Negotiations Card Challenge

We started with 15M and had to bid for different decks of cards and then negotiate to get the best combinations and cash them in to get more money. I was partners with Noshin who's personality type is INFJ. We lost the challenge because we didn't have the most money. 

We didn't know the value of our cards which led us to some bad trades. We were also not very organized and we had to constantly go back and check our pile of cards before finalizing a deal which not only wasted time but also gave the opposition more time to think about the deal and whether or not it was the best for them. It also looked very unprofessional and made it seem like we didn't know what we were doing, which was not true. 

I mostly did the negotiations and Noshin sorted out all our cards and told me which ones we needed. We were both good at knowing what we wanted and knowing our limits on how much we could offer. There were many deals that fell through because other groups thought that they could convince us to pay more but we stood our ground and walked away to let them know when we say "final offer" we mean it. This helped us later on and people took us a little more seriously. We also kept a close watch on the time and cashed in all of our cards before the time limit. Some groups didn't cash them in before the bell and lost a lot of potential profit. 

Next time I would alter our strategy so that we took a little more time figuring out the value of our cards and organizing them. I would also make deals for cards with money because everyone was trading card for card and didn't know the dollar value of what they were trading. Overall it was a fun challenge and I learned a lot about negotiating.

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Auction Hunters

For this blog I watched an episode of Auction Hunters called "Battle Bought" and looked at the different negotiation strategies used.

1. What were they trying to sell to who?
They were selling battle bot's to Chuck and Jason who are two aerospace engineers.

2. What were the opening bids for both sides? How did they come to an agreement?
Chuck and Jason started with $2,000 and that price was agreed upon under the condition that it worked perfectly. The battle bot didn't work perfectly so Chuck and Jason dropped it to $1,800. Ton and Allen counter offered by including all of the controllers plus the big battle bot for $2,500. In the end they compromised and decided on a price of $2,000.


3. Name 3 things you read off of observing body language during negotiations.
Jason's hands in a strained position indicated that he was still very interested but wanted to get a better deal.

Chuck was leaning a little bit away from Allen and avoiding eye contact suggesting he was trying to hide something. Perhaps he knew the robot was worth a bit more and wanted to keep that a secret. 

4. Identify any negotiation strategies used.
Alan and Ton used small talk to get the buyers to feel a little more comfortable. When they feel more comfortable they might give more things away with their body language. Another thing they did was a little sweet talking. "Wow I'm feeling humbled" said Allen after they talked about Chuck and Jason's work. When the deal was in danger of dropping in value they bartered and threw in some extra robot controllers and parts to bring the price up. This worked pretty well because they sold the buyers things they didn't originally want and thus raised the price of the deal.

5. In your opinion, who got the best out of this negotiation?
I think that Allen and Ton got the best deal out of this negotiation because although they didn't know the value of the product as much as the buyers but they used their superior negotiating skills to sell the product on their terms. I noticed that in they had an initial offer of $2,000 and that's what they ended up with in the end. Although at one point they could have walked away with selling only one item for a fairly good price they sold off the rest in order to squeeze the last few hundred out of the buyers. They also made a positive relationship with the buyer's which leaves room for further deals later on.

Tips for Negotiations

What you should do:

• know what you want
• know what others want
• know the value of what you have
• don't show uncertainty
• be friendly to others, firm but not pushy

What you should try not to do:

• wait for others to approach you with a deal
• look for things that are in high demand
• let others look through all your wares. Offer them something and don't let on how many pieces you have that they might want
• try not to make rush decisions, they often lead to bad decisions.
• let others know what you need. Once they know that they can manipulate you and you'll end up with a bad deal

Tanks

Group:Evan
           Gregor (team leader)
           Emma (parts collector)

1.Our team lost this challenge. Our tank was very un-tank-like and was not able to take a hit. The way the battery pack was supported wasn't that great and I personally think we had an excessive amount of gears and it didn't seem to help the overall performance. Our big problem was the securing of the wheels, gears and the battery pack.

2. We were all extroverts so we made sure that our ideas got heard, that's for sure. Even with that though we seemed to get along really well and had a very good work atmosphere. Gregor was the main builder because of his previous experience with Lego but also because he just picked up the materials and started doing stuff. Evan was also building. I was the one that asked questions because I didn't understand the plan of the robot. That lead us to conversations like this, "Oh yeah we have a great gear system. Emma what did you say about supporting the battery pack? Oh I forgot all about that. Let's figure it out now." All in all we worked great as a team until the testing part. Gregor did the most driving and sometimes didn't let Evan and I test it out.

3. Our team did best at allotting time for testing and emergency modifications. We finished building twenty minutes before the end time so had a solid 15 minutes to test. It was great because we all got to have fun driving without the pressure of competing. Our robot did really really well at first but then things went downhill from there. The gears started breaking off, the connection to the battery pack weakened... it was a mess but thankfully we had 5 minutes to fix things.

4. Next time I think we should spend more time on the brainstorming and putting together ideas part. We did share ideas but then we didn't really put them all together at the beginning. People just started building and worried about the rest of the design later. The questions I asked during the building time were good but should have come up in our brainstorming session. I think that thinking about Anti-winning would have really helped because our robot wasn't like a tank. We should have focused on stability and strength rather than speed. Tanks don't usually go fast but they are really strong. Ours was the exact opposite, very fragile and quick. I would have changed the design so that it had a way to defend itself against opponents.