Reconnecting With Old Friends to Push Mary Kay
One of the first things I was taught after I started Mary Kay was how to “reconnect” with old friends in order to sell the product. They get you to make a list of “everyone with skin” that you know, so you can start begging them to “help me meet a challenge” or “help me start my business” or some other lame guilt trip.
Once you get through your list of current friends and family, you’re encouraged to think of old friends you haven’t talked to in a while. You contact them under the pretense of “reconnecting” (what a great buzz word), but then as soon as they ask what’s new, you launch into your spiel about this great new thing you’re doing (Mary Kay). When I was in MK, you had to find their phone number, so that involved a phone book or some sort of directory. Today it’s connecting with them on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok.
From there you try to get them to hold a class with their friends and family, and if they’re foolish enough to do that, you start with the recruiting lines and continue on from there.
Sales directors encourage the use of these types of tactics, which I find sneaky and disingenuous. Sure, they may be nice people and you might be happy that you looked them up again. But if you were honest with yourself, you know that you wouldn’t have had any interest in “reconnecting” if you weren’t trying to pimp some overpriced beauty products. In fact, if you had an interest outside of MK, you would have called them BEFORE you joined!
The old school methods involved using tactics like “Secret Pal” or “Secret Santa.” You would get your hands on a list of names and start contacting them with a line about how someone wanted to give them a Secret Pal Pampering Package. Sure, you wanted to be their pal for monetary reasons, so technically it was true. You would get your hands on any sort of directory (church, mom’s club, PTA, etc) that would list names and numbers and start making the calls. I always felt that this method was dishonest. Even though you could technically say you told the truth, in your heart you knew that you created a false situation in order to lure someone into having a party.
The more current methods revolve around posting endless things on social media. There are a couple of different ways to do this. One involves doing promotional types of posts which promote the various products and ask people to buy them and/or host classes. The other kind of social media posts flaunt a lifestyle that you say MLM offers and you casually mention your MLM in every post and make sure everyone knows the MLM is responsible for this wonderfulness.
No discussion of sneaky tactics would be complete without mentioning “warm chatter,” a favorite Mary Kay ruse. Included in this is offering a supposedly sincere compliment to someone in order to start a conversation that will quickly lead to mentioning Mary Kay. It’s the equivalent of stalking people in public to badger them (even if it is ever-so-subtle) about lipstick. Who wants to be approached at Target while they’re shopping? How embarrassing to have to spend loitering at Starbucks trying to meet women coming in for their morning coffee so you can give them a “sincere compliment”?
Now… I get the concept of “networking.” I’ve done it to build my own real business. But I’ve done it in a genuine way, not with these tricky little methods. I haven’t contacted anyone to pretend to “reconnect.” I’ve told people about my company in the context of a legitimate, genuine conversation… not because I want to recruit them or sell them something. I haven’t stalked women at Target or Starbucks to try to push my services.
These tactics in the context of Mary Kay are so insincere. And if you doubt that… Just remember that one of the key teachings in Mary Kay is “work the numbers.” Have you been told: “Some will, some won’t, who’s next!”??? These things demonstrate how the goal of Mary Kay isn’t sincere interaction with women. It’s about playing a numbers game and moving on to the next person with skin who might be interested.
Share your favorite sneaky Mary Kay selling or recruiting strategy!
Visit the
The cat is out of the bag now. I am pretty sure everyone “with skin” is suspicious of these out-of-the-blue contacts from a person from one’s past. “Let me guess…Amway?”
And these MLMs are not trying to sell product anyway. Rather, they are peddling an “opportunity”. Sadly, for over 99% of recruits, it is an opportunity to lose money, time and relationships. Not to mention a tarnished image and reputation…recovery from which can take years.
And lost friendships.
I was never in MK, but I have read a lot on this site, so I have 2 sneaky tactics to add:
1) The “facial box” or fishbowl placed at bridal salons and other beauty-related establishments, purportedly offering a chance for a “free facial” that is really just a high-pressure sales presentation.
2) Bringing “models” to those weekly meetings that are really recruiting events–and driving them there so that they will not be able to leave gracefully after they figure out they have been tricked into attending a high-pressure recruiting event.
Just ugh.
I absolutely HATE THIS! It makes actually checking up on old acquaintances so DAMNED HARD! Their level of suspicion is sky high and you have to start with “This is not an attempt to recruit you into selling crappy products … but I’ll be in your town next weekend and thought we might have coffee.”
I had an acquaintance (calling her a friend was a flex) reach out on Messenger “will you have a Mary Kay party for me?” I said “wow, I really can’t. I moved out of the state 6 months ago (pre COVID). It was true, not an excuse but I guess I was way far down on her people with skin list.
Totally no shame: “Here will you do this for me? I don’t know the first thing going on in your life but…….”
I received a text this weekend from my former adopted director. I haven’t been in Mary Kay in like 15 years and the only time I hear from here is a blast text about her holiday open house.
I absolutely blasted a former adopted director several years ago. She kicked me out of her meetings as a consultant because I called her on some of her nonsense (ok, sure, not the most tactful thing to do, but…) At any rate, after I quit, she added me to her freaking group chat that she used to advertise her open house. GROUP CHAT!! I hate those things anyway, and I vented some of my formerly pink spleen all over her. Very satisfying results mean that I got removed from the message thread.
The idea of asking somebody to ‘help you meet a goal’ or ‘host a party’ is so tacky and would find it extremely off putting. I wouldn’t ask an acquaintance to help clean out my garage, give me a ride to the airport, to borrow $500, let my out of town relative stay at their house, etc. so I wouldn’t expect them to ask me to ‘help’ with their business. If somebody reconnects for that purpose, I will be happy to disconnect again.
I would say the ‘false friendship’. Inviting somebody to lunch or for coffee only to pedal your MLM, not because you are interested in a friendship.
I was the old friend that my HS-pink fogged friend reached out to. I was happy to reconnect and in reconnecting she told me about her Mary Kay “business”. I jumped on a call about MK to help her out with a challenge a few weeks later. I found the story about how a consultant lost her house but managed to “win” the caddy very strange. I was going to sign up to help her out and figured I could peddle some lipsticks and what not on the side. I liked makeup and thought I could spread around a few catalogs here and there. As for the extra cash I’d be bringing in outside my J-O-B, I thought I could make a couple extra bucks for going out to dinner, getting a few drinks – nothing exorbitant. My old friend called me immediately after the call and began the inventory talk. That’s when the red flags really went flying. She was trying to talk me into thousands of dollars worth of inventory on my credit card. I was already living paycheck to paycheck and there was no way I was putting anything that wasn’t absolutely needed onto my credit cards. (Side note: thank you mom and dad for having a very frank talk to me about credit cards, savings and financials after graduating high school because that’s honestly what saved me here). I was honestly hurt and mortified that after all these years my long-lost friend was using me and didn’t care about the potential damage she could inflict. I stopped answering her hounding phone calls and we haven’t spoken since. I ultimately was a number, not a true long-lost friend.