Until recently, if you called my home phone number, you’d hear a cheerful message recorded by me announcing that you’d reached “Monica Getz, your Mary Kay Beauty Consultant.” Yup, that’s me. Used to working from home as a proofreader and editor for the years I was raising my two daughters, I was particularly attracted to the “independent” part of the “Independent Beauty Consultant” label when I signed up to sell cosmetics in January of 2002.

I admit, I was one of those “not in a million years” types of women when it came to the idea of selling Mary Kay. It wasn’t that I was averse to the idea of selling. And I wasn’t opposed to either makeup in general or Mary Kay cosmetics in particular. It was just the idea of me selling makeup that gave me pause.

Eventually, the 50% commission Mary Kay consultants make (along with a variety of motivational perks that included jeweled pins, MK–emblazoned apparel and business items, and the unfettered, absolutely consistent encouragement at any evidence of the smallest step taken out of my comfort zone) convinced me to don pantyhose, heels, and a skirt and blazer and begin selling Mary Kay’s skin care and color cosmetics line to my friends and family. I was good enough at it to earn my Red Jacket, the blazer awarded sales consultants who recruit three new selling team members within a certain time period. Alas, I was not good enough at it to earn either the coveted pink Cadillac or the first Mary Kay car award, at the time a red Pontiac Grand Am.

In addition to the Red Jacket that still hangs in my closet and several hundred dollars of unsold cosmetics,  I took away a lot from my 5-year-stint as a Mary Kay consultant. The most important lesson I learned is this: it pays to learn to sell. I’m convinced that anyone can benefit from good sales training, which not only makes you an expert in your product but gives you insight into human nature, helping you to read body language and understand how different personality types respond to sales advances in different ways.

Beyond the general appreciation of sales as a profession, here are some tips and wisdom I learned from Mary Kay that I use all the time. OK, so maybe a few of them sound a little cheesy; they still work and inspire me to this day—because, after all, isn’t working for an advertising agency kind of like being in the cosmetics business? Sometimes it takes just a little touch-up and sometimes it takes a complete makeover, but it’s always about making a client look their best.

1. Smile when you’re talking on the phone. It makes your voice sound friendlier. (If you have to, place a mirror near your phone and smile at yourself to keep yourself honest.)
2. Dress up a little before you go shopping for an item that requires contact with a salesperson or out to eat. You’ll get better service (as long as you are your normal friendly self).
3. FAYC. That means forget about yourself completely. Which, of course, is impossible, but nonetheless worth aspiring to. Think about how you can meet a client’s needs in the meeting, not just about what you hope to gain from it.
4. Only buy what you need, even if someone gives you something “free” to buy more. It took me a while to learn that it was more prudent to buy an $18 item outright than to buy $75 more to get the $18 “special of the month” item free.
5. Follow up. Call people back regularly to see if they need anything and while you’re at it, ask about their family or about that new job. If you’re not pushy, they will look forward to your calls and not always let the answering machine get them. (Maybe they’ll even call you back!)
6. If you don’t ask, the answer is always “no.”
7. Don’t give up. Every “no” gets you closer to “yes.”
8. Get your priorities straight. In Mary Kay, it was always family first and your Mary Kay business second.
9. It takes a lot more work than I was willing to do to earn a car. Nonetheless, it’s not a scam. There are thousands of Mary Kay cars being driven by Mary Kay consultants who earned them.
10. The last four letters in the word enthusiasm stand for “I Am Sold Myself.” If you pride yourself on being rational in your business interactions, you may benefit from introducing a little more warmth in your voice. You can be enthusiastic without being out of control.

What I didn’t learn: Why Ann Arbor women don’t wear lipstick. And why, as soon as I started working in Ann Arbor, I joined the crowd, applying a light layer of subtle lipstick only for client meetings. But that’s a  post for another day.

Tags: Mary Kay consultant, Monica Getz, sales training, selling cosmetics, selling makeup

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.