11. Coaching Students
11.1 From Instructor to Coach
Instructor — "I'm going to teach you what you need to know."
Coach — "I'm going to help you discover what you need to know."
Instructors who adopt experiential learning into their courses discover an important change in how they interact with students. They move from being an instructor, or provider of information, to a coach or advisor. A coach who facilitates the learning process and encourages reflection through observations, questions, and discussions. It's an amazing experience — an Aha! moment in teaching.
Watch this video to discover how ...
11.2 DEBRIEF Performance Report
Consider showing the DEBRIEF Performance Report (found in the white Manage tile) on a big screen in front of the class or on a shared screen in an online meeting. Identify businesses that appear to be improving and ask them to share their thoughts with everyone.
11.3 Student Reflection Slides
A Simulation Competition provides many opportunities for discussion, reflection, and coaching. To help with these efforts, use the 📃Student Reflection Slides found on the Instructor Dashboard in the yellow Tutorials & Guides tile.
11.4 Sample Discussion Topics
Understanding consumer behavior. If you do not understand how customers make purchase decisions, you will not know how to best position your business to serve their needs.
Generally, a business will not have enough cash to be the best at everything: in the case of a soft-drink business: price, taste, health, packaging, and brand. Choose a limited number of features to be the best at.
Knowing the market demographics/psychographics. Consumer Profile groups vary in size by territory. Make sure you are targeting a large enough segment of the market to be profitable. For example, if you are running a soft-drink business and you are targeting taste-conscious consumers because your product is the taste leader, make sure this consumer profile group is large enough to make you profitable.
Pricing products carefully. There is no preset price consumers are expecting to pay for your product. Price expectation is based on supply and demand, including how attractive your products are compared to your competition. Make sure to price your products high enough to cover all of your costs (production, distribution, reseller, research and development, sales and marketing), and add an amount of profit that is achievable based on your competitors' prices and product features.
Knowing your competition. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors enables you to better position your business. For example, if you are running a soft-drink business and you notice that a large Consumer Profile group is health-conscious but your competitors' products are weak in health benefits, then you may want to consider investing heavily in becoming the health leader.
If you are losing money, it could be for one or more of these reasons: Price is too low; Did not produce enough units to sell; Your product is not as attractive as your competitors'; Too many companies are targeting the same Consumer Profile group; Insufficient Sales and Marketing efforts.
Consider being contrarian. If most competitors are pursuing the largest Consumer Profile groups, the market may become too competitive for profitability (i.e., a big pie that is divided into too many small pieces). Consider pursuing smaller Consumer Profile groups where you may have minimal competition (i.e., a bigger piece of a small pie).
Keep in mind that decisions and strategies by competing businesses will directly affect the market conditions and your specific results. Constant review and adjustment of your strategy is necessary to properly adapt to changing market conditions.
Timing and luck matter. A great strategy may still fail due to bad timing and luck. You never know when an unexpected event may happen, or a competitor may drastically drop price or pursue some other market-changing strategy.