If you’ve been thinking about joining a direct sales company, you’ve probably heard terms like up line, down line, cold calling, hostess, and more. These, along with others, may be words you’ve never heard used before. If you plan to join any direct sales company, it’s wise to learn these terms and what they mean to help you succeed even more at your business. Here’s the first half of the Direct Sales Beginner’s Dictionary.
Annual Conference or Seminar: This is usually a trip to a large city where everyone in a designated area or district goes to get awarded for sales and recruits. Often the conferences are filled with shows, classes and awards ceremonies. They are fun, motivational and encouraging to attend. Some companies offer an incentive, like a free pass or discounted rate to the conference for meeting a specific sales goal or recruiting goal.
Client: A more sophisticated term for a customer. Clientele is the plural form of client.
Close or closing: The act of getting the customer to make a commitment to purchase.
Cold calling: The act of making phone calls to unknown persons or persons not expecting a call from you or your company and there is no known need of the person receiving the call.
Commission: The amount of money you, the salesperson, will make from the sales at a show, class or party.
Consultant: A term often used in place of ‘salesperson’ by direct sales companies.
Consumer: The person purchasing and/or using the product or service.
Customer Service: Taking care of your customers, their needs and desires in a professional and courteous manner.
Database: A record of all your clientele’s information, purchases, desires, etc. A database can be stored in a folder in a file cabinet, on index cards or on a spreadsheet in a computer software program such as Microsoft Excel.
Demographics: The information about people in a certain marketing area or territory such as age, number of men, number of women, number of mothers, number of children, income brackets, home owners, renters, line of work, etc.
Distribution Center: A building located closer to an area, region or district that houses products and makes shipping less costly and timelier.
Host/Hostess: The person holding the show, class, party or meeting in their home. Usually the hostess will receive free or discounted items for reaching a certain number of sales and/or recruits at their show.
Incentive: A reward for sales or purchases.
Inventory: Products or goods on-hand, ready to sell.
Marketing: The way you present your products to the buyer. Marketing tends to go hand in hand with advertising.
National Sales Director: A sales director who has achieved the highest level of sales and recruits in the company throughout the nation.
Networking: Getting to know others. You network with other business owners, directors, potential customers and current customers.
Objection: The reason someone may refuse to buy your products or services.
Recruiter: The person you sign up under when you become a direct sales business owner. This person is your TEEam leader or upline. They normally make a commission percentage off of the sales you make.
Residual Income: Money that you earn over and over (usually monthly) when someone signs up for a recurring product or service through you.
Sales Director: The leader of a TEEam of direct sales recruits. New direct sales business owners can find answers to their questions with their TEEam’s leader. There is usually a certain amount of sales and/or recruits that have to be made in order to reach this level.
Target market: A certain group of people the company or salesperson wishes to market products to.
TEEam Trainer: This person is responsible for training a TEEam about the product the company sells. They have worked in the business for awhile and know the products and the company very well.
Up Line: The person who signed you up is part of your up line in direct sales. The person who signed them up is also part of your up line. This goes on over various levels and your up line will normally make money from the sales their recruits (down line) make.
Warm Calling: Calling current or previous customers or those who have signed up to receive a call from the company. These calls are usually made to try and recruit sales or TEEam members.
The jargon varies somewhat between companies, but for the most part, the terms used are similar no matter which company you are working for. These words and phrases, along with their definition will help you become more familiar with the terminology that will become part of your everyday life as a direct sales business owner.
In order to make the most of your business, it’s a good idea to learn these terms, along with their meanings and use them regularly.
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