Sample cover letter for Internship position at Cisco

«Knowledge is the Power». It is the power, which once you gain and use it correctly you get an opportunity to make changes and to be a part of development. This was my inspiring point from the very first step of my educational ladder. I was always sure that to achieve the goals I have set; I should have first invested in building a strong personality. I honestly believe that it is important to have a good education, which will eventually affect the process of formulation of a qualified individuality in me.

The position of Associate Sales Representative highly interested me due to several reasons.

First of all, it provides an opportunity to participate in a training program. The second reason is that I am profoundly interested in Sales Due to my current position. I started working in a local IT company, but it would be the big success for me to have an opportunity to work in such a powerful company like Cisco. I have always supported an idea of being entirely dedicated to work and at the same time developing knowledge, skills.

For my personal development, I took exams and training and received the certifications as a result of successful completion of them.

I firmly believe that being chosen for the position of Associate Sales Representative could be a stepping stone for my future career. And I am sure that my educational background and work experience makes me a strong candidate.

First of all I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to introduce myself.

I would like to start with my Educational background first. I completed my bachelor’s degree in International Relations in 2014. After my studies I had an internship in State Committee for Women, Family and Children Affairs as Research Analyst. Working there i realised that this field doesn’t fit me very well and that i didn’t enjoy working in that environment. baijan.Technology is something I have been passionate about for as long as I can remember.Technology has never failed to amaze me and fortunately I have been in the right generation to be able to keep up and observe the impact that it has on the world. Therefore i Started working in one of the leading IT companies in Azerbaijan. It totally changed my life, i think that i found myself. I feel very lucky for that. My friends and people who surround me say that they can feel passion and motivation in my eyes when I talk about my duties and job. I have been sent to Baku European Games Operation Committee. It was the one of the biggest sport events in the history of my country. I had undertaken Venue Helpdesk manager position. We had a strict deadlines during that project. I was leading the headquarters which more than 300 people to support. As there were not a lot of people to support the venue we had volunteers that helped us during the Games. I had undertaken the responsibility to teach volunteers how to troubleshoot user issues and how to react in a timely manner. My performance shown during the project led me job offer as Account and Vendor Manager. I managed to stabilize relations with key partners and contributed into building the database with vendors and distributors.

My skills:

I always pay attention to detail. I have great communications skills. I am very hardworking person, I like developing my knowledge and skills. I am very flexible and adaptive person.

Sales experience:

I understand that i am not supposed to know everything about Sales in order to be chosen for this program, as it is aimed to train the Sales Associates and to prepare them for their future career as Account Managers. I just started my career in Sales however I managed to complete successfully the trainings needed and to pass Selling Business Outcomes, Advanced Collaboration and Security Architecture exams. At the moment what I need is to be more informed that my customers are. I meet a lot of customers and of course i get a lot of useful information from them about new innovations and solutions, but I understand that i am the person they should get this information from not vice versa.

I don’t engage only with customers but also with partners. I try to understand their solutions, compare them with competitor companies. It is always important from my point of view to be able to make 2 or 3 proposals to customers. To give a chance to customer to choose. I want to learn for instance how can we make the customer to choose the expensive solution instead of the cheapest one. The company where I work is more focused on Enterprise business, but this business is leaded by our project managers, so I don’t have an opportunity to develop my sales skills a lot but I deal with

REASONS TO APPLY:

1) To expand my global network, it is very important for Sales Managers to have great communications skills but what is the most important for them in my opinion is to have a network, the more people you know the more deals you can get and the more informed you are.

2) Of course to get an international experience and to enjoy my time. I consider that when you work in a local company people’s behaviour their approach to work do not differ much. But when you are in international environment, you develop the world outlook, you may learn new languages, get familiar with culture and values of people.

3) I want to learn how to persuade people to buy things and what should be the approach for selling to customers.

4) I want to develop my ideas and to turn them into great innovations with the help of Cisco

5) The last but not least is to get an experience of a lifetime!

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

1) What is the process of evaluation the candidates? What will be the next after the interview stage?

2) I am aware of Cisco’s vision of Collaboration and am just being curious what drives Cisco to encourage people from different countries to apply to this program, choose the best candidates and train them? How big are the outcomes for Cisco, if it is not an internal information i would like to know that?

3) What is the main objective of this program? And besides Sales skills, which skills can interns develop?

4) How important is to have some technical skills in order to be chosen as Sales Associate?