Affiliate-Programm mit besseren Kickbacks ausbauen

0:00Hey, Alex. This is a beer. I own a business that provides accounting and CFO services to e-commerce brands. >> Okay. >> Uh doing about six mil a year. My goal is to make the competition irrelevant. Uh so I want to grow as much as I possibly can. >> Mhm. >> What's stopping me though is I don't have a lead generation channel that's sufficiently effective that I can really ramp up growth a lot.

0:26>> Right. >> I attended your L3 workshop a couple months ago. You recommended implementing a front-end offer, an affiliate program. I've done both. We are growing we've grown a lot since then. So thank you for that. >> You're welcome. >> But one of the big challenges I have is while I think the affiliate offer is pretty solid >> Mhm. >> and everybody I talk to will often admit that it's a no-brainer.

0:50I've a lot of difficulty getting them Like that just turn on and send those first referrals, but there's that initial friction. So it isn't still working. The affiliates aren't having just on as much as I want and at the same time I'd like another channel that is short-term ROI faster as opposed to affiliates which I know builds up over time and gives you a very low cost unstoppable funnel. >> Woah. Do you hear something in your background by the way?

1:17>> I hope not. I'm sorry. I have feedback. >> Okay, yeah, I had some feedback too. Oh good. Okay, so a couple things. So first off on the affiliate piece, we have to make sure that we're launching harder. So I think is there a like what amount of money they're making if they Like are you getting what kind of kickback are the affiliates getting? >> Uh at the moment 2K as soon as we close someone. >> Okay. So is there any way that you could dangle like 10 grand or something like that for somebody to do like a webinar with you and then you do like a you kind of like send emails to their audience and then you give them 10 grand up front and then you kind of do a draw out of it. So it's like the first 10's is and then I'll also give you and so like once I get five, that's kind of counts towards the 10 and then after that it's two. And then what's a customer worth to you?

2:06>> I would say a fair bit. I mean, we have almost no churn. Um so, thus far with the data that we have, I mean, it's not reasonable to it's not unreasonable thing that, you know, 50, 60, I mean, we have LTVs that go up into the six figures. Um so, it's just a question of time. >> Okay, well, then I mean, fundamentally, if you have a three to one LTV to CAC, right? I'm guessing what are your gross profits on that? >> Uh about 60-ish percent, 55.

2:31>> Okay, so call it 36 on 60 is what you make and 100k you're making um uh 60k, right? So, like 36 to 60k-ish. Does that sound correct? Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, I think you're I think you're under compensating for the affiliate. So, I'd be willing to give six, eight, 10 even, you know, for a deal like that and that's per deal. Now, now you're starting lower, which is fine, but given like you getting one customer can be on the low side worth 36 to you in gross profit. It's like I'm willing to give 10 for that all day. And so, if I were to say, "Hey, I'll front you 10 to get started." Or like I'll let's say you offer two and you say, "Hey, but if we do the thing in the next 30 days, I'll give you three for each for life."

3:17>> That's fantastic. Yeah. >> Let's put a little bit of urgency into it. I do I think this I don't want you to abandon the affiliate things cuz I still think it's like the it's obviously working and so we need to tweak it rather than like let's start something else. It's like we're we're 6 in away from gold. It's like let's drill the next 6 in to get it over the hump. You know what I'm saying? >> No, 100%. The impression that I've gotten and I don't know if you would agree with this, at least your AI kind of felt this way. Um but the actual motivation for them is not purely financial. For them, some of the hesitation comes from just the general friction of activation and then the fact that they uh the social capital that comes with making a referral to a client. So, that's why as much as possible I try to position it as the offers there's it's white labeled it's value to the client.

4:01I And again, they all say it's a no-brainer. So, I think that aspect is there, but well, I'm more than happy to increase the commission per your recommendation. I do wonder if there's a psychological element out there outside of the fact that like dangling more money alone would not create it. Like I don't know that it would double the activation. >> two things. One is I would I would consider making it ongoing. So, I would like consider raising cuz you have almost no churn. Do you have any sale like is getting someone to close when they get on the phone difficult?

4:27>> Uh sorry, I didn't hear the last part. >> What are your close rates? >> Uh about 30 35. >> Yeah. I was going to see cuz like if we could get like a 10% boost in price, we could just hand all of that to the affiliate and make it ongoing. Because if if you're white labeling it, then you can position it as like So, there's two angles to position this from. Number one is that with my services, they will I will make sure that they see your thing is free, right? So, I'm going to do my economics to show them what they're saving with me and they can count that towards what they see with you and your thing is is free forever. That's framing for them, right?

4:58That's that's sales beneficial. The second element is that a lot of people don't want to refer out their business for a one-time spiff. But if they can get 10% 15% ongoing, they're probably way more likely to want to do it. >> Interesting. Okay, I actually offered both. I assumed the upfront hit might be a little bit more motivating. >> The thing that is I think honestly right now is like you're not offering enough. And so right now it feels like the money is like it's like money isn't motivating. It's like well, if you offer them $10 it's not motivating. If you offer a million dollars it is, right?

