Written by Raisinberry

It’s time to get off the soap box. Face reality. Hike up our “big girl panties”.

Let’s just face it. We all didn’t do 3 classes a week. We didn’t even work more than an hour or two calling customers, on the phone, per day. When 7 pm rolled around, we cringed. As long as you had leads or call backs from previous parties, you had something to do… otherwise it was a fishing expedition trying to reach people who either didn’t recognize your number or didn’t want to! Our customers liked us… it wasn’t that. They just didn’t want to turn us down again for another invitation to be our model at meeting… or come see our National in town. They didn’t seem to fall for manipulation like we did!

The ruse, “I have to have a guest and I would be so honored if you would accompany me” just didn’t work on the sharp ones! Usually an hour would cover it… all done! Nobody left to call. It was only when we were in DIQ or finishing car that we stayed on the phone humiliating ourselves, calling back over and over from a limited supply of names and numbers, making excuses for why we are calling yet again.

When we didn’t get anywhere, we got dressed and went out into the world! We may have warm chatted the waitresses, but how many times do you think they have heard the same spiel? And naturally they are going to exchange information… they want a nice tip. We patted ourselves on the back thinking we had picked up a new customer… but when she didn’t answer the phone, it was on to the next restaurant.

Every now and then we get lucky and connect, and they would say “yes” to book or come to the meeting. We were so grateful we stopped calling for the night! Yes we knew we needed to ask 10 to get one. It took 3 days to get ONE! We were going to give this woman our undivided attention. We wanted her to feel special! At 4pm on Monday she cancelled. Should have asked 10. Yep, we could have done more.

The opponents to Pink Truth want you to believe you could have done more. We are always being told we didn’t work hard enough! And apparently we really didn’t. We could have gone out warm stalking every day for 12 hours.. 9am to 9pm. We could have spent $40 a day on coffee, soda, or bagels, just visiting establishments looking for women to “Be My Model”. We could have purchased booth space at fairs with a drawing for a free whatever basket, just to get leads. And when you spotted the other Mary Kay table, try to remind yourself you are not in competition cause that’s not the “Mary Kay Way.”

You could have done more! Your problem was when a customer said, “no” you tended to believe them and didn’t really want to be annoyingly persistent. Even though you have heard Debi Moore’s “I – story” where she is so sweaty palmed grateful that her recruiter kept after her for something like 7 weeks. Debi gave her the brush off for 6 of those. See what persistence does? Why don’t you just take the displeasure and annoyance of your customers as trivial, so you can lead them to salvation in Mary Kay? You could have done more!

So where is the line in the sand that says “winner” and where is the “also ran”. I watched one director’s interview, where she tells her story of being an unwed mother at 14 and by 19 has 3 children. Without her High School diploma, she takes the GED and gets a job at a law firm. She works and learns and gives Mary Kay a try and in less than 4 years, she was a Director heading for the Million this Seminar Year. See? You just didn’t work hard enough. We hang our heads in shame. It’s true. We didn’t work hard enough. We could have done more.

The funny thing about this business is that it isn’t a business at all. There frankly is no way that a 3 year old unit can hit a million dollars in retail sales, and I think everybody here and there knows it. What it hits is $500,000 (or less) in wholesale orders, driven chiefly by recruiting volume. The winners figured out early that it is a recruiting scam, while the “also rans” assumed it actually was a cosmetics sales business.

Those who are skeptical or customer service conscious, go slow. Those who are savvy go fast. If you go fast enough you do not see the pile up of financial wreckage you are leaving in your wake. You can parrot the lines, energy and scripts with ease. Those who take more time, collect more data, also collect more tales of abuse. They want to believe, but they see a different reality. Not having enough doubts to quit and bowled over by the dazzling speed of the Winners, thinking it’s legit and true they lament, “I could have done more. ” That hooks them for another Seminar Year.

As long as no one knows how they did it, no one questions the difference between the “savvy” women and the “also rans”…. except the “also rans.” With eyes glued to the exalted winners the proof of the Mary Kay dream looms large!

DO MORE! She did it-you can do it! DO MORE!

But what is she really doing? She is coaching a woman to take on $1,800 or more in inventory that will “fly” off her shelf for the first 4 weeks as she sells her soft market. Well, at least a part of it will. Encouraged by those sales she will reinvest. She “stars” again and by now her Director has shoved her up the career path by recruiting her best customer.

Now the praise and manipulation starts to keep her there, as she works it, works it, works it, over and over trying to be a “speed of the leader” consultant until she is in so much DEBT she HAS to make it to Director. The current “on fire” directors of the world have no problem duplicating this scenario with 5 or 10 of their consultants because by now they are making $8,000 to $15,000 a month churning out the personnel, and convincing themselves that they are “living the dream”.

No one looks back at the consultant who perhaps, being more ethical, is bothered by the lack of success she sees in herself or in her people. She thought it had to do with selling the product. She cares for the consultant who stops coming. She worries about the team member who put $2,000 on a card to go “on target”. Then flops. Something is fishy about this…

She sees members of the unit come and go. So many saddled with inventory they won’t sell back because they, too, know about “not doing enough”, and maybe someday they will want to do “more.” The whole “doing more” mantra sure seems to accomplish a lot for Mary Kay. It keeps the hamsters running and the quitters from returning merchandise. But knowing how many are not successful, how many go inactive, how many have lost money, and been harmed… who would want to do more of it?

TRULY. Who in their ethical mind would want to do MORE OF it?

So yes, Mary Kay Lurkers. We finally admit it. We at Pink Truth have come to our senses, and we freely admit, we did not “work hard enough.” We are guilty as charged! We stopped doing more of that “enriching women’s lives”… since the only ones who are getting “enriched” are the ones with a seared conscience.