Overview
Mary Kay has been in business since 1963. They sell make up, fragrances, various skin care products, and body care products.
Well, I want to get to the point and answer your questions of whether or not the Mary Kay business opportunity is a right fit for your home based business. I'm going to give as much information as possible so that you can make an educated business decision for yourself. I'll be talking about the initial expenses to get started, the compensation plan, and the training you receive if you decide to become a Mary Kay consultant.
Starting Costs & Training
The initial fee to get started with Mary Kay as an independent beauty consultant is $100. You get a starter package for paying the $100 fee. The starter package contains around $200 worth of May Kay Products. These products can be sold, but most of the time they are used as product samples for customers to use at home shows.
Mary Kay offers a pre built web site that is optional. It's actually less expensive than most other businesses that I've reviewed. The first year costs only $25. And every year after that will be $50 a year.
Now of course you buy an inventory of products. You and your sponsor can decide how much you will buy. Keep in mind that the starting costs will increase based on how much Mary Kay products you want to initially purchase to sell to customers.
It's known that in order to remain an active Mary Kay Beauty consultant you have to order a minimum of $200 worth of products every three months. This is roughly $67 dollars per month ($200 divided by 3 months).
Also, they offer something called Silver Wings Scholars which is a free online back office for Mary Kay consultants. There are videos and other training documentation to help people succeed in the Mary Kay business opportunity.
Time Investments
Home shows are held at a customer's house. The customer can invite their friend's to attend these shows. The majority of customers are attained through word of mouth. Some people use social networking sites such as MySpace or FaceBook to connect with people in their local area.
Once a week, a Mary Kay consultant must attend their director's house for training. Consultants can invite guests to come and learn about the product or even join the opportunity. Mary Kay stresses the fact that they don't pressure anyone to join their opportunity or buy their products which is definitely a great thing to know. I can attest to that as I actually talked to a May Kay consultant who did not pressure me at all to make any commitments until I was ready.
As you can see they offer a real support system giving people the opportunity to connect with each other. If you're a person that needs that personal connection in order to be motivated to learn and perform better, then Mary Kay is a good opportunity for you to join.
The Mary Kay Compensation Plan
As a Mary Kay beauty consultant, you receive a 50% discount on their products. For example, if you as a beauty consultant purchased an item for the wholesale price of $25, you can then go and sell it for $50. And of course this profit is what you keep for yourself.
There are different levels of Mary Kay consultants. When you first start out, you are classified as an Independent Beauty Consultant.
You can get to the next level called Senior Consultant when you recruit 1 person onto your team. So now you'll be able to earn a 4% commission on your newly acquired recruit's wholesale orders. So for example if someone in your downline orders $300 worth of Mary Kay products at the wholesale price then you will earn a commission of $12 ($300 multiplied by 4%).
The next level is called Star Recruiter. In order to be promoted to this level you have to sponsor 3 new team members. In addition to being able to make all the commissions at the lower levels, you will now qualify to earn a $50 dollar team building bonus. You qualify for this on your 4th recruit and on any future recruits thereafter. But the additional condition to get the $50 dollar team building bonus is that the new recruit must make a minimum order of at least $600.
So if you're in this position you are going to do everything in your power to make sure your new recruit makes at least a $600 order. You have to ask yourself "Is it going to be worth my time to try to convince someone to make an initial purchase of $600 so that I can get that $50 bonus?" Is this something you don't mind doing? I'm just providing you the facts and asking questions to help you decide if this is the right business opportunity for you.
Once you have 5 recruits under your belt, you will be promoted to Team Leader. So instead of making 4% off any team members order as noted at the Senior Consultant level, you will now be able to make between 9% to 13% off any orders in your downline. You only qualify for the 13% if you make a personal order of at least $600.
Now the next level you can get to is called a Future Director. You achieve this level when you have 8 people in your downline that you personally recruited yourself. When becoming a Future Director you can apply to get to the Director level. You actually have to make it known to Mary Kay that you're applying to this level. Once you notify them of your goals, you will then have 4 months to have 30 active people on your team. You as a team leader only have to personally sponsor 8 active members. But your team can take care of the remaining 22 if you want. It's totally up to you how you're going to accomplish this goal of Director status. Also, another condition to qualify for Director level is that your team must earn at least $16,000 worth of wholesale orders.
Your reward for becoming a Director is that you'll get 9% to 13% commissions off orders of any of your 30 or more representatives below you that helped you achieve Director level status.
Now another important fact to consider is that you can be demoted no matter what level you're at in the Mary Kay business. For example if you're at Team Leader status with 5 recruits under you and any one of those recruits decides to stop ordering products, then you'll get demoted to the previous level, which is Star Recruiter. So you can see it is very important to get to know your teammates and continually provide effective training so that they can consistently perform well for themselves and for you.
Conclusion
Mary Kay offers quality products to their clientele backed by a legitimate business opportunity. They are filled with very personable distributors that are willing to give you answers in a no pressure environment. If you're the type of person that truly loves the product then promoting it will be easy.
However, one of the drawbacks that the Mary Kay business opportunity has is their old way of marketing. They give home shows and get customer leads through mostly word of mouth. So you are limited geographically to the number of people you can sell your products to because it's known that the majority of their sales are through word of mouth.
Now it's known that some of their consultants have pre-built web sites. But they aren't being taught how to leverage the internet and use effective marketing techniques to bring people to their web site to purchase items.
It's known that their training does not emphasize new effective marketing concepts such as using advertising campaigns with pay per click, writing articles, doing videos, and implementing a funded proposal. There is no way to create an automated marketing machine so that you can have a system on auto pilot. Instead Mary Kay consultants have to drive to peoples houses to give presentations to sell products and possibly recruit new representatives.
Some may see this as a great thing because they get to connect with people by driving to different areas to put on home shows. Others will think that this method of marketing defeats the purpose of working at the comfort of their own home. It's really up to you to decide if this type of business model fits your style. My job is to provide you with the facts so that you can make an informed decision determining whether or not this Mary Kay opportunity is the right fit for your home based business.
Brandon R. Drake is a professional marketer and an [
http://www.honestwealthbuilder.com]online marketing coach that helps serious entrepreneurs increase their skills by teaching effective methods to leverage the power of the internet and utilize smart marketing techniques to be successful in network marketing.
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