Sporting Kansas City Internship - Overcoming Obstacles

As I have just crossed the midway point of my internship, I can definitely see my strengths and weaknesses. My supervisor truly believes that my work ethic will make me stand out from the crowd, no matter what field I end up working in. He told me that he can see the fire I always have in myself and that I have a ready-to-work attitude, which is something that not very many people possess.

However, I have specific areas that I can improve upon. First of all, I need to improve my communication skills. Many times, when I am trying to convince people to come out to a game, I don't do the best job of "painting a picture" of the experience. I struggle with speaking in a convincing manner at times. But I believe with practice, my confidence will increase, which will help me speak to clients in a more persuasive manner.

Currently, I am working on a project for our Friday October 10th game against Chicago. The staff has given the other intern and me a block of 300 seats to sell. That being said, there is a bit of a friendly competition going on between her and me. I have created a theme: Indian Heritage Night. Basically, I am inviting all the Kansas City Indian organizations out to the game, giving them the following incentives:

1. Discounted rate of $19.00 per person, as opposed to face value price of $32.00 (Given that you bring out 20+ people).
2. Scoreboard recognition for organizations that participate in Indian Heritage Night.
3. Field level group photo after the game for Indian groups that come out to the game.

By making this theme night, I am able to target a certain audience. Also, all these Indian organizations have a greater sense of purpose and reason to come out to the game. I am very well connected to the Indian community here, so I think I will be able to convince quite a few organizations to come out to the game.

So far, my main challenge with this project has been getting in touch with the leaders of some of the organizations. On many of their websites, they only list an email address and no phone number. Unfortunately, many of these groups have not responded to their emails yet. Therefore, I will have to be creative in overcoming this problem. I may expand my target audience and change the theme to Asian Heritage Night. That way, I will be able to contact more organizations. I will let you all know on my next blog about how this project is going!