So here’s a story for you:
It starts, like many stories do, in the past. The setting is our Marketing Strategy class, where we had divided into three-person teams for a case analysis paper and presentation. We had chosen to do an XM Satellite Radio pricing strategy case.
My group, upon getting our case assignment, looked at the syllabus and said “Ah ha! XM Satellite Radio… presentation on October 16th, analysis due the 14th. Cool, we’ve got time.” And we promptly got off to a slow start and planned on doing the work later.
Fast forward to last Sunday, the 30th of September. We had planned a 6 hour group meeting to really start getting some traction early and figure out what we needed to do for the case. Yes, we felt like we were being pretty proactive about it.
At 10:00 AM - two hours before our meeting - the professor sent out an email saying something to the effect of, “the three teams presenting on Thursday the 4th are [group 1], [group 2], and XM Satellite Radio. Remember, your analysis is due on Tuesday the 2nd.” Despite the fact that we weren’t listed on the syllabus, were we going to waste time trying to ask the professor about that on a Sunday?
Very not good.
So we did what any self-respecting MBA students would do and got to work. The challenge was to come up with a profitable pricing strategy - but also to be able to predict what the future revenue might be. And while we’d just read another case that gave us a great deal of information on predicting XM’s growth compared to other new products, I’d never done a Bass model.
I took the lead and assigned one of my teammates to write up the background and create a value proposition, another team member to detail the product mix, and - being the most analytically gifted of the group - I took the forecasting and actual pricing strategy on myself.
Sunday night: Work until 4 AM, sleep, get up and go to class.
Monday night: Collect the parts from my team at midnight, start assembling…
And, Monday night (at 1:30 AM), Comcast decided to do maintenance on my internet connection. I called, frustrated, because I would need to send a draft back to my team. “We should be done by 6 AM your time.” That didn’t work, so - like the true rock star that I am - I hopped in the car and drove over to the school, where I worked until 3:30 AM coming up with a solid draft, emailed it out, and went home and to bed at 4 AM.
Up again on Tuesday, and to Marketing Strategy at 11 AM, draft in hand. After class I approached the professor and explained our curiosity at the fact that we weren’t listed on the syllabus. He was surprised as well, since we were on his copy. And, it turns out, that the syllabus he was working off of was NOT the same as the one the students had - despite having the same filename. In fact, probably the most significant difference was our presentation date.
He was dismayed.
We were given a choice. We could push our presentation off a week (to be fair) or - if we were actually ready - we could continue to go on Thursday. My biggest concern was the fact that we hadn’t had a chance to run our numbers past him and get at least one round of mid-development feedback. He agreed to look over our paper in the hour following class (1:30-2:30) and get it back to us. It would be due at 5:00, though he also said we could email him at that time and decide to go next week.
I launched into revising our paper with his guidelines. I put in more forecasts and was just in the middle of some analysis, at 3:00 (two hours to the deadline), I realized that I had made what I call a “Mars Surveyor” error: I’d been directly comparing monthly revenue to annual revenue - without conversion.
That I was able - in two hours - to completely revise our analysis, graphs, charts, and conclusion is a testament to - let’s be honest - me. I was awesome. I’ll admit it. We turned in a 5 page paper (with 6 pages of appendices) that, while I’m not overly proud of it, I’m not ashamed, either.
I slept like a baby Tuesday night.
Wednesday (yesterday), after my public finance class from 6 - 9 PM, my group met again at the school to develop the presentation we’re about to give. In four hours we manage to put together a nice-looking presentation (using Keynote) that would concisely convey our point. Then we practiced it three times and went to bed.
And now I’m sitting here in my suit, and we’re about to give our presentation.
We’ll see how it goes.
