How to Walk the Floor at an Affiliate Conference

Last month Affiliate Convention came to my neighborhood. I took advantage of the opportunity to walk the exhibit hall with one of our team members who had never been to a conference.

As we wrapped up I told him that while it was a good education, he might not want to be quite as direct as I am.

You see, I don’t like dealing with bad sales people. I’ve done sales. Of course, I think that just about everything includes sales. Are you applying for a job? Then you’re selling yourself as the product. Do you think your company should release a new product or service? Then you are selling that internally. So we all need to be good at sales.

What makes a good salesperson

First, know your business and the product you are selling. If you don’t know it better than the person you are selling to, your sale will be based on luck, not skill. I hate when I know more about the product than someone who cold called me to get me to buy something I already know I don’t need.

Second, know your prospect’s business. If you can, know it better than they do. If you have too broad of a target market, focus where you can and then ask questions for those whose businesses you don’t know. Don’t try to sound like you are an expert at something you are not. I hate when I know more about the product than someone who cold called me to get me to buy something I already know I don’t need. [Yes, I know I repeated that.]

Next, don’t be scared to tell your prospect about your business and be honest. “Sign up at our website” is not a sales pitch. That’s a trick to get e-mail addresses to impress an executive who doesn’t understand the difference between hot and cold prospects.

Finally, don’t use buzzwords and, if you are required to, be able to explain what you company does without them. Jargon often means nothing. Sometimes it means different things to different people. If you can’t use simple words to describe what your company does, I’ll figure you have no clue.

Walking the floor

Affiliate conferences have a few types of exhibitors (forgive me if I miss any and just add a comment below):

• Affiliate networks
• Service providers
• Stores / Merchants
• Publishers / Affiliates
• Outsourced Program Management firms

The inspiration for this article was affiliate networks. I’m not talking about the majors. I’m talking about all of the CPA networks. We typically add one network per year. I used to ask about URL structure (buy.at failed that one recently so miserably we probably will never work with that network), automated feeds on at least a daily basis and product feeds. Now I found I have a new set of questions.

Sign up at our website

Name 3 stores or services in your network we need to have on our site.That sounds like a simple, basic question that anyone should be able to answer.

Some networks either can’t or won’t answer it. #SRSLY?!?

Either they don’t know the stores or services I should want or they just want me to sign up for their network. If they think having another inactive affiliate will do them good, they should just make up fake accounts. What’s the difference?

Simply put, if you can’t rattle off 3 stores that we need to have on our site, we assume you don’t have at least 3. If you tell us stores that are on numerous networks (including CJ, GAN and/or Linkshare), we don’t need you.

We work with thousands of stores and you want me to add yours? OK, tell me what they are. You can’t? OK, no soup for you! NEXT!

What types of stores do you have?

This seems to be another tough question. This is where the buzzwords really start to jump out. This is where I start asking the questions that I don’t recommend to Casey. In most cases, I found that the offers were the type where a user signs up for an incentivized offer and gets charged $9.95 to their cellphone every month and has trouble unsubscribing. Uh, we won’t put those on our site. We like having long-term value to our members.

If you have to hide what you do, there is a problem.

Why the networks won’t talk to me at Affiliate Summit

There you have it. I think CPA networks will throw their swag at me to keep me away. I gave away the secrets on how to make them say what they really do. Try asking. It’s a lot of fun when you get into it. My greatest hope on this topic is that CPA networks can and will answer these questions for you and that you find lasting, profitable relationships. Short of that, I hope you have fun!

About David Lewis

David Lewis is the CEO and founder of 77Blue which operates online shopping websites. Prior to that, he worked in business development at GoTo / Overture. David was a product manager and accountant in past lives. In 2006, David won Commission Junction’s Horizon Award for Innovation and was a finalist for Linkshare’s Golden Link Award. You can find David on Twitter @thedavidlewis.

Website: http://davidlew.is

Twitter: thedavidlewis