College Student Takes On Sales
My name is Eralinda Hasani and I am an Advertising and English double major concentrating in Media Planning and Creative Writing, respectively. I recently completed an Internship with GraySquare, a Marketing Agency located in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. My time with GraySquare was extremely influential, educational, and eye-opening. This was exactly what I had hoped to gain in an internship, as I continue to learn about potential fields while preparing to apply for full-time jobs.
Being that the title of my intern position is “Marketing and Sales,” I had a preconceived idea of what to expect at GraySquare. I can admit that my expectations lightly aligned with what I completed during my internship. I was given an opportunity to practice direct sales – offering a vast audience of potential consumers the ability to purchase from GraySquare’s current client, Verizon. I learned how to sell myself, on top of selling a product or service, something I had previously not considered as a vital aspect of advertising and marketing agencies. I was given an audience – casual grocery shoppers – and it was up to my personable persuasion skills to convince them to make a purchase that they hadn’t planned on making. This valuable lesson taught me that individual trust-building, physical and emotional behavior, and general demeanor all heavily affect how a client or consumer is persuaded. By becoming a sales representative for Verizon Fios, I learned the “ins and outs” of wifi speeds and cable packages – something I had no knowledge of before this internship.
GraySquare taught me how to transfer my learned knowledge (of advertising) from the classroom and into the live workplace. This means that my work at GS successfully related to some of my past academic experiences. This extension of practice goes beyond a textbook education and exposed me to the “real world” – something once so daunting has become a comfortable space for me. Advertising and marketing are all about successful communication, being able to maintain a relationship, captivate an audience, and persuade someone to perform an action. All of these skills were directly applied and developed at GraySquare. While I do not expect myself to continue working in sales in the future, my work at GraySquare will forever prove useful; I am very glad that I was given this direct experience so early in my career. I have learned key tactics for persuasion, which will be vital in my future advertising careers, whether it be direct or indirectly applied to my line of work.
