Introducing Matt Coen | Careers at Megantic
15 July 2022 Blog Posts
Matt Coen is one of our Technical Project Managers. He began working with Megantic in May 2017 as a Sales Development Representative and transferred to our PM team in early 2018.
Currently, some of Matt’s clients include Gintonica, KJ Essentials, Snooza, Outdoors Domain, OCAM 4×4.
I spoke with Matt about his career growth at Megantic. Read about his journey below.
What do you do at Megantic?
I’m a Technical Project Manager at Megantic. I work directly with clients, partners and internal teams to develop and deliver organic search strategies for e-commerce clients.
I heard that you actually started at Megantic in 2017 in our Sales team Matt. What made you want to move to the PM team and how was that process?
That’s right! There were many aspects I enjoyed about the Sales role I had at Megantic, but I was always very interested in the analytical side. Coming from an educational background in science, I really enjoyed digging into the details and understanding the processes that drove growth to our clients.
While I was successful on the sales side, after about 9 months, I was presented with the opportunity to transition to the Project Management team which was very exciting for me.
This transitionary period occurred over the next 3 months and was very intensive, learning a new field, while maintaining strong performance on the sales side.
What did you like most about your time in Sales, and do you miss that aspect?
I am an introvert by nature, so the sales role was always pushing my communication skills and comfort zone to its limit. This is an area that I look back on as something that has helped me grow and build important skills that have helped me throughout my career.
I miss certain aspects, including the feeling you get when you close a deal or book a big meeting, but I still get the most out of achieving tangible results and growth for a client.
What skills or training programs helped you make the move to project manager?
As I briefly mentioned above, the experience and skills that I adopted during my sales role were invaluable to ensuring that I was communicating effectively with clients.
Otherwise, when I moved over to project management I was thrown right into the deep end, and handed my own portfolio of clients (with the support of the rest of my team), which really helped me acclimatise quickly.
Megantic has grown quite a bit since then, so newer PM’s are lucky to have some dedicated training resources at their disposal, but back then, what we didn’t learn from the guidance of the senior PM’s, we learned from experience first-hand which I think is one of the most important ways to learn!
So Matt, are you planning any other big moves?
I am! I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say yet, but watch this space 🙂
You’ve recently come back to Melbourne from Canada for a few weeks. Did you get a chance to see any clients in person?
I was lucky enough to come back to Melbourne and visit most of my Victoria clients in person. I’d say about 60% of my portfolio is in the Greater Melbourne area, so it was really nice to visit my clients, many of whom I had only met over endless Zoom sessions!
COVID19 put a bit of a block on F2F meetings, but it was hugely refreshing to meet my clients in person, take them for lunch and in some cases a beer or two!
So Matt, how did you organise your time when you were in Canada? It must be hard when your clients are based in Australia and you’re around 16 hours behind.
It took a lot of trial and error. At the start I was definitely a bit lost as I had never experienced working from home before, let alone with a constantly fluctuating time difference due to opposite daylight savings.
As with most businesses at the time, we were quick to adapt and I attribute a large amount of my success to the rest of the team who were very supportive and willing to help work with my schedule at times.
I did mainly work Aussie hours, but maintained some flexibility to ensure a healthy work-life balance.
I imagine your time management skills have improved so much from this! Do you use any specific tools to help manage your time?
I use various tools including my personal and work calendars, Outlook’s scheduling tools and more. As counter-intuitive that it is being a Project Manager, organisational skills are an area that I have put a lot of effort into improving, so I heavily rely on these tools to keep my mind and work uncluttered and focussed.
That said, Megantic’s own in-house CRM was probably the most helpful tool to keep my work organised across all of my clients.
Moving on to a little about your work as a Technical Project Manager, what does a typical day look like for you?
One of the reasons that I enjoy the role so much is that there’s no such thing as a typical day! With the fast-moving nature of eCommerce, there’s always new trends, ideas, and avenues for growth that we’re looking for with each of our clients.
Working from Canada, I’ll usually begin work in the early afternoon, check my emails and run through each of my clients’ analytics to achieve the right mindset for the day. From there, I’ll respond to emails, discuss any tasks in progress/training with team members, work on reporting, growth strategies, and/or attend scheduled meetings with clients.
You actually work with a few of our Junior Product Managers, how would you describe your teaching style, Matt?
I think empathy is a very important skill to have when leading and especially teaching and training. I always put myself in their shoes, as I was definitely there once and I know how difficult it can be to absorb so much information in a relatively short period of time.
I try to be the kind of person that these juniors can lean on and communicate with if they have questions, concerns or just want to have a chat. I’ve made some great friends along the way, and am proud to have been able to work with some of the juniors as they transitioned into full-fledged technical project managers at Megantic.
What was the best piece of advice you have received and do you have any of your own for aspiring Project Managers?
I’ve received a lot of great advice over the years, but I always try to take feedback on board. Thinking laterally, and looking at problems from different perspectives, is a piece of advice that I’ve been given and I think is very important in this role.
As alluded to above, I think empathy is the most important quality in a successful project manager. Putting yourself in your clients shoes and truly understanding *why* they might be having concerns does wonders for helping put together an action plan to come up with a solution to that problem.
Treating your clients’ businesses as they’re in some way your own, really allows you to get in the right mindset to promote growth and makes the role so much more rewarding when you’re able to genuinely celebrate the success that you helped attain.
Thanks for chatting with us Matt. We’re excited to see where the future takes you and how you will continue to grow with Megantic.
Want to work with Matt? We have open opportunities in our Project Management team. Apply today.
