Mary Kay DIQ Never Ends
When you’re grinding away at the Mary Kay “career ladder,” they tell you to just get through DIQ and everything is smooth sailing after that. Gathering up all of your recruits and conning them all into ordering on the right schedule so you meet your monthly requirements during DIQ and have the right totals at the end…. is nerve wracking. (Just ask Lauren Wagner, who has been a DIQ at least 5 times.)
And the sad truth is that no one makes it through DIQ without “recruiting” a reluctant friend or family member who is nothing more than a warm body to count toward the total consultants in the unit. And no one make it through DIQ without buying some (or a lot) of the production themselves.
But your director will make it seem like you’re the only one struggling. But that you should put the money in because once you get to the position of director, you’ll make lots more money and it’s a whole lot easier.
Yet another lie, of course.
Perpetual consultant Heather Pankratz wants to know why it’s so hard:
Heather has been in Mary Kay more than 16 years, and still doesn’t understand the scam?
Well, in fairness, sales director Pamela Pearson has been in Mary Kay for 50 years and still believes in the scam. This despite the fact that she never moved up, has no retirement, grinds every month to try to make that production.
But never fear! Just make your monthly goal $5,500 instead of $4,500, and you’ll be fine! And just work, according to Ronda Rice.
And break down the numbers. Yes. That makes it easier if you know how many orders you need.
No, it’s not really any easier.
Oh… maybe just have a solid team. Yes, that’s it! Because one of the many thousands upon thousands of failed DIQs and directors knows that not having a solid team is a problem. (Ever wonder why there are so many failed DIQs and directors?)
But at least some people are questioning how you find people who want to “build a business” instead of being personal use.
We’ve got another failed DIQ who hasn’t understood the scam and is starting over again. But one wise person who admits IT NEVER STOPS. And that people don’t want to do facials.
Ladies, get off the merry go round!!!
Visit the
I’ve seen Strangers on a Train too many times to see merry-go-rounds as anything but sinister 😨
Let’s see, it can’t be due to market oversaturation with overpriced and mediocre products, lack of sales territories, and MK’s own reputation working against them. It’s gotta be the candidate’s fault for not working hard enough, setting high enough goals, or having the right team.
Face it, ladies, you’re Guy, and the Bruno of production is always going to be on the horse right behind you with that creepy half smile.
Italics phail. My kingdom for an edit button 😅
Hmm…it seems the magic formula to success in Mary Kay is recruiting.
Lona Holdridge is the only one who mentions sales…and reveals the folly of it all. She points out you have to make a $50 (wholesale) sale to 90 people every month. But if your orders are “average” ($30), you will actually need 150 ladies making an average purchase per month. That’s five per day, every day of the year! If you want to work only week days, that’s closer to 7 per day, or about one sale per hour of a full time work day. Want to work only evenings? Two sales per hour, four hours per week day evening. Better get busy!
The rest of the directors instead are pushing for a “supportive” team. What they mean is a team of people willing to support your goals financially at their own expense. Or, put another way, a group of ladies giving you financial support. Just how sustainable is that? Who’s going to financially support you month after month ad infinitum?
Alicia Romero then asks the $1M question, “Where do you go to get people?”
That is the question. If every rep needs 150 people placing a $30 order every month…where do you find this many people, much less this many people willing to drop $30 per month on Mary Kay products?
According to P.T. Barnum, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. I guess that’s as good a place as any to get started!
Alicia Romero said the quiet part out loud: It never ends. DIQ NEVER ENDS. You are always and forever recruiting, watching your production, and praying that you have enough room on a credit card to finish the month up.
All while telling consultants they only work part-time for full-time pay. 🙄 Because ya gotta sell the sizzle.
I feel bad for directors, because what you wrote sounds absolutely horrible.
It’s like that Sisyphus guy in Greek mythology … you never get the rock up the hill, you have to keep fetching it from lower down and pushing it up again. Or Tantalus, with the goodies just out of reach.
It’s exactly like Sisyphus! On a 30 day cycle. You spend all month long pushing the boulder up the hill. Whether or not you hit your goal, or even blow it out of the water one month, on Day 1 of the next month, that stupid rock is back at the bottom of the hill. Every. Single. Month. Forever!
