Written by Raisinberry

The days after the Mary Kay seminar year end wholesale buying frenzy are a celebration for some and a painful chest constrictor for most others. The typical director sleeps in on July 1 because of sheer exhaustion from the stress and phone calls and waiting and frenzy of June 30th. Focused on meeting her own goals, she never even considers what her June frontloading costx the new recruit.

The NSDs will spin how “magnanimous” corporate was for helping get those last orders in. Those June recruits who were pushed to get their orders together before year end don’t realize they will have no standing for the next Seminar Year. They will have built something into “star”… but no lasting recognition for last year’s contribution into the unit… and no recognition for the new year.

July 1st the game starts all over again and the newest June recruits have simply lost their first orders into oblivion, because the only thing that mattered in June was the director’s standing in the contests. Wholesale is indeed, everything.

As the July 1 page turns, and “standings” are published, Miss June recruit will have zero in her column for retail production. If she was a star, imagine her surprise to be most likely listed in the Top Fifteen of her Unit for her doubled wholesale, for her local awards night meeting, never having sold a thing.

This immediately produces an uncomfortable feeling but is the beginning of fraud training in Mary Kay. She is to smile and receive her Seminar Year to date Rosette Ribbon, and is expected to just accept her placement at 10 or 8 or 6 in the lineup, with absolutely no idea why. And as July progresses, she will find out that she has ZERO in toward the new year’s numbers, because all her order for June did was benefit the Director and upline. She, of course, will never be told this.

What would have benefited her, would have been holding the last days of June order, for July, so she can accrue a full years production. But Mary Kay really doesn’t teach benefiting the new recruit, when Seminar standings are at stake. (The Veteran Unit should have been responsible for standings… if “retail sales” were really being measured!)

If she goes to Seminar, as an excited June recruit, she can wear her Rosette Ribbon proudly. She will be noted by those who share her luncheon table at “Number 9” in Sales, with not one iota of truth to it. It is a marvel of human intelligence that everyone who knows differently will play this game anyway, and it is part of the breakdown of assessing “truth” in Mary Kay.

Pretense is taught right from the beginning, as recognition and rewards are given for work not achieved, but rather wholesale orders placed.

There is an adage in Mary Kay that goes, “Inspect what you, Expect.” All Directors are taught this and it is designed to get a Director to follow up on what really matters. We are taught to “check results” to insure that the activity we want gets rewarded.

Isn’t it funny that there isn’t one iota of “inspection” of actual RETAIL SELLING in all of Mary Kay? Not from corporate. Not from NSDs. Not from Directors.

Instead, what can be “inspected” is the accrual of wholesale ordering, and how it is rewarded is by “fantasy doubling.”

Too bad Miss June recruit will only have that short lived moment at her local awards night, with not a clue why she is standing there in the top ten or twenty. “Smile and Nod, Miss June.”

You are getting your first lesson in “pretense” that will lead you to many more command performances in your Mary Kay Career.