Earned Exits

Introducing Earned Exits

Earned Exits is a majority woman-owned and led business brokerage and M&A advisory firm helping small to mid-sized businesses successfully sell their companies. With more than 30 years of experience across 17+ industries, their team specializes in guiding entrepreneurs through every stage of the sale process, from valuation to closing.

When the company decided to implement affiliate marketing, their goal wasn’t to chase quick conversions; it was to build a system that could mirror their detailed, multi-stage sales process and reward affiliates for contributing to complex, high-ticket deals.

The challenge: Traditional platforms couldn’t keep up

For Earned Exits, affiliate marketing meant managing long sales cycles that can stretch up to 18 months, involving several deal stages and multiple touchpoints. The problem? Most affiliate platforms were built for simple, fast transactions, not long, high-value negotiations.

Before adopting Post Affiliate Pro, they faced several key issues:

• Lack of flexibility to mirror their unique sales pipeline.

• No automated way to update and reward affiliates as leads progressed through each sales stage.

• High pricing from platforms that still didn’t meet their needs.

We needed something that would fit with our clients sales cycle and would allow us to automatically keep individual affiliates informed as their leads progressed through a sales process that could take up to 18 months.

— Adrian Tatum, affiliate manager consultant at Effective Business Growth, the affiliate marketing consultancy that designed, implemented, and manages Earned Exits’ affiliate program.

After evaluating nearly 30 affiliate platforms, they found that only Post Affiliate Pro offered the right mix of flexibility, customization, and value.

Most affiliate platforms we have evaluated for clients in the past are either very expensive or simply do not have this functionality.

— Adrian Tatum

The solution: Customization, transparency, and industry-leading support

Earned Exits, through Effective Business Growth, chose Post Affiliate Pro for its adaptability and outstanding integration support, as they had highly customized requirements:

• A multi-step sales process with tailored rewards at each stage.

• Automated affiliate notifications when leads advanced.

• Integration with PipeDrive CRM to sync real-time data.

• Multi-tier commissions to reward affiliates at different levels and stages of the deal.

• Transparent multi-step reporting to deliver automated updates that keep affiliates informed at every stage, building trust and engagement.

The Post Affiliate Pro integration team delivered all of this with ease, resulting in a platform perfectly fitted for Earned Exits’ complex sales cycles.

We worked with the integration team to customize Post Affiliate Pro to deliver precisely what the business needed. Now we have an affiliate process mapped to our business, rather than having to map our business to what most affiliate platforms want you to do.

— Adrian Tatum

Why multi-step progress reporting matters

One of the most significant advantages, according to Adrian, is the automatic communication flow designed for affiliates.

One thing I’ve found through many years of both being an affiliate and designing and running affiliate platforms is that affiliates hate when a lead goes into a company and they have no idea what’s happening with it. What we’ve designed together keeps affiliates automatically informed of every step of progress and what the next step is.

— Adrian Tatum

For affiliates, this means feeling valued, informed, and confident that their leads are actively being worked on.

For companies, it means no more manual updates and dramatically higher affiliate engagement and retention.

Implementation: From complex needs to seamless integration

Earned Exits’ setup was far from standard. The company needed a custom-built structure that could track deals across months or even years while communicating progress to affiliates automatically.

The integration team just got it and made it happen. Some of the best support I have ever seen—and I’ve been in the industry for over 40 years.

— Adrian Tatum

Thanks to Post Affiliate Pro’s integration support, the system was configured precisely to their specifications. Their affiliate management is now tightly connected to PipeDrive CRM, ensuring that every deal update is reflected in the affiliate dashboard and in automatic communications. This ensures clarity for affiliates and complete operational efficiency for Earned Exits.

Adrian emphasizes that after working with many platforms over the years, the implementation experience and flexibility of Post Affiliate Pro truly stood out:

I would recommend Post Affiliate Pro to anyone evaluating affiliate software. I’ve set up and run many affiliate programs for clients, including Earned Exits. I can say this platform is by far the most adaptable, and the support is excellent. I believe that if companies do proper evaluations of all affiliate programs on the market, Post Affiliate Pro will top your charts.

— Adrian Tatum

Results and impact

Since adopting Post Affiliate Pro, Earned Exits has seen a transformation in affiliate management:

• Full visibility – affiliates see exactly where their leads stand at every stage of the sales process.

• Complete transparency – affiliates understand how commissions are calculated and receive automated updates that keep them informed and confident.

• Higher engagement and retention – real-time notifications and clear progress reporting keep affiliates motivated, active, and committed to the program.

• Time savings – automated reporting and workflows replaced manual tracking.

• Faster onboarding – affiliates now understand the process from the start, reducing confusion and setup time.

Affiliates often ask why all programs can’t do this. The custom email notifications alone have boosted motivation, retention, and engagement.

— Adrian Tatum

Continuing the growth journey with Post Affiliate Pro

After 18 months of success, Earned Exits is ready to take its affiliate program to the next level. The company plans to expand and diversify its affiliate recruitment, bringing in partners from new industries while introducing enhanced commission structures and bonuses to reward top performers.

At the same time, Earned Exits will continue to leverage its PipeDrive CRM integration to maintain scalability, real-time visibility, and the high level of efficiency achieved with Post Affiliate Pro.