Are There Quotas in Mary Kay?

The simple answer to this question: YES!!! 

Do not let anyone ever tell you differently.

During my first few months as a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant, I was still very starry-eyed. I was determined to go all the way with my business. I also had a lot of room on credit cards at that time. 

So, I was placing fairly sizable orders every month, maybe a few times a month. Around December, my funds became very tight, and my credit card bills were getting more difficult to manage. 

At that point, I made the decision that I would not place another large ($200+) order unless I had brought in at least $500 in sales. Or something like that. 

That actually goes against what our directors encourage us to do. “Don’t rob your store,” is a popular refrain. This means that as you are making money from selling products, you need to be reinvesting at least 50% of it. You always need to be building your inventory. If you use your money for other things, like…life, you are robbing your store. You’re taking the profits and using them inappropriately! 

Anyway, my finances had gotten to the point where I had no other choice but to steal from myself. If I didn’t have a home, where would I store all of my wonderful Mary Kay Inventory? 

The decision was made: don’t order until you have made enough to keep back several hundred, then reinvest a few hundred. 

In January, a customer requested a product, and I also wanted a couple of items. So, I placed a huge order of about $54.00. Much less than the $600 per month needed to stay “on target” for Star. Don’t forget, “Stars win cars.” I wanted a car. No star meant maybe no car.

A couple more months passed, and I didn’t order. I decided to have a look at my Mary Kay InTouch account. Over those few months, I lost the privilege of placing an order at 50% of retail price. If I ordered, I would have to order at least $200, in order to reinstate my discount. 

By the way, as a favor to the consultants, Mary Kay decided to raise this minimum to $225.  That way, you would have more to sell! And more money to earn! 

(Let me translate that for you: Thay way, you would have no choice but to send more money to Mary Kay, in order to keep receiving your discount.)

Let’s say that Customer A places a $50 order from Consultant X. Consultant X does not have the item in stock. Consultant X also does not need to order anything else at the time, nor does she have extra money sitting around to invest in “building her store.” 

Since Consultant X has not placed a $200 – now $225 – order lately, she will pay Mary Kay $50 to get the product. In turn, Customer A will pay Consultant X $50 for her order. 

I never was very good at math, but that looks like a profit of ZERO to me…

Mary Kay does not force you to buy a certain amount of inventory, no. However, they kind of back you waaaaaay into a corner as far as ordering from them. If you want to see any profit from your sales, you better keep ordering at a pace acceptable to Mary Kay. 

Sounds like a quota…

To be fair, there really isn’t a sales quota. Mary Kay doesn’t track sales. You could order $10,000 worth of product and not sell a single eyeshadow, but you would still be heavily rewarded by the company. 

So, you see: Mary Kay is interested in what you order, not what you sell.*

*They make the claim that, of course the consultant must be selling that much, if she is ordering that much. Believe you me, that is, more often than not, not the way it works. 

Step Two: Purchasing Mary Kay Inventory, or “You can’t sell from an empty wagon.”

As I mentioned in my first post, I was very adamant with my Mary Kay Sales Director and recruiter about the fact that I would not be purchasing inventory.  SD said that decision was completely up to me, but she’d at least like for me to watch the video.  Fair enough.  I’ll watch the video.

You’ll never guess what happened next!  I watched the video.  Haha.  Anyway, the director in the video spoke about the various inventory packages from largest to smallest.  The largest was about $4,800, I believe.  The package sizes decrease in cost by increments of $600.  All packages costing $1,800 and above are considered “Star Orders.”  

She mentioned that “Stars win cars.”  She said that every car driver in Mary Kay had been a Star every quarter that she’d been with the company.  Basically, that means each car driver ordered at least $1,800 worth of inventory every 3 months.  Hint:  cars aren’t based on sales; they’re based on orders.  Oh, and team size.  

But let’s try to stay on topic here.

After talking about stars, cars, jars, etc., she began to discuss the $1,200 and $600 inventory orders.  Her voice and enthusiasm dropped noticeably when she began to discuss these levels of inventory. 

An interesting thing that she said in the video: since she had inventory, anytime she and her husband wanted to have a night on the town, she’d just call a couple of customers, drop off their orders, and voila! 

She also talked about different ways to fund your inventory purchase.  So, here I sit:  bright-eyed, new Independent Beauty Consultant who just happens to have a credit card with a $2,000 limit and zero balance!  

Assuming I sold everything, including alllll the bonus items, I’d stand to make about a $2,000 profit off of an $1,800 investment.  My decision was made.  I would kickoff my Mary Kay business as a Sapphire Star Consultant!!