This YouTube interview (host Sam with guest Sabri Suby) recounts how Sabri became the top salesperson in his first job at age 16 by changing his cold-call approach. He describes harsh working conditions (a converted steel shipping container in Byron Bay), making about 300 cold calls per day from printed Yellow Pages leads, and selling a service that bought empty ink cartridges and resold ink. After shifting from a company-focused pitch to a customer-centered opener (e.g., offering to pay to collect empty cartridges), he rapidly doubled his results and became the top producer within weeks.
Questions this video answers
About 300 cold calls per day.
They bought back empty ink cartridges from customers and then sold them ink cartridges.
Chapters
Founder Sabri Subhi joins me now in the studio. I really look at business as an incredible vehicle to really like, make good and make change in the world. My first full time job was in sales. They had like a proper office and then they had this converted shipping container that I was working in with 12 other individuals. And you can imagine it like in the middle of summer in Byron Bay, no AC in like a literally steel box. And they would give us like leads printed out from the yellow pages and they would give it to us and we would basically make 300 cold calls a day. This is like before headsets and computers and all of that stuff. It was literally, you just keep the phone on your ear and you just dial for dollars all day long. And yeah, it was like me and two other girls who got the job and I was the runt of the litter. Those two chicks were kicking my ass and it was like, it was a two week kind of probation and it got to the end of that and I was definitely the wor and the, the guy who ran that business, very incredible sales guy. He was like, hey, like, I see something in you. Like, I don't want to let go of you, but man, like, you're not doing very good. Like, you need to change something. I'll give you another week, basically. And then that was like that. I remember just going home that night, just being like, if I don't turn this around, like, I'm going to lose my job. And in, in that, in like in Byron Bay, it's like a regional beach town. Like you have literally a sales job or you're like a kitchen hand washing dishes, right? So I was like, I gotta make this thing work. And so it was like a moment of like desperation, of inspiration. And I just remember, like, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna like throw all this other stuff out. Like, if I was on the other end of the telephone, what would I wanna hear? And I just started approaching it like a video game pretty much. And it was like a switch flicked in me overnight. You know, that first day I got better results than the other two girls and than everyone else in the team. And within like four weeks, I was, I was the top producer. And that didn't change.
So that step change or that that switch in your head was treating the customer more like as if you were the customer putting yourself in their shoes and thinking, what would you like to hear?
Exactly. And it was all. The whole pitch that they gave you was all about their company, right? And I was like, I'm calling about this company and this is what we do, and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, look, these people don't give a shit about that. Like, I'm getting verbally abused all day long on the telephone. Like, I'm just going to go straight for the jugular on these phone calls. And it was just a change in my opening pitch rather than calling up and being like, you know, we were selling ink cartridges, and our thing was, like, we would buy back empty ink cartridges off people and we would pay them for those recycling, recycle those empty ink cartridges, and then we would call them back and we would sell them the ink cartridges. So our whole thing was like, oh, we're calling from XYZ company and we saved the planet and we're doing all of this stuff and really trying to appeal to, like, what we do. And then I just scrapped that. And I was just like, hey, are you the person that looks after the print cartridges? And they're like, yep. And I'm like, cool, what kind of printer do you have there? And they're like, I have a brother 5440. And I'm like, cool. You know those empty ink cartridges that you keep in that thing and you throw in the bin? I want to pay you to come and collect those. And they're like, what? I'm like, yeah, I want to pay you to come and collect your trash. And it was just that intro alone, and it was just like, I just doubled the sales immediately. And it wasn't long before they were all like, copying that script. Yeah. Yeah. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. We're dropping a video like this almost every single day on YouTube. And if you've got any questions, leave them in the comments box below with heysubri. And I'll do my best to get in there and get that answered. Sam.
