Sales Jobs has put together a list of the most commonly used 'jargon' words from the world of sales. We hope this glossary is a useful tool for sales candidates at every level:

Affiliate marketing: Many companies offer commission to consumers or other businesses who sell their products or services. This is known as affiliate marketing and the commission rate can vary from company to company.

Bottom line: This term generally refers to the actual money you've made on selling a product. For instance a company may sell a product for £1000 but it could cost them £750 to market, sell and post the product. Therefore the bottom line on the product is £250.

Commission: Many sales professionals will work towards targets and within this process a commission plan will be agreed. This tends to be a percentage of the bottom line or purchase price of whatever they sell on top of their 'basic pay'.

Conversion rates: When a prospective client becomes a customer this can be called a 'conversion'. So if a sales professional talks to 100 people and 5 become clients the conversion rate is 5%.

Cross-selling: This term is used when sales professionals sell a new product to an existing customer.

Customer/Client: Any person or business that purchases products or a service is then a customer or client of that company.

Goals: You'll often find yourself aiming to complete 'goals' in any sales or marketing departments. These could be anything from a set number of products to sell to an increase in sales compared to the last quarter.

List brokerage: Marketers will often purchase lists of contact details from a third party in order to email or post marketing literature.

Prospect: A person or business who could potentially become a client. Sales personnel sometimes talk about 'prospecting' which means they are searching for these particular people or businesses.

Return on investment (ROI): This term is used time and time again. It basically means the amount of money a sale actually brings to the company. Similar to the 'bottom line' (see above).

Sales Cycle: This is the time it takes for a prospect to become a client or customer. This varies greatly from business to business depending on the product or service you're selling. Usually the longer the sales cycle the higher the ROI.

Sand bagging: This is when a sales professional is on target so they hold back on sales until the following month in order to reach their target. It is frowned upon and in some cases can lead to serious disciplinary action.

Scrubbing: This is the process of removing duplicates or unnecessary data from a list brokerage.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): This term refers to the implementation of keywords within website copy, advertisement and HTML code in order to increase rankings on popular search engines.

Stretch goals: These goals are used on top of a sales person's usual goals in order to challenge them more. Sales managers sometimes add extra commission to stretch goals as an incentive to achieve them.

Up-selling: This is the same as 'cross-selling' but focussed on selling the client a similar product with more facilities and at a higher price.

Web analytics: Often marketing departments will assess SEO and rankings in order to see how their websites are performing. This is known as 'web analytics'.