Starting a Business Via Network Marketing

Network Marketing Terminology

Although it sounds vaguely familiar, the terminology of network marketing has a mystifying effect on new recruits and prospects. Now we demystify the lingo with some of network marketing's most common terms.

The network marketing industry is full of words that don't mean much to the average person.

But to a network marketing professional, those words mean everything because they communicate important aspects of the network marketing process. Here is our list of must-know words for every network marketing professional.

• Distributor - An individual who signs up to sell products or services for a network marketing company. Distributors are also expected to recruit other people to the company.
• Sponsors - People who recruit new distributors and train them how to sell the company's products. At some point, all distributors are expected to also become sponsors in most MLM business models.
• Upline - Consists of all the people who occupy higher rungs on the organization's ladder than you do, including your sponsor.
• Downline - Consists of all the people who occupy lower rungs than you within the company. The distributors you recruit are part of your downline.
• Frontline - The distributors you directly recruit, train, and sponsor, and who are on the first level of your downline.
• Width - The number of people in your frontline or the number of people the company allows you to have in your frontline based on its structure.
• Matrix Plans - Tiered compensation plans that limit the number of people you can have on your frontline to two or three individuals.
• Stairstep/Breakaway Plans - A compensation plan in which distributors are expected to meet a series of monthly quotas and levels similar to stair steps. When the distributor reaches a certain achievement level, he can breakaway from his sponsor and start his own group.
• Warm Market - Sales and recruiting prospects that you know personally. Friends, family members, acquaintances - if they know who you are, they are part of your warm market and are considered fair game.
• Opportunity Meeting - Event organized by network marketing distributors to present distributorship opportunities to prospects.
• Personal Volume - How much inventory you buy from the company in a month.
• Personal Sales Volume - How much product you sell for the company in a month.

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