Affiliate Marketing Tips

Some MLMers think that every minute spent listening is a minute they are not selling. They seem to think that a talking prospect is just taking up THEIR valuable time.

A lot of veteran network marketers believe that what the prospect needs more than anything is to be educated. They need to learn about your company, your products, your business, and you ... why you are better than anybody else. And the only way that'll happen is if YOU talk and your prospect listens.

Do you spend any time identifying your prospect's desires ... or do you think you already know them? That sure simplifies the process. If you know what they need, you don't need to spend any time listening to them. Just tell them what they need, what's best for them.

When your prospect is talking, do you listen then? Or are you busy planning what you're going to say next?

As your prospect tells you about their life situation or their business situation, are you busy thinking about your sale?

Is your plan to simply stick your deal down everyone's throat, because you know that works X% of the time?

Did you ever see the movie "The Music Man?" Based on a Broadway play, the movie came out when I was a kid. Professor Harold Hill was a travelling salesman, hitting every little community in the midwest, selling the townsfolk on the dream of having their kids be part of a glorious marching band.

The Professor sold musical instruments. He truly had the gift of gab ... could sell anything to anybody. That talkative salesperson with the golden tongue has been a cliche for a long time.

Have you ever been in a situation where the salesperson would not stop talking?

Of course you have.

I'll bet there have been times you bought just to avoid the ordeal of listening to ANOTHER salesperson who wouldn't stop talking.

A lot of people over the years have figured that if you could talk, you ought to be in sales. And as time has progressed, and MLM companies spend more and more time educating their distributors about their products, reps get the attitude more and more that they know better than the customer what the customer should have ... which means they need to listen even less.

You tend to think ... "I know this stuff. They want to know this stuff. I should talk. They should listen."

And there's the problem. Your prospect does not want to be talked at. They've been talked at since the beginning of time. What they want is to be heard.

If you're going to build relationships in a network marketing business, you need to ask the right questions, to find out who your prospect REALLY is. To do that, just listen. Then you can hear your prospect.

Richard Dennis actively builds an MLM business. He shares his thoughts and observations several times a week at http://RichardDennisNetworking.com/

# posted by mlm-marketing97195 : 10:52 PM  0 comments

After three months, my company's CEO is getting antsy regarding our affiliate campaign. We're a somewhat niched market and we've had an account with Commission Junction that has so far yielded very little activity and even fewer sales. At what point should we simply pull the plug on our affiliate campaign?

One thing I hope you did before you got started was to do some competitive research in your niche.

This is something I always do when a prospective client comes to me about outsourcing their affiliate program. I like to be sure an affiliate program makes sense for a company.

One indicator is whether your competitors have an affiliate program. This is certainly not a perfect measure, but if they don't have an affiliate program, this might lead you to question why.

If your competitors do have affiliate programs, be sure that yours is competitive or better than theirs.

Also, look at your current sales without an affiliate program. Affiliates are generally not going to make or break a company, but they can bring in a bunch of incremental sales or leads.

If you already have a vibrant business going, it's probably safe to assume an affiliate program would be a good addition to your marketing arsenal.

This doesn't help you, but hopefully some future folks looking into affiliate programs will dig a little before deciding they need an affiliate program.

So anyhow, your affiliate program isn't working out after three months. I'd generally set an expectation of 3-6 months for an affiliate program to gain momentum, but that's based on the affiliate program being proactively managed.

I've seen too many companies assume their affiliate program can run on auto-pilot. That's not the case, and if you've been operating in that fashion, it's time to allocate more resources to the affiliate program.

I would recommend running your affiliate program with three ongoing directives: recruit, activate, and retain affiliates.

It's essential that you recruit affiliates into your affiliate program, have a process in place to activate them, and then work to retain them.

Affiliate marketing isn't like other marketing channels. Money alone cannot power it - you need to focus on the relationships of your affiliates, too.

If you've been doing all of this and you simply cannot gain traction, you might want to consider bringing in a consultant to troubleshoot the affiliate program and relaunch it.

Now if that doesn't work, put the poor thing out of it's misery and move on.

http://www.affiliatetip.com

# posted by mlm-marketing97195 : 2:09 AM  0 comments