5:29So, there's an amount, right? And so the thing is is you have more than enough LTV to make up for it. And I think if they give you a little bit more of an assist, but I think the key element here in terms of making sure that it actually gets like implemented faster is that you say that you give there's two two plans. You you call it 2K, 3K or you know, 3K, 10K, whatever. And they get the big one if they do it now.

5:55>> Okay. So, basically creating a form of urgency for them. >> Yes. And it says within the first 30 days. And the only reason we do that is because we found the people who do in the first 30 days have by far the most success. Because there's really like in our in our I don't know if you do this, but I would show them a road map because but think about risk uh think about value equation, right? You got risk, speed, ease. So, it's like how do we make it less risky? How do we make it faster? And how do we make it easier? So, I'd say, "Hey, we already have the emails written. I already took the liberty of, you know, writing that. Obviously, my VA can help you with that." So, it's like take their brand, take the pre you know, the the email sequences and the text sequences that have to go. I already custom built the page. There's nothing you have to do there.

6:31Um that's on the ease side. So, it's like and I'll I'll go there. I'll send one of my team to Yeah, right. I'll actually plug it into your CRM to make that happen. That's the ease side. The second thing is risk. And so, from risk perspective, um one is like here's testimonials, number one. Number two, people are willing to take on risk if they're getting ongoing payments, far more likely to. That's where I think the ongoing spiff is something that's more valuable. Um and then from a speed perspective, uh that was the whole framing around the urgency. Right?

7:02>> Yes, that's all it makes sense. With respect to the bit on the uh risk and the testimonials, I had the feeling that if I were to speed up the amount of the essentially the offer is like the cash asset of the front end. So, if I can get a lot more testimonials for that through a different channel, then it just speeds up the ability to generate that social proof well. And then again, faster revenue in the door today uh in addition to adding the affiliate channel.

7:27>> Well, the fastest channel for you Go ahead. No, go ahead. >> just going to ask if it makes sense to try something like uh running an ad funnel for that. >> You absolutely can. I'm pretty sure I recommended affiliates because it didn't seem like it was like within your like realm of skill sets at the time. And so, I was like, I want to take the the highest likelihood bet as my first bet. Given where you're at, I still like if I had my druthers, I'd want you to still redline this and go harder on it, because I think that gets you to 10, 12, and beyond.

7:55Do I think that having an ad funnel is in the future of the business? Yes, I do. But I just want to have this base of affiliates that's feeding you first. Um from an ad funnel perspective, um I think that it would be almost content driven, because this is a very authority like this is an authority thing. Like they're literally coming to you for like CFO. You know what I mean? Like they they have to see you as an authority figure. And so I think the logos of the brands, the size of the brands that you have being mentioned as long as they're okay with it in the ads, plus like two or three very clear tactical hooks and angles of things that they're not thinking about or that their generic bookkeeper CPA is leaving out that is going to have a dramatic effect on the business. And so it's like I would I know this sounds wild, but like try and ROI yourself before the call.

8:40>> You mean like a calculator close type thing? >> No, no, no. Try and ROI yourself in the content that you're putting out that becomes the ads. >> Ah, okay. >> So here's the next steps on the ad funnel side. I prefer you still double down on the affiliate thing, but the the next steps look like this. Post a shitload of content about you doing stuff with the clients that you currently serve, and the size and the savings, all of that, right? And talk about all the tiny little tactics that you do with those businesses.

9:08Then you could hook up um uh ManyChat to those organic content pieces, drive them to uh just inbound leads, so you'll get leads from that, and that can go opt-in VSL close. And then once you know the highest performing content pieces, you can take all that content and immediately just distribute them as ads to the same funnel. >> Okay. That's very helpful. And then just to pivot back to the affiliate for the moment, most of the ones that I have been managing to uh acquire are somewhat warm people like agencies and people in our networks that I know. Um Is it worth it then going that step further to like the cold affiliate acquisition? Obviously, it's functional, but the amount of

9:54>> If I had my druthers, yeah, if I had my druthers, I would actually advertise to B2B agencies via ads instead. Cuz there's so many e-commerce agencies. >> Lead magnet to them? >> Yeah, and I would just get them on the phone and say, "Listen, I have an offer that is only me making you money, not costing you money, but here's the deal." >> Right. >> Think about it this way. If you give six grand up front, and let's say an agency has 30 clients, okay?

10:20They do a webinar with you, and let's say half of their customers take it. That's 15 out of 30. If they're getting 6K up front, they make 90,000 in the first month with you. That's a hell of a testimonial. >> Right, and then I can have testimonials of Exactly. affiliates to social proof more affiliates. >> Exactly. And so, one of And the the pain points are going to be different. So, it's like you're probably dealing with LTV issues, churn issues, them constantly doing XYZ. It's like, "What if you could onboard a customer, and even if they leave you, you still keep getting paid?"

10:54>> That's solid. >> Right? Cool. I got to jump to the next person, but that that help you out? >> Fantastic. I appreciate Of course. Thank you so much for your time. >> Appreciate you, bud. Rock and roll. >> Appreciate you. Bye. >> If you're a business owner, and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had, and what stages of growth they went through, and more importantly, where they got stuck, and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages, and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at, and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you de-constrain the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.