I arrived at SAS at 9:30 this morning, 30 minutes early for my shift. I was very excited and a little nervous to see how my first day would go at my new internship. I sat in the lobby with excitement as my classmates arrived. Then Ms. Dougherty showed up and gave us a tour and I was really impressed at how nice everything was at SAS. Everything was really tidy and clean and comfortable. After a quick tour, I sat in on a 2-hour presentation about SAS’s purpose and this was very helpful to me. I learned that SAS can do almost anything with data with any company in the world. SAS even uses their software to help them decide how many metal sheets they would need to help Nepal rebuild and recover from an earthquake. Their work can literally be applied to any company or situation on earth that deals with any sort of data. However, at the end of the day, I only have a vague idea of what SAS does because it is so complex and there is so much to learn about it. Throughout these two weeks, I hope to become much more familiar with some of their software and the techniques sales members use to convince other companies to try out their software. After lunch, I shadowed Patty Hager, the director of mid-market presales at SAS. As soon as I met her I was rushed upstairs to her office and she immediately got to work, we had a busy afternoon together. She called her boss to let her check in on her to make sure she was staying busy and on track with her relations with other companies. Ms. Hager, I learned, deals even with sports teams such as the LA Kings. After her checkup with her boss, I went with Ms. Hager to a conference meeting with three other pre-sales workers that were on her team and five other people that had called in through Skype. Everyone shared ideas on how to get their clients interested in their products. All of them had interesting ideas and perspectives. One of the most profound ideas I took notes about during the conference was the suggestion that as a salesperson for SAS you should put yourself into your clients’ shoes and consider what they would want to hear offered from a salesperson. A SAS salesperson would want to pitch their product in a way that leaves the customer confident they will profit from the SAS software. So, I learned a lot more about sales that I thought I would from this meeting. I’m excited to continue learning about the SAS software specifically tomorrow and I hope day 2 will be just as fun as day 1 was!!
