Today, I'm here with a special guest, Troy Hitt, an expert in credit repair affiliate marketing!
Troy built a credit repair business with over a thousand affiliates, making over a million dollars in annual revenue. And on today's Podcast, he's going to share some amazing real-world examples of how affiliate relationships can grow your credit repair business!
Our most successful credit heroes, the ones who make a great living and change a ton of lives, all have a few things in common. They all know the power of affiliate relationships and how to use them to grow their business.
Troy Hitt ran a hugely successful credit repair business for many years. He's designed countless sales funnels and is an expert at building affiliate relationships.
In fact, he is so smart and so talented. We hired him!
He's our Head of Customer Success here at Credit Repair Cloud. And if you're interested in building affiliate relationships and growing your credit repair business, you need to hear this!
So grab a pen and paper because you're gonna wanna take notes!
Here are a few of the highlights…
Why are affiliates important, and why should Credit Heroes consider creating affiliate relationships?
The most important thing, especially when you're starting out…They don't cost anything but your time. But they end up being more valuable than any kiosk you can put in a mall or any sign you can put on the road. They end up being more valuable.
Your return on investment with an affiliate relationship is 100X.
It might cost you a tank of gas a week to go see them and develop a relationship. But that's why I think it's so valuable for those CROs out there, not only to grow but to start your business.
What were some tactics or tips you can give to a credit hero that would help them get their first affiliate?
Google mortgage brokers or real estate offices in your area and get in your car and drive and spend a couple of bucks on a box of donuts. Staple a few business cards to it and do this thing we like called "Donut Drops."
That was it. You just walk in and say, "Hey, I'm a local credit repair industry. I'd love the opportunity to help your clients improve their credit situation, if at all possible, but we don't need to talk about it today. Just enjoy donuts on us."
And that's literally it. You just start to get that visibility, right?
Think about those expensive billboards. Think about that kiosk in the mall. Think about that sign. It's all about visibility. Well, at that time, I think those, in order to establish a relationship, you're only gonna be successful if you establish that in person, and you can only establish so many of those in person before you're doing things virtually.
But you can create a big business, just local contact with your real estate agents and your mortgage brokers.
What do you do to activate affiliates?
You have to constantly give value.
And one of the biggest ways you can give value, there's no better gift to a realtor or mortgage broker than a qualified applicant. That's what they live for. That's the lifeline of their business. So how cool is it when you look through your lens of improving someone's credit situation that, "Hey, it looks like your credit situation has improved? I have a realtor that might be able to find you a place in your area."
Because, now remember, you went around, and you've got names and offices of all the people in the area. "Oh, you're looking in, in our case, Northeast Houston. Well, I know a realtor in Northeast Houston. Why do I connect you two?"
You continue to give value, and if you give them a qualified applicant who's really serious about looking for a home, there's no greater gift that you can give. And again, you're not looking for anything in return. You're just giving, you know?
The law of reciprocity will take care of itself, but you have to trust that process.
How do you keep those affiliates engaged on an ongoing basis?
The first thing you have to do is set an expectation for yourself.
We know that it's not gonna be 100% return every time. There are affiliates that it's a full-time job. It's their livelihood. It's how they put food on the table, and they're definitely more intuitive as to what we're trying to serve. So prepare yourself. I don't want to say lower your expectations but prepare yourself for the outcome of your efforts.
You know, I can remember one time looking into our affiliate portal and having a thousand affiliates in an affiliate portal, right? A thousand. But when we did our report for active affiliates, what we call "Active Affiliates," at best, we may get 300 active affiliates, right? So that's 30%. So if you've got ten relationships, you can maybe expect three of those to engage you, but it doesn't change your effort.
How did you reach that type of market dominance?
The first focus was to dominate your zip code. Like if you have an office, if you have an area that you frequent, just dominate that zip code.
Well, once we began to, what we refer to as "Dominate the Zip Code," we found ways. We wanted to find ways to duplicate ourselves. It's hard to do. Again, those in-person relationships are hard to duplicate.
We discovered an organization called BNI. It's Business Networking International. It's just a networking group, and it's across, it's international. And it just happened to have really good traction in the Houston area because you can only have one representation from one industry in each of these chapters.
So if there was a credit repair person in that chapter, you couldn't be in there. There's going to be a real estate agent in there. There's going to be a mortgage broker in there. There's gonna be a plumber. There's gonna be a carpenter. There's probably going to be all those things that I mentioned. So we paid our money. It's like 500 bucks a year or something like that. We paid our money to say, "Yes, we'll come every week."
We were members of four chapters at one time and began our networking process of being present again. We only have a certain small pool of money when you're just starting out. You're like, "Okay, well, 500 bucks each, that's two grand. That's a lot of money for all of us to do that. But we get to meet every week with our sales and marketing team for an hour and a half a day and let them know the type of person we're looking for and what referrals we want. In return, we get to do the same. I would say that was probably the big catalyst that took our affiliate program to the next level.
What percentage of your clients came from affiliates?
It was a huge percentage. Last I can recall, it was probably in the 30 to 40%. 30 to 40% came from referrals. We could always track it to somebody. We were very diligent in tracking that.
If they weren't directly referred to us by Susie at the front desk or whatever, we'll be like, "Hey, how'd you find out about us?"
As a business, you want to know that. And there was always a name that popped up, and then we would load that in there. We would make sure that we'd load that in there because we wanna be able to track that. Because it wasn't just a one-person job to maintain those affiliate relationships.
We needed to know who our biggest referral is, who's one of our biggest fans out there and take care of them. And sometimes they don't even know, right? "Hey, Tom, did you know you sent us 11 people over last month looking for their credit?" He's like, "No kidding?" I'm like, "Yeah, man. Hey, we're looking to take you out to lunch, man. What's your favorite joint?"
And that was just the beginning of the interview!
Troy shared so many golden nuggets.
You have to check out the entire interview, take notes, and start building those affiliate relationships!
I'LL END BY SAYING
If you still need a Credit Repair Cloud account, check it out. It's the software that most Credit Repair businesses in America run on. Sign up here for a Free Trial!
And if you'd like to change lives and grow your Credit Repair business, check out our Credit Hero Challenge!
It's an amazing program, and we've got another challenge starting in a few days, so grab your spot right now at CreditHeroChallenge.com!
So take care, Credit Hero!
And Keep Changing Lives!