My Internship Experience: Preparation for Life after College

CMAT 495 Internship

Spring 2017
 I think I can speak for most college students when I say that there is a time in each class

that we find ourselves thinking why do I need to know this. I have been guilty of this thought

myself, and would be lying if I said that often times I would doubt the criticalness of certain

classes. It wasnt until I enrolled in my CMAT 495 internship class and began my internship

with Electronic Transactions Systems (ETS), that I realized the interconnectedness of the values

learned in many of my different classes during my college career. I realized that internships are

the first opportunity a student gets to watch what was taught in the classroom become applied in

real life. I had the pleasure of interning this semester with ETS at their Berlin, Maryland sales

office and received in-depth training about the tactics that are used to become a master business

consultant, and on top of all that, a proficient communicator. Looking back on the semester, I

learned invaluable information about the art of sales, had surprise moments, some of which were

positive and some that were negative. As I reminisce, this internship experience has definitely

shed some light on the direction of my career path moving forward.

Electronic Transactions Systems Corporation is an international corporation

headquartered in Virginia, with satellite ofces in Germany, Canada, and Ireland. ETS offers

merchant services to clients in 23 countries around the world. It is one of the largest independent

merchant processors in the world, serving the industry for over 22 years and during that time has

set up over 400 integrations with club management systems. Additionally, ETS earns less than a

2% attrition rate with its clients in an industry that averages 22%. The role of the Berlin sales

division is to generate more business relationships within the Eastern Shore, which is mostly

done through cold-calls, as well as face to face meetings with business owners within the local

area of the office. If a business accepts credit cards, they can be a client of ETS which is why the

office is constantly busy generating connections.

 My internship at ETS could be considered a position in-between marketing and

consulting. At ETS, Communication is a critical step in connecting with prospective clients

about their current business operations, and in turn offering a solution that would fit best within

their business model. For the past 3 years, I have been studying Human Communication and the

way in which people interact with each other in various settings. I believe that my

Communications Rhetoric and Presentation class was the first in which I realized the importance

of communicating with confidence, clarity, and competency. There is nothing more nerve

racking to a college sophomore than to stand in front of a class, majority of who were strangers,

and deliver a presentation that was clear and concise, all the while conveying to the audience

they were competent and confident. It is within these trial and error periods that you find your

comfort level as a speaker, and learn to organize your thoughts into a convincing, smooth flow.

It is classes like this one that I have found the skills gained were able to be re-applied in a

real-life context within my internship. Cold calling businesses, most of the time with owners and

managers who are considered strangers, takes a strong sense of communication competency to

generate an idea over the phone in a clear manner, all the while being conscious of the business

workers worth of time. Like a speech class, there is a window of opportunity, most calls

averaging at five minutes. Within this window, a consultant needs to be able to paint a mental

picture for the prospective client, of their business currently, and then sell them on how it would

be improved by the products that ETS has to offer. The only way this interaction between

consultant and client can successfully be done is by the consultant who is speaking, to provide

confidence in their voice that they are an expert in their field, all the while keeping their rate of

speech under control and allowing for the share of ideas to be spread from the client to the

consultant.
 I learned a valuable lesson at my internship, about phone interactions in the sales industry

through a training video that my Supervisor Ryan Pappas had shared with me on my first week

about the Straight Line Persuasion by Jordan Belfort. This video was absolutely critical to my

understanding of sales calls. The points shown to me in this video have given me the utmost

confidence when consulting prospective clients because I learned the communicative cues that

allow for efficient conversation flow. Cues like what has held your business from running

promotions in the past and what has been stopping your business from selling gift cards

online? The Straight Line Persuasion video taught me vital information that I did not know at

my previous internship while working with Avalanche Industries as an Amazon wholesaler, and

the difference in my job performance is obvious. Information such as learning to talk less and

listen more, 80% listening to 20% talking, and allowing prospective clients to admit to me areas

in which their business is lacking.

Verbal communication is not the only lesson that has been gained through these

experiences. I have also learned that non-verbal communication can be as, if not, more important

than verbal communication. Through the course of my internship this semester I was also able to

apply what I learned in my Nonverbal Communication class, that luckily I had enrolled in this

semester as well. It is said that our body language makes up for over 90% of our total

communication that we use on a daily basis. Our nonverbal cues, such as our body posture, the

ability to make eye contact when talking, and effective handshaking are just some examples of

nonverbal behaviors that are taken into account in the professional setting.

From the first day that I arrived at my internship, I had made myself conscious of how I

handled myself even when I was not being spoken too. I made sure to keep a positive look about

me by standing up straight, looking others straight in the eye, and delivering a firm hand shake.
In my Nonverbal Communication class this semester I learned that interviewers create their

initial impression of an interviewee in the first four minutes of an interview. I think this statistic

can also be said for any human encounter, especially including situations with superiors. For

example, the first time I met the ETS CEO Ed Vaughn, I had already been hired as an intern but

was plying for a full-time position. At this point, I had a comfort level within the office, but I

needed to implant trust with Ed because he had not yet met me. This was done in part with the

use of my nonverbal cues of a firm hand shake, and creating direct eye contact when conversing.

