Top Salespeople: The Earner

The list of material rewards Cheryl Warfield has earned over a 39-year sales career for Mary Kay is dizzyingly diverse.

Sure, there are the pink Cadillacs. Those are the trophies for top performers that Mary Kay, a worldwide direct sales skin care and makeup company, branded as a symbol of sales success. Warfield has earned 32 Cadillacs since 1978, from a two-seat XLR convertible to a Hybrid Escalade.

But there's also a list of spoils that would qualify for anyone's lap of luxury showcase. It includes a 4.8-carat ring with 49 diamonds; two full-length mink coats; a 14-carat gold tennis bracelet; and two TV sets. Trips, meanwhile, include a Tahitian Island cruise; a week at the La Costa Spa in San Diego; an excursion to Singapore, Bali, Thailand and Hong Kong; and a windsurf cruise from Rome to Venice.

In total, Warfield, who works out of her Sarasota home, has made $7 million in commissions from selling Mary Kay products, a gig she started part-time in 1973. In her best month, she received a check for $61,000.

“It has been a lifetime of building a business,” says Warfield. “But I don't think this is hard work. I love working with women.”

Moreover, Warfield, 61, says the greatest reward she earned from Mary Kay wasn't any of the material prizes. Instead, it was the ability to have enough money to send her two daughters to college debt-free, and now, her three grandchildren to local private schools, also debt-free.

That, and the tinge of pride Warfield felt when she and her husband built their 4,800-square-foot home on Lido Key. “When we first started building this house, people asked me what my husband does,” says Warfield. “They never thought a woman could be behind this.”

The woman behind Mary Kay, Mary Kay Ash, founded a company that now has $2.5 billion in worldwide sales. Ash launched the business in 1963.

The business model, then and now, is multi-level marketing. That means a salesperson earns commissions of what they sell and a percentage of commissions earned by people they recruit into the network.

At Mary Kay, a saleswoman starts out as an independent beauty consultant. There are at least seven levels on top of that designation, up to independent executive national sales director. Warfield earned that title last year, when she was one of 19 in the Mary Kay network who earned more than $325,000 in annual commissions.

It's a long way from Warfield's admitted humble entry into Mary Kay. A Maine native, Warfield moved to Florida to attend Stetson University. After college, married with a baby daughter, Warfield took a teaching job in Fort Myers. Her husband, Rob Warfield, worked for a local bank.

A teenage model, Warfield heard about Mary Kay from a friend. She started part-time, like many other young women did in the 1970s. She was 22 years old. She worked on Mary Kay about six hours a week back then, after school.

“I thought it would just be a part-time job to pay off credit cards,” she says. “I had no idea it would turn out this way.”

But she discovered she liked the business model. It was a way to control her earnings potential based on her attitude, organizational skills and networking and recruiting abilities. It beat school.

“My reward for being the best teacher in school was the bad kids,” says Warfield. “My reward for being the best at Mary Kay was a car. I just went for everything I could.”

Warfield had 100 customers within her first year, which bumped her up a level. She earned another promotion in 1976, and by 1982 her network, the Warfield Unit, was in the top 10 of Mary Kay sales nationwide.

Warfield also earned national sales director status in 1982, when she was 31. Warfield's network has since produced five national sales directors, including one in St. Petersburg. And there are another eight sales directors on her team working toward national sales director designations, one in Clearwater and one in Fort Myers.

Warfield keeps in touch with the sales directors under her through daily 15-minute conference calls. The calls are both motivational and strategy sessions. Warfield's goal is to have 20 national sales directors on her team by the time she's 65, in 2015.

It's an ambitious goal, but, given Warfield's past accomplishments, certainly achievable.

“You have to believe in what can happen,” Warfield says. “If other people can do it, so can I.”

TIPS
• Think big: Mary Kay independent executive national sales director Cheryl Warfield says big goals should give a salesperson the drive to succeed. “If you are going to do something,” she says, “why not do it big?

• Be organized: Warfield says anyone in a home-based sales job must have a plan and stick to it. “Free yourself up to work,” Warfield says. “You can't be in five bridge clubs or volunteer for everything and pursue your career with gusto. Choose your outside interests carefully.”

• Good listening: Even though it's a cliche, Warfield says a good salesperson must keenly listen to what a client really wants. “Women don't like aggressive sales people,” says Warfield says, “but women love to shop.”

BEST SALES TOOL
Cheryl Warfield, an independent executive national sales director for Mary Kay, is decidedly old school when it comes to her most valued sales tool. It's a phone. “My organization is all over the United States and Canada, and soon to be in Brazil,” Warfield says. “So to reach them all, I conduct conference calls. I am a leader of leaders, so sales motivation and training are best done when people hear my voice.”