An Intern’s Week at WAMS
WAMS had the pleasure of partaking in an internship and career exploration program called “Living the Map.” A student from Colorado College was interested in spending a week with a marketing executive. Daniel Seddiqui of “Living the Map” reached out to me about this opportunity and sent me Alan Fox, an ambitious college student who had just completed his first year and chose this career exploration program to help him decide on his major. His reflection below describes his experience, and we are so grateful to have had an impact on such a promising young man. This was a wonderful opportunity for the both of us, and it was a pleasure to teach Alan about what I do. As a company, we are so proud to have left this impression on him.
“Ashli Lopp, a marketing executive at the IT consulting company known as WAMS, expressed a primary goal of my five week internship project bluntly when she stated, “It takes doing what you don’t want to do to help you realize the importance of doing what you want to do.”
As I first entered the WAMS office located just outside of the Los Angeles area in Brea, CA, I was nervous about what the week had in store for me. Would my presence be a distraction to others working? Does the individual that I’m shadowing have the time or desire to work with me for an entire week? To put it plainly, I didn’t want to be a problem at all for this company. Within five minutes of entering the office, it became clear that this fear was unwarranted and would not be the case. Ashli, the marketing executive I shadowed for the week, and Kevin, the general manager of WAMS, immediately made me feel welcome. After introducing myself to Kevin and discussing his recent travels in Colorado, Ashli introduced me to the rest of the company and had the patience to teach me about her job as well as a brief overview of the company.
The first thing I noticed in the office was that the employees exuded an unusual level of positivity and joyfulness. They seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time working there and they weren’t simply watching the clock, eagerly awaiting their time to clock out like many of my fellow auto shop co-workers in the past would. Throughout my week at WAMS, I tried to pinpoint the source of their workplace jubilance. Was management responsible? Was it the composition of employees? While I do think that WAMS has done an excellent job of hiring exuberant employees that are passionate about their jobs as well as their interactions with each other, I think the company’s upbeat culture has more to do with management incentivizing their employees with freedom and encouragement, rather than fear. Later in the week, an account manager addressed this assumption, stating that, “Kevin doesn’t rule with an iron fist. . . He’s made this a place where you don’t dread coming to work.” This claim is supported by the fact that throughout my week with WAMS, I never observed a time when Ashli was motivated to complete a task by fear. On the contrary, Ashli went about her daily obligations with freedom and a sense of pride that she would complete them individually to the best of her abilities—not because a manager was breathing down her neck.
Other than observing the encouraging role of management within the company, I also thoroughly enjoyed learning about the different ways Ashli attracts clients. First off, she explained the three basic client profiles that she is aiming to attract and how she is able to craft a marketing approach to suit the audience. For example, for firm administrators who are typically more interested in the final result WAMS has to offer and less in the technology, Ashli would appeal to them through means that invoke emotion and focus on possible positive results rather than nitty-gritty tech details of how the system works. In addition, I was interested in the different ways Ashli went about striking fear in the hearts of her potential clients, communicating the dangers of ransomware and how customers needed WAMS to save their firm from potential closure.
While I was fascinated by the way Ashli went about attracting clients, I was also intrigued by the ways she went about keeping clients and making them feel appreciated. Whether it was sending clients cookies embroidered with the WAMS logo, “anniversary” Starbucks gift cards, or shock-and-awe packages containing promotional gear, Ashli was adamant about ensuring that a customer’s business was appreciated and not taken for granted.
Besides focusing on improving and maintaining her client base, Ashli also focused on educating and developing herself as a marketer. Each day Ashli read the news in order to keep up to date and inform her clients about the latest development in her field, whether that’s a development in cyberware or technology. Moreover, her eagerness to improve and develop further ways of marketing was clearly illustrated by her weekly discussion with different marketing employees in different fields across America.
All in all, exposure to both a close-knit, enthusiastic work place and to a marketing professional that was eager to teach me ways of creating and maintaining fruitful client relations made this week an especially beneficial and educational experience.”
