The challenge was exactly the same as last class except you could only cash in three sets at a time, so as to not clog up the line as part of your strategy. To refresh your memory: each group started with $15 million to bid on cards and negotiate. Different card combinations gave you a different amount of money and the goal was to have as much money as possible by the end of class. This time I worked with Chelsea.
What started us off in the right direction?
When looking at the decks we tried to rank them from most desirable to least. Right of the bat Chelsea and I bought one deck, which we thought was pretty good, for $7 million. Unfortunately we must have made a mistake because we looked through the cards and there weren't to many of them and didn't have a lot of the same suit. After that, most of the decks sold for higher than we could afford. The last deck though was of great interest to everyone except they only had $7 million left so we ended up topping their bids with $8 million. This was a good move because it gave us a really big deck that was way better than expected.
What was your best trade? How did the Negotiation lessons help?
Our best trade was with Evan. We were looking for a King of diamonds to complete a same set suit. We were fair with the deal and did a one card for one card deal. We knew and communicated to him what we wanted, we knew our limit (which was two cards and a value of $1 million) we knew his motivation (he told us it was for a four of a kind and showed us the cards), and we created an honest, good relationship. Our first bid was the bid we settled on so we didn't have to remake our bid. Although the deal didn't gain us many cards it was the quality of the cards that counted. We could have asked for more, and might have gotten it, but it was important that Evan felt like he was getting a deal because it was our first trade with him and wanted many more fair trades to come. We used what we learned in class about being direct and helping to come to a compromise, if needed, to make both parties feel good about the trade.
What was your worst trade? How could it be improved?
We only did five trades in total and our worst was again, with Evan. The time was running out and we only needed the four of clubs to complete a set that would make us $10 million dollars. I guess we were sort of rushed and didn't really pay attention about what we were giving away, we just wanted that card. We ended up giving Evan a 2 and 3 of diamonds. Not only did we give him more cards for less, they were also in numerical order and the same suit which increases their value. It wasn't a huge mistake but if we had made more trades we may have made more trades such as these which would have not helped our financial state at all.
We could have improved this deal by taking a breath and calming down. If we weren't as frantic to cash things in I think this deal would have gone better. We could have asked for another card to make it a 2 for 2 deal, not offered two cards and stood our ground on the one card deal or asked for money to accompany the card to make up for the quantity difference.
Did we win?
YES WE DID! In the end we had $140 million dollars, beating out Nobu and Griffin's group by $1 million dollars.
Thanks to a last minute deal with Trevor we went from having $80 million (still a really good sum of money, we would have ended as second place) to almost doubling our total. Trevor wanted our 2 of diamonds and was willing to pay $60 million for it. Although this was the most profitable deal for us I wouldn't classify it as the best because he approached us with the deal and we were caught unaware and didn't know what we wanted, what we could offer and what his motives were. After the transaction, approved done by Mr.Kee, it turned out Trevor gave us the money just so that Nobu's team wouldn't win. Although that suited me just fine because that would mean we won, I knew it wouldn't happen in a real world situation.
Aside from that bizarre deal, Chelsea and I were successful and won because we bought two decks to start and had enough time to sort out our cards. We knew the value of our cards, what we had and what we needed. Since we had so many cards to start with, we didn't need to rely on trading and got to know our cards better. Chelsea is an introvert so ended up doing most of the sorting of cards and I made most of the trades. It was definitely an improvement from the last challenge. Without the bizarre, last minute deal (which was completely legal in game rules) we ended up with $80 million, $43 million more than last time. Our official total though was $140 million which was $103 million more than last time.
It was a huge success!
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