National Sales Director Doesn’t Know that Mary Kay is MLM
You would think that by the time someone gets to the top of the pyramid in Mary Kay Cosmetics…. the position of “national sales director”… she would know how to properly define what this scheme is. And yet, here is nsd Diana Sumpter … a lifer, who has been in Mary Kay since 1987, proudly proclaiming that Mary Kay is not multi-level marketing.
Diana clearly does not know the definition of multi-level marketing. This is from the FTC’s website:
If you know any thing about Mary Kay Cosmetics, the FTC basically defined the program for consultants EXACTLY!
- Person-to-person sales… selling directly to other people
- Saying you can make money two ways:
- Selling to customers and making a commission on those sales
- Recruiting a downline
Even Wikipedia seems to know that Mary Kay is MLM!
Multi-level marketing is exactly what the term sounds like… multiple levels of distributors. This is something Mary Kay can’t hide from. National sales directors have areas and directors below them. Super-duper-exeutive-something directors have offspring directors below them. Directors have team leaders and star consultants in their units (i.e. below them). Consultants who recruit have people below them. Lots and lots of levels!
When people involved in MLM try so hard to way WE’RE NOT MLM… I always wonder why. Why is it so important to you to pretend that this term does not apply to you?
Visit the
I remember Diana as a director and well before she became an NSD. While she was in the Air Force, she was in Connie Lamp’s unit outside of Omaha, Nebraska. I always thought that the higher she went in MK, the flightier she became.
At least she picked a good song for her new NSD debut, Van Halen’s “Right Now.”
“Buy for $1, sell for $2 — this is one of, if not the HIGHEST profit potentials in the industry!”
This is just silly. You could potentially sell that $1 product for $10. But that is not happening in reality…only a tiny fraction of MK product actually sells for full retail.
Meanwhile, even Diana Sumpter herself is making far more from downline commissions than she can ever make from margins on retail sales. If the big money was associated with retail sales, there would be no reason to recruit, and you could earn a car without a downline.
But alas, all the corporate incentives in Mary Kay are tied to ordering and recruiting, with no corporate incentive to actually sell.
What she quotes as “potential” is very far from “reality”, and she knows it from her own inability to retail these products at full MSRP. Selling others on the “potential” sales margins she herself has not realized is misleading, dishonest and unethical.
Wake up Ms. Sumpter…you and your downline sales folks are the true customers of Mary Kay Corp. No outside sales are required for MK corporate (and upline) profitability.
Also, “MK is number 1 in skin care and cosmetics,” because of the volume of product purchased by the consultant-omers. No direct relation to how much is purchased from “customers” once those billions are purchased by the consultants. They have no idea how much is sold to the “customer,” and they also DO NOT CARE.
Am I wrong?
Oh, I’m sure she knows, but doesn’t care. No point in being a negative Nelly and losing all the good stuff that her downline has worked so hard to obtain for her.
“Every active IBC has access to the same 50% profit.”
She fails to provide Mary Kay’s definition of “active.”
What is it again?
$225 Wholesale order every 3 months!!!!! (Where you are charged sales tax on $450 retail value!)
So, to “have access to the 50% profit”, the consultant must order hundreds of dollars in MK products every three months? Even if she doesn’t want or need them?
Pay to play.
The House always wins.
It’s actually gone up I think. All of the quotas have gone up. Also, even if you pay for a website and propay, you can’t use it if you’re not active. Most Consultants wait until the last day of the month to order (quilted by their director to help out the unit) so they actually have to order every 2 months and not 3. The only way it’s 3 months is if you order on the 1st day of a month.
“All of the quotas have gone up”
Mary Kay has quotas?
Mary Kay:
Beauty consultant, senior beauty consultant, star recruiter, team leader, future sales director, director in qualification, sales director, senior sales director, future executive senior sales director, executive senior sales director, national director in qualification, national sales director, senior national sales director, executive senior national sales director. They have different uniforms for the different levels.
I know some of the level names have changed over the years but the fact remains- there are multiple levels in Mary Kay. Thus, Mary Kay is a multi-level marketing company. Why can’t they just be honest about it? Just tell the truth for once!
At the bottom of the post, there’s a rectangle that says: Tags Diana Sumpter. My tired, reading-too-fast brain read that as Diana Dumpster, and I thought “Her last name fits her job!” 😆
That’s her pro wrestling name.
Did anyone else notice that she called Mary Kay a ‘B to B’ in her 2nd paragraph, and then turns right around and says [MK sales people] ‘sells directly to their clients’. She does not know what B to B means.