Why I started Asbiverse Group – A Salesman’s desire

It was April 1993, I was 15 years old and on the first day of my first ever summer job selling soft toys door to door in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi during school vacations.

Amongst my fair share of snubs, partial interest, bargaining etc. I managed to make my first ever Sale. The biggest toy in my bag, a 4 foot Teddy Bear for a cute little girl who was playing in her courtyard. As soon as her father bought the teddy, it was the biggest and sweetest burst of happiness I had ever seen. That is where my love for sales was born.

I felt I had played some role in bringing joy to the girl and the family.

That feeling stayed with me which led to more part-time sales roles at Uni and even resulted in me leaving a coveted gazetted officer position with the Government of India, all for the love of sales.

I was fortunate that my Sales and then subsequently Strategy, Marketing and Consulting journey took me to roles with ICI Paints (Akzo Nobel)India, Procter & Gamble Europe,
and Accenture Consulting Global.

It was when I started my Consulting journey and my exposure to multiple clients increased that I realised that there were “ Ways of Working” or “Sales Transformations” being undertaken by Consulting/Client teams with an extremely limited participation of Sales people with actual selling experience. What really bothered me was that the Sales professionals were then expected to fully adopt these new processes without proper incorporation of their role perspective. It led to some very emotional discussions in the project teams I was part of (I was still learning the art of diplomacy 😊) but I felt there was a huge gap. That was the moment I decided to set up our business to give a proper voice to the Sales profession which has now taken the shape of Asbiverse Group.

We were very lucky that in our initial years until 2014 we found like minded partners @Consulting by Kantar and we did some great work together.

In more than a decade of our operations,the best feeling in the world is when fellow Sales professionals share their happiness on feeling more equipped having attended one of our training programmes or as a result of a project outcome. Personally when I see dots on the global map increasing where we had the opportunity to work with Sales and Commercial teams (more than 50 countries on last count across 6 continents) I feel extremely humbled that I have had the opportunity to work in the field I absolutely love across the world and hopefully have been able to make a small contribution to the happiness quotient of my fellow Sales professionals.

A Sales professional takes on a lot of responsibility and pressure in the process of helping clients fulfill their needs and deserves to get the best support possible.

I hope to play a small part in that and continue pursuing my purpose of “Empowering Sales Professionals and Profession”