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.