Even if you “work all month long” and don’t “procrastinate,” you’re dialing for dollars, booking, coaching, selling, rebooking, recruiting, convincing recruits to frontload an insane amount of inventory, up-selling, warm-stalking, begging for referrals, begging for sales, giving product away just to get it off the shelf and make room for more. And on the last day of the month, regardless of how much production you have in, your upline is going to push you to “stretch” just a little more!
The advice to add 10 new month?? Seriously?? Basic math dictates that this is not possible. You run out of humans on earth in very short order, and that assumes that everyone is actually interested in MK.
The real question that goes completely unanswered: “How do you find people who are interested in building a business and not just personal use?” You don’t! With the upswing in the anti-MLM movement, and especially with increasingly savvy consumers among younger generations, it’s hard enough to find someone who wants to TRY the products, much less PURCHASE the products on a continuing basis. If they do purchase something, it takes about 5 minutes into a “sharing appointment” for them to figure out that consultants are fleecing them by charging them double what they could pay if they purchased directly from Corporate. So they take the $10 sign-up special and join the shoppers club. And that’s a series of big “IFs”–“IF” they like the products, “IF” they don’t object to MLMs in general or MK in particular, “IF” they don’t object to animal testing, “IF” they find greater value at MK than Ulta, Sephora, or any of a myriad of drug stores.
And the Danaides, filling the bottomless barrel…
All the talk about bringing in new team members and production sounds so hard, but so innocent.
“Production” has a nice professional ring to it, but what exactly is it? They call them “team/unit members”, but who are they really…..to the recruiter?
If people repeat lies and fake phrases/terms enough times, the mind will accept it as true, acceptable, and normal. Be on the lookout for it, everywhere.
Production: Using an illusion, i.e., lie to ask women to order products, so the consultant can make a commission and advance in level, and without regard for the buyer’s situation. The buyers are labeled “team members”, not “people spending lots of money ordering products for upline commissions”. The twisted part is people can be both perp and willing-victim in MLM.
Well stated Char. MK uses all these silly terms to obfuscate reality. “Production” does not refer to sales, it refers to orders. Unit members are not sellers, they are buyers, or dare I say, customers.
The business goal of MLMs like MK is to get the sales force to purchase much more product than they can ever hope to use or sell, and to recruit others to do the same. No outside sales necessary. In fact, the corporate business plan has ZERO dependency on retailing product to outside customers. The sales force is the target customer, and sales to the sales force alone are sufficient for corporate and upline profitability.
Anyone who questions the above assertion need look no further than the MK compensation plan and the pricing of the product. In Mary Kay, there is no bonus for actually selling (except for online orders). Meanwhile, the product price is not set to make it easy to sell…it is set to pay layers and layers of up-line commissions, which makes the products nearly impossible to retail.
Just because some product does make it into the hands of outside customers does not nullify the assertion that members of the sales force are the target customer of the MLM. The smoking gun is the fact that sales people have to buy any product at all. In non-MLM businesses, sales folks are not required to be customers of the company in order to make a living selling the company’s products.
What a beautiful thread of comments! Nicely done, all! 👏🏼
And since it’s so much more convenient to order online, that’s what people do now. Amazon does not bug me with emails, texts, and phone calls to remind me to order more.
I don’t know about that. Amazon wants me to set up an ordering schedule for things like cat food and litter. Every time I open the app, I get a reminder.
The “just break down the numbers” totally got me when I was in MK; it sounded so reasonable. “I can facial 3 faces/ week. That’s do-able”. But now I realize they might as well say, “All it takes is 6 correct numbers to win in Powerball. Only 5 numbers to win a smaller prize.” Breaking down the numbers doesn’t make it any easier to find new faces/ customers.
You just need more numbers! Buy more PowerBall tickets, duh!!😆
But at least they don’t bother you to become an amazon seller!
The days of MLMs are truly numbered. Lifestyles are different. The rise to technology: PT/eBay/Amazon, etc… who can be left to sucker, er, recruit? Hats off and let’s hunker down and keep pushing back and revealing the pink scam, for what it is!
and what is up with Mary Kay advertising to sign up new beauty consultants?