A lot of us have heard the term “A-B-C” always be closing, but to be a great closer you have to A-B-L always be learning. To be the best at anything you must continue to learn and learn and learn. Knowledge is power especially in this game. Confidence in any sales job can be derived from two things: knowledge and experience. 

What I love about sales you can never be perfect. But you can sure get good at it really good at it. I focus on the things I can control and then let time and experience catch up. First you must master the fundamentals. A few fundamentals I live by in the affiliate game are:

-Know your offers: How can you sell it if you don’t know about it? Every offer is out there  for a reason, the more you know about all the nuances you about a particular offer the more you can relate it to my affiliate and their audience.

-Don’t tell just ask: The golden rule of sales is “answer a question with a question, not an answer”. If I tell it to you it can be rude or offensive. If I ask and get you to tell me it is the truth. The person who asks the most questions win. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

-Embrace your mistakes: Mistakes are not a good thing they are a great thing. It is the fastest to learn something and the bigger the mistake, the fastest you learn. Not only that but you build nuggets of confidence everytime you fail and overcome it.

Those are some tricks of the trade I have learned over my sales career. What are some of yours? Look people we sell every single day so what are the best techniques or tricks you have?

Talk to me,

Chris Mello 

There are people that think quantity is much more important than quality, whether it be from a personal or business perspective. From a personal perspective, some people feel comfort if they know “everyone” in their area and can walk through their town and say hello to most people that the see. It’s a false sense of security but it makes that type of person who craves comfort, feel better. I’m the exact opposite. Sure I know a lot of people but I have a small inner circle that I trust and consider to be true friends. I prefer to keep it that way. I’d rather have 3 people that I know I can call for whatever reason and they’ll be there for me, rather that having a full address book with no true friend to call for a favor.

In business, there are marketers & business owners who believe that having more consumers who visit your website or store equates with more revenue. Again I’m on the opposite of the spectrum here too. For example, you can have 1,000 unqualified consumers visit your site because they are looking for a deal and only a handful actually purchase anything. Or you can have 100 qualified consumers visit your site and 50% of them purchase something. Option 2 is a much better scenario in my opinion since this group of people weren’t just looking for a deal so they’ll most likely be more long term, loyal, repeat purchasers.

We have the same posture at AKMG regarding the affiliates & advertisers that we’ll work with. We’d rather work with the best of breed in each vertical rather than just working with everyone to say we work with a lot of people. After all, quality is much more important than quantity.

The online industry is transforming at the speed of light. What we thought would be a great idea is now in the past and what we deemed as being impossible is already in the works. The upside to this is the sky is the limit in our evolving industry. The benefit of being in such a fast pace field is we are always capable of coming up with new ideas, ideas that will possibly change the the way this industry works.

I realize how quickly our technology is changing when I see the latest and greatest phones come out. Take a look at the cell phones you had 5 years ago and compare them to what you are sporting now. Pretty different, eh? The average person must have at least 3 cell phones laying around, due to upgrading to the newest version. Someone caught on pretty quick and created a service that gives you money for your old cell phones. Brilliant! Check it out

With technology transforming at the rate it is, there must be more things out there that we can create for our benefit… financially. I am always trying to find out what can be tweaked to make it more beneficial to users and of course to earn a little extra cash… never hurts. I just wonder where we will be 10 years from now. Will we be using those little cell phones from Zoolander , tracking leads without pixels, or taking trips to the moon - as a vacation (which is already in the works). Whatever it is, it’s obvious we are moving forward very fast, so it is essential to stay on top of what’s new so we can be ahead of the game.

The advertising industry is a living, breathing organism.  It functions, grows, and thrives in direct relation to the consumer’s demands, desires, and accessibility.  With the advent of the internet and other interactive digital media and communications, advertising has become a larger industry than anyone could have ever imagined.

To continue to use the internet and it’s various forms of streams of outlet for advertising, our technologies must always be dynamic.  Rather, every single internet-oriented piece of engineering must be implemented in such a way that the systems, down to the pieces of hardware and bits of code, can be tailored to the ’state’, rules and regulations that we are all required to abide by.

There are so many things that must be taken into consideration and so many technological advances to ‘flow’ with, lest our systems and methods become archaic and completely unusable.

Surely, the internet was undoubtedly the catalyst of catalysts for great success and innovation in our industry.  However, we have to be as ever-changing and adaptable as this internet, the stream, that moves us in order continue the path to successful gelling with the ‘times’.

 We had a company meeting this morning to talk about taking our company to the next level. This topic is not new to me personally but one can never here this enough.“All success in my life begins and ends with me.” That can mean two completely different things by the way that you look at it. It can scare the hell out of you, or it can excite you. Well it should do both.I believe you will never do anything great unless it makes you nervous and you are uncomfortable. You will never make any big changes if you are always comfortable. You have to have that fire in your belly to make to do something BIG! Whether it is out work the next, make that call on your chicken list, or just do something out of the ordinary.Having the power that you and only you can path the way for your future should also excite you. Life can really be whatever you want it to. Life is the ultimate truth. If you set a goal there can only be two outcomes: you either do it or you don’t. And there is three reasons for the outcome: you either want it bad enough and you do whatever it takes to get it, you are all talk and it doesn’t happen, or you never really wanted the goal so you just didn’t make it happen.So people it is all about goals and action. Lets start with short term goals first.Here are 3 of my goals that will be done by next August 2009:1- Pay off my personal debt.2- Take my wife on a trip to Europe.3- Complete a workout called “Fran” in sub 4 minutes (if you don’t know what that means just ask)What are 3 goals you want to accomplish in the next year? What actions are you willing to take to make that happen?I would love to know.Talk to me,Chris Mello

I find myself in awe of those people that somehow are always able to come up with the next big thing, so much sooner the rest. I wonder how they’re able to do that so effortlessly. I think anyone in the Internet business is ahead of the curve already; but then there are those that lead the pack. Those are the ones that amaze me. I had a conversation with an advertiser today about this very topic. He was telling me about his biggest competitor who always seem to know the fads before the rest & is able to get a head start on everyone. You can’t help but respect him for that and my advertiser couldn’t help but agree.

I often try to figure out ways to come up with new & interesting ideas to get ahead and be THAT person. I analyze all marketing that I see, no matter the format - TV, billboards, radio - it doesn’t really matter where it’s coming from. It’s funny what you see when you leave the online silo (not that I do that very often!). If only there was really enough time in the day to daydream about this. If I had the time…I might actually come up with the “next big thing”.

The team we have put together at AKMG is always looking for the next big thing.  The first step in finding such a revolutionary idea and implementing it for profits is to have the right frame of mind to NOTICE the next big thing when it presents itself.  That is what separates us, not just from other performance based networks, but from other business professionals.