Pink Truth
One of my favourite reading from the networking marketing field is Pink Truth: Facts, opinions, and the real story behind Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Although the blog can sometimes stumble, in the comments section, the author is generally restrained, but deadly accurate in his/her questions about the Mary Kay set-up.
Several days ago, in the post above, Pink Truth pointed out that when MK offers the consultants a "special deal" it was also a signal that MK was discontinuing the line. Pink pointed out that in the past, MK would make this offer, but fail to disclose that MK would be discontinuing the line. And as such, the offer was deceptive.
Now, there is nothing wrong with having a discount sale, but if MK doesn't tell its consultants that this is the end of the line, it risks being accused of front-loading -dumping inventory on its sales force that it knows cannot be sold.
There is a simple way to check local demand for your MK product, a neat due diligence trick for MLM -check your local eBay. If there is a lot of product being dumped on eBay, it would probably pay to stay away from this particular line.
The relationship between a company and their distributors, salesforce, and consultants is similar to the relationship between a franchisor and franchisee: the former wants gross sales, and the latter wants net profit. Sales consultants would be wise to keep this in mind when joining the network marketing party.
