My month of April was reserved for a completely new experience in 2015 – sales and marketing internship at Inchoo. I spent four weeks in Gdansk, sales & partially marketing team named after the city in Poland (all of the Inchoo teams are named after cities across the world).
This team is the starting point for all forms of business – no matter if it’s smaller SEO jobs or making a web shop from scratch, sales & marketing is where the inquiries come to and where communication transforms into project that later on finds its way to Inchoo’s designers and developers.
Previous interns have already praised their experience at Inchoo so I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. One of them actually started working full time just as I was starting my internship. An excellent example how your internship can become something more at Inchoo.
New workplace – challenge accepted
It’s always somewhat of a challenge coming to a new work environment, a new territory and to learn new things, no matter how short your time there might be. It’s a mix of excitement and expectations. During the first couple of days I received a lot of information about Magento, eCommerce and quite a bit in between.
The atmosphere you can feel in the office shattered my worries the first day there. I’ve experienced an equivalent feeling in a couple of companies before, but I’ve never experienced that much productivity with such a relaxed attitude.
From light socialising on the coffee breaks in one of the local cafés during sunny days, through mandatory pizza days in cases of birthdays and anniversaries, it was my pleasure working with Inchooers and learning a different side of marketing, as well as picking up new skills without stress or pressure.
Business side of things
I’m no stranger to marketing, I had some experience during my University years and getting MA in Communicology, but the economics of the sales part was news to me, uncharted territory. I’m no stranger to eCommerce either, but always on the buyer’s end.
Sales & marketing duo in charge, Aron and Vesna, guided me through the process very skillfully. This wasn’t an easy task if you want to run your department competently, so I’m very gratefully for the chance they gave me.
My time in Inchoo did coincide with Aron going to Magento Imagine Commerce conference in Las Vegas, making Vesna a bit swamped with new inquiries and deals so I’m sure future interns to sales & marketing are going to get even better experience.
The sales process seems very pleasant towards (potential) clients. Don’t you hate it when you don’t get a reply on your email? Not going to happen at Inchoo. No matter how short your inquiry may be (once it was only one letter) or how detailed, you’re getting the same helpful treatment. I got a chance to communicate with certain potential clients as well, with supervision of course.
Onboarding manual
Among other things, I was assigned with a specific task – to write the first Inchoo onboarding manual. That’s the document that tells you, among other things, not to leave milk outside of the fridge, how to clean the coffee maker, what are the best and nearest cafes people go for a break, and other really useful work related information, dos and don’ts for creating and maintaining a nice working environment throughout the company.
That manual should ease in new employees or interns into their new role at the company, introduce them with the most of the important processes, people and serves as a quality intro to their work at Inchoo.
What did I learn? I became more aware of how sale actually works. I saw how teams function when their productivity has the priority, and their willingness to go an extra mile for their clients. I did write Inchoo onboarding manual, the first experience of that kind.
In the end…
I’ve picked up a good number of new terms which I’m sure I’ll need in the future, even though I was in the less technical part of the technical based company. This was a sort of look behind the beautifully designed web pages to see what are the elements that make a good web shop.
I realised SEO is much more than mere pilling up keywords wherever possible. Also, if you don’t have a website with responsive design it’s like you don’t even have it (maybe a bit of exaggeration, but seriously, it’s time to get one).
Four weeks is really not much time, but I have to say that eCommerce and Magento are much closer topics to me now. I am the first of the few interns that’ll follow in sales & marketing, guinea pig of sorts, and they have conducted their experiment quite well.
I’m sure interns to come are going to learn even more and see better what’s Inchoo all about because in this department they have the opportunity to tailor tasks according to individual’s preferences and previous work.
After this time I can see why Inchoo is a respected name in the Magento world. I hope that I left a good impression as their test subject and they didn’t regret choosing me for the role. I guess time will tell. In the end, definitely an experience I would do all over again.
About the author: Dijana was a sales & marketing intern at Inchoo during April 2015. Her previous experience includes working as a social media manager, and she is currently running and working as editor-in-chief and writer at a literary based website Narativa.
