From Selling on the Streets to a Masterclass at IIM Bangalore

Success is not about having the perfect plan. It is about having the courage to take the next step when the future looks uncertain. If there is one line I would want you to carry away from my session at IIM Bangalore, it is this one.

I was at the IIM Bangalore campus recently for the Open Canvas series of IIM Bangalore Executive Education, with the EGMP cohort, for a masterclass on leadership and sales. An evening with some of the brightest minds in the country, on a subject I deeply love.

I often share my journey of going from selling on the streets to selling to the suits. But that evening, the journey felt even more meaningful than it usually does.

There was a time when I was just another student trying to figure life out. If someone had told me then that one day I would build Simpli5Sales into one of India''s leading sales talent enablement companies, I would have smiled and dismissed it as a distant dream.

Yet, life has a fascinating way of rewarding consistency.

As I walked through the iconic IIM Bangalore campus and stood before a room full of future leaders, countless memories flashed before my eyes. The rejections. The doubts. The failures. The long days when nobody believed. The small wins that nobody noticed.

And then I realised something, standing there. Every stage of the journey, from the streets to boardrooms, from learner to teacher, from dreamer to entrepreneur, was built one step at a time.

What did the masterclass at IIM Bangalore cover?

The session went deep into the psychology of modern buying. Buyers today are informed, distracted and sceptical, often at the same time. They do not respond to pressure. They respond to understanding. When a salesperson understands how a buyer actually thinks, the conversation changes on its own.

I grounded the discussion in neuroscience, because selling is a conversation between two brains, and the brain decides long before the spreadsheet does. Fear, trust, status and certainty shape every buying decision long before anyone mentions price.

We also spent time on what I call the ''maybe'' trap. It is the quiet stall that kills more deals than any competitor ever will. A buyer who says maybe is not saying no. The maybe is where deals go to sleep. If your pipeline is full of maybes, do not keep adding maybes to it. Qualify harder, follow up with structure, and give the buyer one clear reason to decide now.

From bridging the gap between potential and results, to building cultures where teams sell with confidence, accountability and consistency, the session was as much about leadership as it was about sales. Because the truth is, the best sales leaders do not just close deals. They build teams that believe in what they are doing.

What did walking the IIM Bangalore campus teach me?

Campuses have a way of returning you to an earlier version of yourself. Walking those corridors, I was a student again, unsure of the next step and unsure whether the next step would even work out.

What changed my life was not a perfect plan. I never had one. What changed my life was the habit of taking the next step anyway. Learning the craft of selling on the streets. Facing rejection and coming back the next day. Reading, practising, failing and adjusting, year after year, until the work started to compound.

Consistency is unglamorous. Nobody celebrates the thousandth cold call. But success rarely announces itself on the day it begins. It shows up later, as a body of work that speaks for you when you are not in the room.

If you are early in your own journey, remember that. You do not need the perfect plan to begin. You need a direction and the courage to move. The plan gets sharper as you walk.

How do you build a company like Simpli5Sales?

The same way. Simpli5Sales was not built in one breakthrough moment. It was built on the same principles I now teach: pick a direction, take small consistent steps, measure what works and keep going when it is hard. Sales is a system, not a lottery, and the people who win treat it that way.

That is also what I told the room. Talent matters, but consistency compounds. A brilliant quarter means little. A disciplined decade changes everything.

What should students and young professionals take away from this?

Never underestimate where your current struggles can take you. The rejections you are collecting today are teaching you resilience. The small wins nobody noticed are building your confidence. Comparisons are loud, but progress is quiet. The chapter you are living today may become the story that inspires others tomorrow.

So dream big, start small and stay consistent. The future has a way of surprising you by exceeding expectations.

Thank you to the IIM Bangalore team for the invitation and for making this evening possible. Deeply grateful.