Why Affiliate Managers Don’t Wear Suits

I was working with a company recently who had an established affiliate program in place that had been performing admirably for the last 18 months, but they felt it could do better than it was and asked me in to give them some advice on how to increase their affiliate sales. It was a mid-range sized company with around 40 or 50 staff.

Now, at first glance you would be forgiven for thinking that their affiliate program was a runaway success as they were doing almost $200,000 in monthly sales from their affiliates alone, which for the size of company was great, but on closer inspection it quickly became obvious that their operation had more holes in it than a teabag.

The first thing that struck me was that they had a team of four affiliate managers and every one of them wore SUITS to work. I’ve never come across that before. Seriously, not once. Affiliate managers don’t wear suits… they wear jeans, sit around in shorts and T-shirts all day, grow their hair long and do cool stuff like playing softball in the office. Affiliate managers simply DON’T wear suits!

Okay, I hear ya. You’re thinking to yourself “what the heck does their dress code have to do with anything?”, but I knew as soon as I saw the suit guys that I was dealing with a company, even considering their success, who were probably a little stuck in their ways and if that’s what they made their staff wear, what on earth did they ask them to DO?

So, much to their surprise, the first thing I asked to see was their affiliate managers’ job descriptions and these told me straight away that the company didn’t quite “get it” when it came to running their own affiliate program. They didn’t know the right questions to ask when they were hiring affiliate managers and they didn’t even know exactly what job their affiliate managers should be doing, so the whole operational process was in a state of confusion.

This is a snippet from the ad they placed for their latest recruit…

“The applicant should have strong negotiation and analytical skills, experience in media buying and account management, exposure to target driven environments, analysis and reporting, marketing degree a must.”

WTF?

Fair enough, I understand the individual elements of what they’re asking for here, but that’s only because I knew before reading this ad what the job actually consisted of. Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect who comes across something like this though and you can understand why the whole recruitment process was so damned flawed.

For starters, they don’t say what the prospect will be doing. Secondly, what they’ve just described sounds to me like 5 or 6 individual jobs. And thirdly, what the heck does a degree in marketing have to do with anything? You DON’T need a degree in marketing, or in anything else for that matter, to be a fantastic affiliate manager. That’s just silly.

So, let me change it around and tell you what the company “should” have been asking for…

“The applicant should have a solid knowledge of websites, affiliate programs and commission deals. You should be actively networking on websites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. An understanding of spreadsheets and tracking software is preferred, but not essential, and strong communication skills are a must”.

See what I just did there? I just removed all of the fluff and filler and said it exactly like it is. Every prospect should have a good idea of what the company is looking for, there’s none of the big talk like “target driven environments” (whatever that means!) and the company are making it clear that they want a good communicator who knows affiliate programs and who appreciates the power of social networking… then whatever else they need they can be trained on.

THAT’S what makes a good affiliate manager.

Not the degree. Not the “strong negotiation and analytical skills”. And certainly NOT the suit.

You simply need someone who knows how to network, well, on the Internet.

And the guys who do that well don’t wear SUITS… ;-)

There’s a lesson to be learned from what I’ve just told you today, but in my next article I’ll let you in on the exact steps I took to boost this particular company’s profits by over $1,000,000 a year… and it didn’t even take two days to do!

No matter if you’re an affiliate, a manager, or a merchant, this should interest you.

Stay tuned…