Direct Sales Beginner’s Dictionary – Part 1

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.

These are just a few of the new terms you will hear mentioned in direct sales circles. We’ll be back with more in a bit.