How much would you pay for an old sewing machine? How much profit would you like to get if you were the one selling that old sewing machine? Last Wednesday, during the MBA class on Human Resources, our teacher, Alfonso Jiménez (one of the best of the master in my opinion) proposed us a game. He divided the class in two halves, one-half of “sellers” and the other half of “buyers”, same context, same thing to sell or buy (an old sewing machine), same will and motivation to do it right. After giving us different documents with information for each activity, we were distributed in pairs to make the deal without listening other pairs conversations. We returned after 10 minutes to the class and we put in common the results.
Sellers were given a reference price of 100 Euros to feel happy about the deal, buyers in the other hand, were given 6000 Euros as reference price! Obviously, sellers and buyers didn’t know that of each other. It was amazing to see how different were the amounts of money agreed in each deal. To start with, two couples weren’t able to close it and reach an agreement. Prices agreed were in the range of 150 Euros to even 6000 Euros for the same thing! Being the average price between 400 and 600 Euros.
He explained us that the key factors for a job well done in whatever company are context, compromise and competencies. In this exercise, we could consider the context and compromise as a constant, so he were exclusively testing our competencies. Competencies in selling or buying were the key to get that big spread range of prices! Without knowing it, he was testing our abilities, and at the same time, giving us a marvelous lesson within the human resources arena.
Thanks and smile,
dk
4 comments:
hello, i am the buyer, and i have finished related class quite happy, first of all because the seller that i should buy from the fantastic and old machine was the magnifican DK, he took from me 1.000 quid, only,just for a old machine he had forgotten in to his garage, but the point is , i am looking for that machine early a year, i couldn´t find anyone in the same state and with this quality...only in internet... for 6.000 , for me was a good deal.
But , when you see in the classroom , people who bougth the same machine only for 100 quid... eh?
but also you can see you bought it for 10.000 quid... so no problem, as long as you have money enougth.
by the way, could you, Mr, DK, leave your little beard...pleaseeeee
just to say hello,
Tomelloso don't be pushy with the little beard thing..
i have to think about it as it could affect my image as a proffesional SELLER... :-)
dk
Interesting to know.
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