Four and a half minutes from a team call with new closers. Yousif Alias talks about the noes that come with any sales job, the four years he made nothing while paying for his own ads, why working from home takes more discipline, why his best clients do one thing, and why the product has to be better than the sales team.
The short version
- 1. You will hear more noes than yeses. The yeses build the career, so don't let the noes stop you.
- 2. Two days proves nothing. Yousif went four years before he earned a single dollar.
- 3. Working from home is harder. Nobody is standing over you, so the work has to be self-driven.
- 4. Do one thing well. His most successful clients stick to their one skill and hand off the rest.
- 5. The product sells the company. Clients from 2016 still pay because the work gets results.
More noes than yeses
Yousif says that if someone had told him on day one how many people would say no, he probably would have quit before he started. In any sales job, insurance included, the noes outnumber the yeses. The yeses are what build your career, and each no gets you one step closer to the next yes.
A new closer messaged him after two days of calls with no deal. Yousif told him he did this for four years before he got paid. You build a relationship with a lead over time. Calling someone and asking "want to buy these ads?" in the first ten seconds gets a no from everybody.
Dental assistant, nightclub, Uber
Those first four years were hard. Yousif worked as a dental assistant during the day, worked a nightclub shift at night, and drove Uber after that, all to pay for ads and learn how to run them properly. He paid one so-called mentor 10K to teach him, and that person didn't even show up to teach. He hired other people to do it.
Working from home is the hard version
Online work looks easy because you don't drive anywhere or burn gas, and you aren't out in the field. Yousif's view is the opposite. Since nobody is there to make you pick up the phone, you have to tell yourself you're going to sit down and do the work, and then do it.
Your best clients do one thing
The pattern he sees in his successful clients is focus. A CPA does CPA work. He doesn't want to run his own marketing or do his own closings. Yousif runs his own work the same way: he does ads, and he doesn't want to do SEO, organic content or anything else.
He's also honest that his company has never had the best sales team. What keeps it going is a product that gets people results, so clients from 2016 are still paying and referrals keep coming in. If the product is good, it sells itself.
The hardest part of leads got easier
Generating leads is the easy part. Getting someone to call them is hard. AI has made that part easier. On the day of this call, his AI setter had already booked three appointments on his calendar.
This episode stays on the mindset. The day-to-day side, the calls and the setups behind them, is what Yousif teaches inside Freedom Club.
Full episode transcript
00:00If you would have told me that when I first started, like hey, you're going to have 3 ,000 people that will say no to you, I would have probably been discouraged and never started this business. But that's part of it. That's part of the actual thing. You'll get more nos than yeses, but the yeses you'll get is what's going to build your career. Especially if you've been doing sales for long enough, you know you're going to get more nos than yeses. But the trick is you don't let the nos discourage you, because the no is just one step closer to a yes. And what I've seen happen is like, I literally had a message earlier.
00:41He said, well, I called for two days, and I didn't get a close deal. Two days? I did this for four years before I got a single dollar. You're telling me you did it for two days and you don't really get? Really? So it's not just like doing it for just two days. You got to at least do it for a good amount of time and build relationships from these leads, not just as soon as they answer, hey, you want to buy this? Hey, you want to buy these ads? You want to make money? You want to get clients? Nobody's going to say yes. You got to build that relationship.
01:18And that goes to any sales process, any sales job you guys get. Insurance, anything. Like you guys sell, you can't just go in and shove it down their throat. It's just not going to work, okay? And so that's really the biggest lesson that I want to leave you guys with is like this is a numbers game, okay? My whole 20s, I lived like a rock star because of this business, okay? But the first four years, it was like hell on earth. I was a dental assistant, so I had to look at people's dirty mouths every day. I used to work in a nightclub, and I did Uber after my nightclub shift.
02:04All so I can fund some ads and learn how to actually do this right. I had to pay some guy 10K to teach me some stuff, and he wasn't even there. He hired some other people to do the teaching. But it was kind of like, that's what I had to do, you know? And again, because this is online, because you guys don't have to go to a location, you don't have to waste your gas, you don't have to risk your life, you don't have to pretty much do anything. You can just stay at home and do this. Because of that, this is hard work. It's not easy, okay?
02:46It's self-driven. You have to literally tell yourself, hey, I'm going to sit here and make those 100 dials, and it's going to happen. And you've got to pretty much do it yourself. And the more you do just one thing, what I've learned from all my successful clients, not my unsuccessful ones because there's nothing to learn there, all my successful clients just do one thing and they do it really well. If he's a CPA, he just does CPA. He doesn't want to do marketing. He doesn't want to do his closings. He doesn't want to do anything, just one thing. I like to do the same thing. I just do ads.
03:27I just want to do ads. I don't want to do SEO. I don't want to do organic content. I don't want to do anything else other than ads. In my opinion, a good company is not all about sales because we don't have the best sales team. I'm going to be honest with you. We've had times where we had a really solid sales team, but we don't have the best sales team overall. But because our products are so well put together and because they generate results for people, that even clients that we've had in 2016 are still paying us to this day. So I believe the product always has to be better than everything else because if the product is good, it can sell itself.
04:11It can bring more people, more referrals, and all that stuff. the main thing about leads is it's easy to generate leads but it's hard to get people to call the leads. But now with AI, it's gotten a lot easier. Our AI setter has set three appointments for me today. So it's really becoming powerful.
