The Wedding Intern

(page 2 of 2)

The reputation of the Post's MBA internship program helped me with these sales reps. While I think they were expecting a snobby MBA kid who didn't know a lick about sales, their familiarity with (and respect for) the MBA intern program led them to at least grant me one meeting. Many of these sales reps ended up being invaluable resources and mentors once I demonstrated that I was there to learn from them, and several of them put a good deal of much appreciated effort into selling ads in the guide.

The second part of the project was to develop the guide itself. The key driver of my work here was cost discipline, and I have to say that my accounting classes and how they sensitized me to the various guises that costs could assume in a project like this one, were very useful. Plotting out all the steps that needed to take place for the production of the guide to actually happen on deadline was something I did thanks to my operations class, and the tracking spreadsheet I created as a result was invaluable in keeping me and my colleagues on track with our internal deadlines across the summer. I also used some of the research skills and resources I'd developed and learned about in my marketing classes to understand our consumers and ensure that we were putting together a product that would serve their needs.

Finally, I put together a marketing plan to promote the guide to brides. That was fun because I had the whole spectrum of Washington Post Media outlets to choose from. Which media would be best for reaching the affluent, 25-to- 40-year-old women I was targeting? The Travel section? Sunday Style and Arts? Washingtonpost.com? If so, which pages online? What about targeting the moms of newly engaged women, who would also be part of the planning process? The Post also gave me the latitude to explore whether using other marketing outlets such as Facebook would make sense for this project. A class I took the second semester of my first year called Advanced Marketing Planning definitely came into play in all of this and was helpful in ensuring I didn't forget some key part of the marketing plan development process.

On to Entrepreneurial Selling

My experience at the Post this summer, while drawing from what I had already learned, also helped to highlight some skills areas that I still need to fill in. Sales, for example, is a key function at many organizations, and I learned this summer that I could know much more about how to do it well. I've therefore signed up to take Entrepreneurial Selling this semester. Greater facility with Excel will also always be useful, and I'm hoping that the Decision Models class I'm taking will further develop my skills in that area. Overall, though, I felt well-prepared for my internship, thanks to my first year of business school, and know that another year at school will put me in a solid position for whatever I pursue full time.

Erin Rupprecht is a member of the NYU Stern full-time MBA class of 2010.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.