Season 01 / Episode 025
Dan Amarquaye – Affiliate Marketer, From Door-to-Door Salesman to multiple startup founder
With Dan Amarquaye - Head of Partnerships, Envolve Technologies
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Summary
Startups, acquisitions, technology affiliates and door to door sales? Yup, we talk about all those things on today’s episode featuring our special guest Dan Amarguaye of Envolve Technologies. I met Dan while he was still with the affiliate recruitment tool company he co-founded in 2018, Publisher Discovery.
Dan is an true, and successful, entrepreneur and he talks about leadership and the lessons he has learned throughout his career. Don’t miss out and listen through to the end. We dive into his resume and talk about how his time as a Door to Door salesmen on the streets of London allowed him to develop strong relationship building skills that allow him to succeed today.
We talked about lessons learned in acquisitions, why he loves starts up and dive into some misconceptions advertisers have about the affiliate channel and coupons specifically. Dan provides great insight into the channel and the importance of affiliates to your marketing mix.
If you’d like to find more about Envolve and how to work with them on a performance basis, contact dan at dan.2ATenvolvetech.com or go to www.envolvetech.com
About Our Guest
Dan Amarquaye on the Web
Top Tips
The key to being a successful affiliate manager is building relationships. Dan mentions a key to his success as an affiliate manager was focusing on relationships, whether it be with the network, client or affiliates. He said it’s important to be hands-on and really understand the programs that you manage. He explains that we are lucky to be an industry where partnerships are a big thing, where you get to work closely with others.
Lead teams by example. Dan discusses the top tips he has for leading a group successfully. He says it’s about leading by example, and that he never asked anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, whether it’s easy or difficult. Let your team be themselves and enjoy what they do. He mentions how important it is to have people around you that you can bounce ideas off of and be yourself around, without egos.
Highlights
Think of sales as a conversational dialogue.
“Nick [Dan’s previous supervisor] allowed me to be myself and try different techniques without judgement. To me, business or sales development isn’t about selling something, it’s a conversational piece. If you feel comfortable having a dialogue with somebody, it can take you a long way in sales. Many people think sales involves pushing someone to do something they don’t want, but I never looked at it like that.”
Dan discusses what exactly Publisher Discovery does and what problems it solves for advertisers.
“Publisher Discovery enables advertisers to find new affiliates, simply. It analyzes the affiliate landscape, understands tracking links and allows advertisers to understand the publishers their competitors are using. It creates a gap analysis between an advertiser and their competitors and then cherry-picks those missing from the program.”
Quotes
[12:30] – “When I first started off in the affiliate space, the main misconception from advertisers was the valuation of the space and their products. We would typically work with a certain type or size of brand and overtime we saw more people and brands adopt affiliate marketing into their general marketing strategy, which was the biggest change I saw.”
[32:15] – “{Dan on founding Publisher Discovery} Something I always wanted to do was work for myself in some capacity. I’ve always had that desire to do my own thing. When I saw the opportunity, it was a no-brainer. We were already running that department on our own anyways, without much backing from Linkdex overall. I certainly knew it was something I could do…”
[45:40] – “Do your homework when it comes to people wanting to buy you out. Is it the right fit for you, as well as them? I have never done anything for the financial gain, it must feel right to me. Finance comes second, don’t ever sell your soul. Make sure your base clients are coming first and the service is still going to be at the forefront. Be true to your value.”
