Sabunwali? Who?

A team leader of 6 men, a 26 year old woman, I am the custodian of an annual turnover of 80 crores, and have close to 100 indirect reportees addressing me as 'Maedumm'. I am the manager of an entire state; all towns, villages, hamlets... - well basically anything from the depot to the shelves of your friendly neighbourhood paanwala, that falls in the defined geography, is under my lordship (or so I tell myself to make my job sound slightly glorious!!)

I play multiple roles; I am a ninja warrior, a fire fighter, the agony aunt of my team, the punching bag of my channel partners, the scapegoat for the boss and the guardian of my turf against stock inflows from nearby areas. For a living, I sell soap and other super useful FMCG products in the red corridor of upcountry India.

I am an FMCG ASM (Area Sales Manager). The breed that none other than a B-School graduate or those in the Indian FMCG companies can understand! Most 'normal' (aka uninitiated to sales) people I encounter cannot even fathom what the job description of an ASM reads like. And it is very difficult to answer questions like "Beta, where is your office?" "Beta, what are your office hours?"  "Beta, why do you travel so much, and where to?"

Having tasted the dust and grime of FMCG sales for 1.5 years, I often wonder as to how I never thought about the miraculous presence of a range FMCG goods in shops at every nook and cranny. I bow my head obsequiously to those mighty humans who ensure that outlets in every city, town and village in India are stocked to the neck with shampoos, soaps, insecticides, toothpastes, toiletries and the likes! I almost always took it for granted that my toothpaste and soap would just be sitting there on the shelf when I strolled casually to the neighborhood kirana shop. Little did I know that somewhere a person called the ASM was losing all their sanity on a daily basis to accomplish this superb feat!

We the ASMs of the FMCG companies operating in India should be thanked by the populace on a daily basis for providing them with the ways and means to keep their bodies, hair and teeth smelling nice and clean and for ensuring that their houses are free from insects. We endure hardship so that their stomachs are always full of their preferred junk food and fizzy/healthy drinks, and provide them with such easy access to all those little glittery packs of hundreds of useful things that line shop shelves. All that the people have to do is to walk to the shop/ get 'free home delivery', and we, the invisible elves of the FMCG world guarantee they get what they want and where they want it, without any heartache.

My profession is noble and completely devoted to public service. I have silently encountered all the brickbats that the evil world of sales has thrown my way, never asking the consumer for anything more than buying my product while shunning the competition. Since I am amongst those few unlucky souls who never get appreciated for the arduous risks they take in their daily mission to ease the life of their customers and make money for their companies, I have no other choice but to resort to writing a blog hoping that somewhere, some nice gentle soul would read the ramblings of an ASM trying to stay sane in the mad world of FMCG and thank me and all my counterparts for their multiple sacrifices and empathize with us and maybe pray to the god they believe in that we accomplish our monthly sales targets and not get chided by the boss for our inability to do so. And it is with this hope in my heart that I devote myself to writing this blog about the adventures/mis-adventures of this sabunwali.