I conversed with Ed about the marketplace idea for our Ocean City, Maryland app called

Emoney Wallet and the vision for the project in the future. I believe he could notice my

excitement to be a part of the project team due in part to my posture and alertness, matched with

my engagement with the conversation.

This internship provided me with another great experience that I would like to share

involving the importance of nonverbal cues in the workplace. Over a cold call, a local Crisfield

crabber named Harvey Linton, owner of Lintons Seafood, mentioned to me that he had been

noticing mass amounts of chargeback fees from his bank on his monthly merchant statements. I,

along with my supervisor, had the opportunity to meet with Harvey at his shop in Crisfield,

Maryland to discuss how a switch to ETS as a merchant service provider could save his business

money annually. We arrived, dressed business professional, and greeted Harvey with genuine

smiles and assuring handshakes to begin our conversation. I could notice within the first two

minutes of the conversation that he had taken down his figurative barrier and began to take us

deeper into the fee that he had mentioned about over the phone. Ryan and I walked away from

that meeting with a follow up appointment in regards to a future business relationship. I believe
it was the nonverbal cues from Ryan and I that proved to Harvey that we were experts in our

field, which led to this potential new relationship.

The importance of organization is a skill I learned during my academic career that was

easily transferable to my internship. While enrolled in my Communication Research 297 class, I

learned the importance of organizing your research and creating folders and files specific to the

content inside of it. In a semester long research group there is a ton of information regarding

sources, academic research excerpts, and surveys. If this information was left unorganized there

would be great confusion and most likely subpar research results. Once my internship started, I

quickly saw the benefits to organization in the workplace and remembered what I had learned in

my Communication Research class.

Towards the end of my internship, my co-worker Tyler Hohenberger and I started a

summer project with the goal of setting up integration relationships with club management

systems, which are point of sale (POS) computers that handle retail and food and beverage

transactions that are linked with the ski resort industry. Our hope in the project is that these new

integrations will lead to partnerships for ETS to be the official merchant processor for these club

management systems. The first step to the project is to sort individual ski resorts into categories

based on what club management system these resorts use. There could be anywhere from two to

seven resorts underneath one club management company. With close to five hundred ski resorts

nationwide, organization is vital for our research to be done successfully.

Another great skill that my internship has taught me is the benefits of the Excel

spreadsheet program. Prior to my internship this semester, I had a basic level of understanding of

the program. I can now say that I have a proficient level of understanding due to my daily
interactions with the program. The program was critical in helping me organize my daily and

weekly work, including storing research from projects, such as the ski club management

database.

Another internship project that reinforced the importance of organization for me was the

creation of the Emoney Wallet, a virtual wallet app created by the technology team at the ETS

corporate office. The app is designed for visitors of tourist towns, such as Ocean City, Maryland

where it is currently being tested. The app would allow a user to pay for transit, pay a business or

another person, and scroll through a virtual marketplace of coupons, deals, discounts, and flyers

from local town merchants. At the ETS Berlin office our role is to reach out to local merchants

of Ocean City, Maryland and make them aware of the apps marketplace feature and the

promotion ETS is running allowing each merchant one free ad space on the app for the entire

Summer 2017. This also allowed us to test the receptivity of the marketplace. Since the

promotion, a free advertisement spot with no strings attached seems logical to the majority of the

business owners we interact with, the information regarding matching the promotions with the

company can become confusing, due to the sheer amount of promotions that need to be ran. I

learned to upload promotional information into Excel by who had given a definite to the

advertisement, and who was still mulling over the promotion. I even found it beneficial to

separate and organize the business cards that I collected along the way by who is a definite and

who is mulling. The main purpose of this was so that I can reach out to those businesses who

were still unsure of going forward with the promotion. My interactions with these business

owners of Ocean City also tie into what I have learned about verbal communication and

nonverbal communication. Again, the face to face interactions within the shops provided another

opportunity for myself and my colleagues to give off a sense of professionalism and sincerity.
When we converse with Ocean City business owners, we gather rapport by having our

information readily available including our flyers that include extensive material about the

promotion, together with screenshots of how the app appears on a smart phone or tablet. Like

stated earlier, the goal is to paint the business owner a mental picture. The Emoney Wallet app is

exciting to me because it allows me to put time and effort into working on a project that is bigger

than me.

Another very important lesson that my internship has taught me is the importance of

being able to turn a negative situation into a positive. In the comfort bubble of college, there

seems to be a predictable level of hardship one could face, for example grades and emotional

relationships are foreseeable dilemmas that could arise within a college career. In the

professional world, unforeseeable dilemmas and confrontations can arise unexpectedly and on a

daily basis. In regards to my internship, the sales industry, most notably the merchant service

industry, has earned a negative stigma due to the lack of transparent billing linked with other

merchant service companies. Due to this, it is important to keep in mind at my internship that

there will be moments where the merchant on the other end of the phone line wants absolutely

nothing to do with me or my company, and that is fine. As the training video Straight Line

Persuasion that was shared to me in the beginning of my internship states, there are three

different types of prospects, one being the non-buyer who will not purchase anything no matter

what, the window shopper who is thinking of a change but does not know if they are ready yet,

and the buy now shopper who knows he is ready for a switch and is looking for one. When

dealing with a non-buyer, it is important to understand it is not you who is doing anything

wrong, but that you simply cannot sell to someone who is not looking to buy and most

importantly, to not let it affect your moral or courageousness moving forward.

