 profit, about $240/month, just from that group. Now that Cathy is a consultant, those women aren’t seeing the new products, aren’t ordering as regularly, and have figured out that Ulta and Sephora don’t hassle them every single month or upsell them like I, the original consultant, did. So Cathy places an initial $600 wholesale order, fills everyone’s needs (not upsold wants) for the whole quarter, and the entire group falls off the MK bandwagon. Cathy never orders again. I, the original consultant, earned a whopping $48 from Cathy’s initial order and lost out on all future income from those customers.
Recruiting people for personal use is blatantly stupid. And yet I did it, and so do other consultants, because it’s the only way to move up the “career path.” Unfortunately, there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, either.
I remember having this exact argument with my director once. WHY would I want to recruit a well-established customer who spent plenty of money each month and lose that sales income? The commission on what she would order would be a fraction of what I would make in sales.
On the flip side, I did have a personal use consultant for the longest time on my team. She ordered darn near $200 wholesale monthly because she really liked all the products. She was consistent with this for 4-5 years and had zero interest in MK as a business or team building.
If you’re someone who actually likes Mary Kay products and would consider yourself an especially good customer, you’re a fool not to become a PU.
Why pay double price when you don’t have too? Not only that, if you have friends/family who are also customers of that consultant, you could do something nice. Just tack-on their products to your PU order, and have them repay you the wholesale price. I think it’s pretty lousy if you’re trying to take advantage of your friends and family anyway. This way, no one you know is wasting their hard-earned money overpaying for products. Bonus: You’ll get to use your own computer at leisure, not be pressured, and have products mailed directly to your door.
Welcome to just one of the flaws with MLM.
There is another option if you don’t want to bother signing up as a PU. Offer to buy products from your consultant NOT MORE than her cost “to help her make production. If she’s not game, I’m sure there are plenty of other consultants needing the “production” help. And, there’s always eBay.
It doesn’t matter what your consultant wants. They can either let you sign under them as a PU and be happy, or you sign up under someone else. You have options. Call the company, complain, and get another name.
I can see why no one wants a PU. If fact, you could apply all the same reasons to a consultant trying to focus only on resales. No one wants them either. MLM always defaults to endless-chain recruiting.
*Having said all that, please don’t support MLM scam companies via buying their products whether it be a direct buy, or re-buy paying double price from a direct buy buyer.