Don’t Go Broke Selling Mary Kay
Written by Parsons Green
The Mary Kay Facebook groups are full of posts like this. Consultants have over ordered products and can’t sell them. The responses are always the same. Either a consultant is in the same boat herself, or a director lectures that no one forces you to buy inventory. Real life examples that your director or recruiter don’t want you to know when they’re pushing your initial inventory order.
So many instances of directors who are overloading consultants with inventory they’ll never sell. If the products “fly right off the shelf,” why does this happen?
Visit the
Whatever you reward you will get more of. If Mary Kay Corp was in the business of retailing beauty products, their incentives would reward this behavior. But they don’t reward sales, they reward orders, which is why we see exchanges like those shared by Parsons Green.
MKC could eliminate these problems by:
– Only pay commissions on SOLD inventory
– Pay all the commission only to the one person making the actual sale
– Eliminate qualifying minimums to receive commissions
These three simple changes would eliminate the financial incentives to over-order and front-load. But MKC won’t make these changes because most of their revenue likely comes from orders for product that is never sold outside the downline.
All of the front-loading, excessive buying for a stage walk, and no actual sales — there are what MK Corporate wants. This is how they make their money. Corporate WANTS this, and they will not change a darn thing about it. They do not care that women and families are going into serious debt with metric tons of unsold products.
The consultant IS the CUSTOMER! This is plain as day to me now. But they doctor it up and try to make consultants (aka the actual customer!) feel like they are looking for customers, when THEY THEMSELVES are the target market.
This is encouraging but also sad. Some folks are starting to see the light and tell the truth but others are pushing back hard and even using cult techniques to do it (“tell yourself…”, “God will bless your business…” and my favorite “I was trained by Mary Kay personally…”)
Hopeful this will continue and some consultants will realize that over ordering is the foundation of Mary Kay, zinc’s business.
Speaking of prizes…Parsons Green deserves a prize for this compilation of Truth Nuggets. So many choice sound-bites here. The link to this article needs to be shared.
As for NSD Cathy Bill…oh, please, Cathy…you started Mary Kay in 1986…40 years ago! You can’t compare your experience to that of current consultants. The world has changed.
And SD Jessica Dudley is floating on a Pink Cloud right now, just returned from CC to pick up her new Trax. It may be her first “free” MK car, so she’s in Pink Heaven, giving out advice to see more faces.
Manipulation, guilt, bullying, pressure, lies, debt, bankruptcy.
Many who appear successful are either faking it, or have other income and/or family money. No worries about paying bills. They’re not even worried about having to sell products or sell them at full price. It’s a hobby.
“Girl-friend time” spent attending events, taking team pics, and walking across a stage waving banners, prancing, and wearing silly sunglasses. It’s not a “business” at all.
Thank you!! This group is also supposed to be NO NEGATIVITY so I’m shocked the post is still up.
My crystal ball says it will be removed.
Ugh! Unwiring my brain from that anxious way of thinking has been no small feat. “Work like the world is going to end tomorrow” or whatever that one lady said?!?!? Is that a business strategy?? In MK it is!!
Gaslighting is a priority in this company as well. Oh, it’s not working? You’re doing what we told you? Well, you’re not REALLY doing what we told you, because that’s not what we meant, we meant THIS way, ad nauseum. In other words, there’s something wrong with YOU, not with the “business model,” (which is deception – because the business model is not built for each person to be successful.)
Thanks for reading my random rant hahaha 😀
Who is even having in-home parties/skin care classes anymore? It’s cruel to tell these women to just hold more appointments, cancel that stinkin’ thinkin and post positive affirmations in their bathrooms. It’s not these consultants’ fault. Women don’t want to book MK parties and they don’t want outdated, overpriced products. Shame on those directors – and you, Cathy Bill.
Right? COVID must have dealt a massive blow to this “home party” type of business model that will take decades to recover from, if it ever recovers.
The woman who said she started using Celesty skincare…yep, Celesty is also MLM.
Celesty is a Turkish company. It was started by former executives of Farmasi, a Turkish MLM company.
Because that’s all these kinds of people ever know how to do. An honest job or business is a foreign concept to them. They run the same scam under a new name and a somewhat but not terribly different product. Because they’re the ones that started the whole thing, they make a boatload of money until the MLM completely saturates and collapses, and then they move onto another one. Can be some easy money for those willing to do it, but I prefer a clear conscience (no, I’m not perfect but I certainly don’t anything on this scale).
NSD Cathy Bill tells them if you send back inventory you’ll never be able to be in Mary Kay again. Not that they’d want to, but this statement is not true. It’s basically a scare tactic. If you come up with a good enough story and the unit you are trying to join is a high ordering unit, they’ll let you in. I know this is true because I did it. I thought it would be different the second time. I was wrong, it was exactly the same, just as it is today.