FEATURE
Q&A:
TOM GALANIS, AFFILIATE
MANAGEMENT ACADEMY
The Affi liate Management Academy sets out to provide affi liate managers of all levels and anyone
working in affi liation to learn the tools of the trade and take on what course trainer Tom Galanis
describes as “the toughest career in igaming”. iGB Affi liate caught up with Tom to fi nd out more.
You’ve been in the gambling
affi liate space for 12 years now,
consulting for the last eight of
these. What inspired the move
into training for the Affi liate
Management Academy?
Being perfectly candid, I was not ready to
be running an affiliate programme when
I started. I was responsible for around a
quarter of the new players and revenue
going in to a multi-million pound business.
That is the case for most coming into the
role, so the Affiliate Management Academy
sets out to provide attendees with some of
the guidance and advice I wish I had all
those years ago.
As you said, most affi liate
managers learn on the job.
What are the advantages of a
more structured learning
approach such as this?
Affiliate management
can be a brutal world.
While it’s true to
say that the most
valuable education
comes from doing
the job, sharing
and picking
up tips to
assist you in
structuring
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iGB Affi liate Issue 64 AUG/SEP 2017
what inevitably becomes a hectic
routine, full of firefighting and satisfying
external and internal stakeholders,
training is always welcome.
The course covers the basics of the
job before exploring techniques designed
to optimise time, resource, learning,
performance and budgeting, all the
while personalising the content to
ensure that attendees fully appraise
the ‘self ’ and take away learnings to
help them flourish and enjoy the job to
the max.
You state in your course intro
that “the art of affi liate
management comes through
personalising the role”.
What do you mean by this?
I am a firm believer that the best sales
people harness their own personality
rather than strive to learn uncomfortable
sales techniques. Combined with the
obvious requirements to blend relationship
management skills and a knowledge base
that supersedes that of any other position in
an igaming business, quite frankly the only
way to get by, never mind excel, is to do so
in your own way.
You also look at negotiating deals
with affi liates, always a contentious
topic of discussion at events.