Hiring your next Affiliate Manager is a big decision and at the end of it all you want to know you’ve made the right decision.

I get asked this question often, so I asked my friend Randy Norton to help answer this, based on his extensive experience in our industry.

I hope it helps you when the time comes to hire an AM.

Here's the question I put to Randy:

Peter:

"What are the top characteristics or skills you need to look for when hiring an AM?"

He came up with these 9 points:


Randy:

"I’ve seen a lot of people come and go in the affiliate marketing profession, but I’m happy to tell you there is a common thread, or 9 for that matter, that will tell you if you have the best person picked out for the position. 

We all know that real estate is about “location, location, location” right?

Well, affiliate marketing is about “relationships, relationships, relationships”.

An effective affiliate manager needs to build strong positive relationships in order to recruit and retain the affiliates that are going to help make a difference in your affiliate program.

Being that this profession is so relationship based you should not be surprised that the first 5 points in the list are concerning these types of attributes.

1. Friendly Disposition - In order to really establish a strong relationship with not only the fellow team members but affiliates as well, the individual needs to be someone that has a friendly disposition.   Now I’m not talking about someone that can dominate a conversation, rather someone that you enjoy talking to or carry on a conversation with.
2. Polished written and oral skills - In building a strong relationship with any affiliate, or anybody for that matter, the individual must be able to both listen effectively and respond intellectually. 
3. Able to work within a team environment effectively – If this individual is going to be able succeed in your company and the direction you want them to take they have to be a team player and be able to thrive within that environment.
4. Punctual response time – I can’t stress how important this is.  When an affiliate asks a question, your affiliate manager needs to tend to that question as quickly as they can.  The affiliate is the life blood of your program and rarely do they say “In a week I plan to. . . . “.  What they usually want to know is “Why won’t my links work?” or “What coupons can I use in tomorrow’s newsletter?”  By not responding to this correspondence quickly your affiliate manager is telling that affiliate that their time and effort is not important to them and you will lose them.
5. Retail or ecommerce experience – The best way to illustrate why this is so important is to ask you a few questions.  How many times have you gone into your favorite clothing or grocery store over the past year and asked one of the employees a question only to find the employee disinterested in what you are asking, treating you with total disrespect or even plain walking away from you?  What if they said “I’ll get back to you after my break?”  Would you be surprised to see them still employed at that location on your next visit?  Probably.  Well see that situation from an employer’s view or even an affiliate’s and you can see what I am getting at.
6. Work ethic and organizational skills – The individual you want to be involved with your affiliate program needs to have a strong work ethic and the ability to manage one’s projects and time wisely.  With a vast portfolio of differing affiliates, multiple company projects and other various tasks to accomplish on any given day the individual needs to have these attributes if they are going to succeed in achieving company and personal objectives.
7. Strong quantitative skills and analytic skills – The ability to scan over a sheet of numbers and pick underperformers, over performers, anomalies, etc is both a learned and genetic attribute that the individual needs to have in their skill set.  When a 0.01% difference in conversion percentage could mean the difference between the company being profitable or not, attention to numbers is very important.
8. Comprehensive knowledge of affiliate marketing techniques – While this is definitely a learned attribute it is imperative that the individual is very familiar with the phrases and terminology of affiliate marketing and the different techniques used by successful affiliates.
9. Hands on experience with various Affiliate Marketing platforms – I know I’m going to get some disagreements here about the importance of this point but let me just say experience matters most if there are only a few members of an affiliate marketing team and the training time frame is minimal.

As for being more familiar with one affiliate program software than another, what I would stress here is that it’s just another interface.

 It is important to know how to upload banners, accept affiliates, create newsletters etc within any of the major networks but they are built quite similar so please don’t make this a make or break point when hiring an affiliate marketer. It's the experience you should be looking for.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article and I hope it helps you to narrow down the next candidate to fill your affiliate marketing needs."

-Randy Norton, Affiliate Program Manager
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Thanks Randy!

If you're looking for help in this area or have questions, you can reach Randy (PST time zone) as follows:

Telephone: 250-483-4736
AIM: RandyNorton99
Email: randynorton (at) hotmail (dot) com

Cheers,
Peter
PS This is not an affiliate offer ... but if you're looking for someone to help you with affiliate management then call Randy before I swamp him with work :)

--- (Edited on 1/16/2008 3:08 pm [GMT-0600] by Peter) ---