 A fitting experience at my internship that portrays an incident with a non-buyer was one

day when I had cold-called a golf course in the Chicagoland area of Illinois; I was planning on

consulting with the owner of the course on how our new marketing tool that our developers had

created could help increase the flow of traffic to and from his course. In this specific incident, the

general manager of the course had a strong belief against using promotional tools and had

decided to operate off word of mouth and merit because, as he had claimed, Thats how it

works in this county, a bunch of small towns where everyone knows all the courses and where

they want to play. When I began to consult on how these tools could help make him the premier

course in the area, he raised his voice and told me, the problem with people in my line of work

is that they assume too often and do not take into account the different areas of the country that

we are reaching out to. He said that in an area like his, people dont spring to their feet because

of coupons and discounts. They know when they want to play golf, where they want to play it,

and how much money they want to spend a year on the hobby. After fifteen minutes of

conversation, which felt like a whole lot longer, I proceeded to thank him for his time and

clarified that I had meant no offense to his course. This was definitely a humbling experience to

be involved in, partly because of the way I envisioned how I came off in his mind compared to

my actual intentions, which was to do right by his business.

I learned to turn this negative experience into a positive one. Since this phone call, I have

begun to conduct more background research, not only on the specific business in general, but

also about the areas in which the given business inhabits as well as the demographic of the area.

Additionally, what I learned from this experience at my internship is that I need to communicate

more soundly with merchants and allow them to teach me about their specific business so that I

can get a better understanding of what solution we offer that would be the most beneficial for
their business. It was not the way I would have liked to learn this lesson of assumption, but at the

end of the day it was a learning lesson, to which I benefited from at my internship. I consider

myself to be a lifelong learner and that was just another experience in which I had the ability to

turn a less than favorable situation into a positive trait moving forward. As the old saying goes,

There are never bad days, just bad moments.

The importance of self-motivation is another important lesson I learned from my

internship this semester. In college, I learned a valuable lesson of self-motivation in order to

obtain good grades and graduate with an exceptional GPA, a lesson that has translated to my

internship. The drive for me to do well at my internship mirrors the same drive for excellence I

had in the classroom. In both scenarios, I had a competitive edge to do well, perhaps even more

so at my internship in order to position myself for a full time placement upon my completion of

interning.

I am extremely excited with the direction that ETS is headed as a company, which is why

I decided to accept a full-time position upon graduation. However in thinking about the long

term, I believe a position with an increased form of job stability is better suited for me. From a

young age, I always wanted to pursue a career in professional sports which is still a goal I hold

today, which is why I have begun to work closely with the Delmarva Shorebirds seasonal

production staff, on top of ETS, to build my professional sports network.

One last lesson that I have learned through my CMAT 495 Internship class, unique to my

own situation, is the importance of attention to detail. Being able to follow all directions clearly

is critical in the professional environment and acting off assumptions, will more often than not,

lead to miscommunication and incorrect results. In the professional environment, higher

management may not be as lenient with such miscommunication as professors are, because

unlike a supervisor, a professor is there to help you learn from these mistakes so that they are not

made in the future.

It is vital to have an understanding of that, because the minute I crossed that stage and

became a Salisbury Alumni, I lost the safety bubble of college. I am now part of companies

much larger than myself, currently ETS and the Delmarva Shorebirds, who do not know me as

the outstanding student that I was, but as an employee whose production is imperative for

efficient business operation. I am grateful for the opportunity that my professor granted me, to

display my greatest work, and plan on taking this lesson with me in my future employment with

ETS, and any career, such as sports marketing, that I might pursue in the future. Cutting corners

is not going to fly in the professional world, and the only way successful businesses operate is

through a similar ideal between team members, matched with the same level of work ethic and

determination.

My internship presented me a semester of success, with some hardship along the way. It

allowed me exposure to the credit card industry, which was not a field that I had much of an

understanding about or an interest in, and taught me some valuable lessons about sales and

marketing. I can confidently say that I am a different person, for the better, than I was when I

started my internship at the beginning of the semester five months ago. The real-life examples of

work ethic, goal setting, and communication that my internship has provided me has increased

my confidence as a professional and as a recent college graduate. Through my CMAT 495

internship course at Salisbury University, I feel I am headed in the right direction with a full time

position being the climax to this semester. I am so thankful for the teachers within the

Communication Arts department that I have had the opportunity to learn from and share ideas
with, especially Dr. Egan and Dr. Horikami, who I have worked with for the bulk of my four

years as an undergraduate. I am so proud to be able to call myself a Salisbury University Alumni,

and now plan to further my pursuit to learn, live, and lead in my next chapter of life.