Meet the Team — Atanas Popivanov, Senior Sales Manager

GRID offers a wide variety of services powered by the GRID Data Platform, and services a number of clients around the world with varying use cases. And just as important as the services themselves are the relationships we develop with our clients from day one. It requires great communication, trust, and a genuine desire to do great things together.

Helping lead the charge on this front, and the focus of this edition of Meet the Team, is Atanas Popivanov — Senior Sales Manager at GRID.

You’re from Bulgaria originally, and work remotely there as well. How do you think GRID’s team and our offerings benefit from having employees from around the world?

On one hand, in the grand scheme of things, the company benefits greatly from having employees around the world, as that contributes to having a great cultural diversity. It almost feels like, since we have so many employees around so many different countries that the company is a lot larger in scale.
On a sales level, being from a specific region helps some of our clients and potential customers relate easier with a certain team member, being from the same region, due to cultural similarities. It is often that we bring other team members from the same regions as them to calls with potential customers, so we can ensure reliability.

What does your day-to-day look like as GRID’s Senior Sales Manager?

I juggle between handling existing clients, maintaining the relationships already created on the best level possible, looking for new prospective clients and trying to connect with them on another hand, which is a form of art by itself. Also handling internal processes and assets in the best way possible, and recently training and supervising on the integration of new employees within the team. It is a very dynamic environment and work process, which requires a lot of flexibility and dedication.

Working in GRID’s Sales Team leads to you having multiple strong relationships with different clients. Can you describe what that entails from the first meeting onward?

It really depends on the client in most cases. There are different types of clients, as some of them prefer a more light-hearted atmosphere in order to feel comfortable and some are more comfortable in a business-only atmosphere of relationships. Either way the initial goal is to establish GRID’s amazing products and services and establish solid relations with the client, based on trust and consensus on mutual benefits of the cooperation.

What are you most proud of achieving since joining GRID 3 years ago? What is a goal(s) you want to achieve in the future?

To be honest, I don’t have one specific event that I can mark as being most proud of. I am proud of the process of growth, both personal and on a company level, since I joined, being achieved through maintaining great working relationships within the company, constantly expanding my knowledge as well. I will have to say kudos to the management team for leading the way and especially to Mikael for being such a great mentor and setting up the pace.

About the future, I would like to see the company scale up massively, along with my client base, not losing the core values we hold now.

How would you describe what GRID does as a company?

An innovative company that highly contributes to the whole Esports ecosystem, by providing a platform for monetization of data and building bridges between the Esports scene and interested parties like viewers, fans, sponsors and pro players. By working with some of the biggest Game Publisher companies in the world, GRID’s platform provides a much needed set of tools, incentivizing the expansion of data usage in Esports and Gaming.

Also a company derived from a dream and developed into one of a great company culture and friendly working environment, full of amazing people, all contributing to mutual success.
 

We have quite a diverse group at GRID with many different interests. What are some of your favorite hobbies outside of work?

I like gaming, attending concerts, watching movies and reading. Nothing super extravagant. 🙂