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by ScottWhigham 5118 days ago
Wait - that's not a "salesperson" in the traditional sense, is it? A traditional salesperson calls on clients, closes deals, and gets paid a commission for each sale. A "sales team" is a team of such salespeople. A salesperson couldn't care less about a lot of things you listed ("... staying on top of the blogs/social networks"). A salesperson cares about finding qualified leads, calling those leads, following up with those leads, and closing deals (and ideally for 1000+ units at a time in your case).

An "affiliate marketer" posts ads and gets paid a commission per action (account created, sale). The affiliate marketers want to create a buzz and get people talking about a product. Affiliate marketers though are thinking "One sale at a time" rather than "1000 units per sale". I think you could easily find affiliate marketers - that's never, ever going to be difficult as long as you are willing to pay a significant enough percentage (30%-50% will attract the better ones).

I'd just advise caution here and perhaps a little more study. You wouldn't be the first guy who some affiliate marketer "tricked" into signing an exclusive contract only to then learn that the affiliate marketer couldn't/wouldn't really sell your product...

1 comments

yeah, affiliate marketing is generally more trouble than it's worth for a business my size, at least for the moment. I've just heard too many horror stories.

I guess what I ultimately want is a "salesman-ish" cofounder to do help with the business side and marketing, while I crank out what my customers want.