Affiliate Sales Process

The Sales Interaction Process:

●      Start out building rapport, but don't approach the person simply for friendship nor should you approach them simply for traffic. You'll get the hang of this quickly, but it does require some finesse. You should get some very basic information about them and jump into asking them about any problems they may have.

○      Affiliates are smart and they do not want to waste time with you learning about their dog on the first interaction.
○      After getting initial rapport questions, begin asking about problems they may have so you can offer solutions.
○      Do not waste too much time on this stage because people hate wasted time.


●      Start the investigating stage (most important stage). Successful sales people ask the most questions related to our target earn the most success by far. This is the stage where you learn about what they do, how they work, what traffic sources they focus on, what offers they are seeking. The most successful closers don't use closing techniques to close sales, they ask more questions and use these questions as part of the process of closing.

○      Your goal should be to find indirect or direct needs of the affiliate. An indirect need would be, "I'm running french dating". A direct need would be "I need french dating". The same applies for specific traffic sources as well ("I'm running on trafficvance" vs "I need offers for traffic vance". Understanding the difference is vital in this process.

○      The more questions you ask (with actual goals behind the questions) the better rapport you will have. Affiliates like to be sold to and want to tell about themselves for the most part.


●      Developing needs into wants. The goal of this is to find out what these individuals needs then turn them wants. You need to make the publisher actually want what you are offering, you cannot force feed what you want for the publisher. You should, from the beginning of the interaction, develop a 'problem solving' atmosphere where you identify problems, and develop solutions with the affiliate.

○      Implied needs ≠ not successful sales, you need to turn them into direct needs and eventually into wants.

○      By developing a problem solving atmosphere  the interaction gives the impression that the publisher is actually making decisions to work with us by themselves. This is highly positive and necessary as we cannot force feed these people.

○      If they have implied problems, then you should work with them to make the implied problems more serious than they are - following up with positive questions like "if we bumped you on this payout to $5.75 would that make you more profitable?". This produces a negative problem, then positive solution they dictate to you.


●      Closing the sale. You need to set goals for every interaction with publishers. There are two successful goals to achieve: an advancement (setting another specific time to actually continue this discussion, for example), or an actual sale(margin actually starts getting generated). If an affiliate says that they will "contact you sometime next week", it's most likely them blowing you off. Be sure to set realistic goals for these publishers that you can actually achieve, and in most cases it's not going to actually be a margin generating sale on the first interaction.

○      Set realistic goals, for example a specific 'advancement' that will reconnect on another contact. Keep in mind, 1/10th of the interactions with new relationships will result to actual margin so you may require a series of communications.

○      Realize that we are working with ultra-sophisticated salesmen that rule with logic, not impulse. Thousands or millions of dollars ride on their decisions. Do not ever use 'techniques' on people, they will revolt. Force feeding sales using pressure actually results in lower post-sale happiness, meaning the long term relationship may be damaged.

○      Using aggressive or repetitive closing techniques in a sales interaction with a long-term relationship severely damages it. You are not selling cellphones to people, these decisions are highly impactful. Aggressive closing works on impulse and emotional decision.

○      Not all closing is bad because at the end of the day, you need to close the sale to actually get the margin. When closing, tell them - don't ask them.

Understanding Split Testing

The word split testing is dreaded by a lot of affiliates, especially the beginners simply because it’s a process that’s more often over-thought than not. This is something that must come to an end. Right here, right now. Let’s go about split testing in a simple way that’s to the point so that it’s much easier for everyone to understand.

The Essence of Split Testing

The whole purpose of split testing is to weed out crappy ads and landing pages from the ones that perform the best. You don’t need to let your emotions get in the way when split testing or it will turn out to be a completely ineffective task. Ending with being nothing but a waste of time, energy, and your thought process. There are two main types of split testing used by affiliates today and those are:

• Website Split Testing - This is also known as split testing landing pages. The purpose is to try out different approaches in order to see which approach works best for the traffic that’s being driven to it.
• Ad Campaign Split Testing - This is where you take variations of one advertisement (it could be using a different picture, headline, etc.) and test out which one gets the most interaction.
  
  

Is split testing for every affiliate?

Absolutely, while many may not think they need to split test, it’s essential for any marketing campaign. If you don’t test out different ideas and approaches, you won’t be able to uncover the gold so to speak. Affiliates can’t afford to ignore what split testing has to offer, and this is honestly something that can’t be stressed enough.

What do I need to get in order to split test?

Just some sort of reputable tracking software like CPV Lab or Prosper202 (which is free by the way) will work. All you need is something that allows you to track the results and see which test is performing the best. It’s nothing too overly complicated.

Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with a whole bunch of cool ideas to test at once!

Ideally you only want to make one change per split test that you do. This could mean changing the picture in the ad, headings, call to action etc. The reason for this is that too many changes can actually hurt you in the long run, one simple change is all it takes to make a difference.

Understand That Split Testing Takes Time

You have to be able to have good ground to work from when you go about doing split testing. This means that you have to be patient to get results that can produce you with the data that you need to come to a logical conclusion. A general rule of thumb is to let the ad be live for 2 days, or for as long as it takes to generate around 20 or so clicks.

Wrapping Up Your Split Test

Alright, so you’ve got your testing done, now it’s time to sum up your results and see what really works and what needs to be thrown in the trash can for good (or just modified to see if it’s just one little thing throwing it all out of whack).