Osborn's Itinerary

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Osborn’s Itinerary is designed to highlight the importance of rigorous planning in business. Players are under pressure to manage their own time well, to draw meaningful conclusions from their experiences as they play the game, and to decide what their future strategy should be to maximise their chances of success. How well is their strategy working as the game progresses? What risks are they prepared to take to chase a high value order that may not materialise? Will they appreciate that just because a client buys once, success is not guaranteed on every visit?
Osborn’s Itinerary encourages players to think beyond the temporary frustrations of unpredictable customers and apparently random buying behaviour. Team members build up a history of the purchasing patterns of target clients, and learn to make best use of the available data within a limited timeframe.

Objectives:

Participants will be able to :

• Prepare a plan that makes the best use of available resources 
• Recognise the need to analyse data and learn from experience
• Evaluate and prioritise between potential customers
• Explain the significance of order value as opposed to ‘getting an order’

How it works

Patrick Osborn is the star salesman at a printing company which is seeking to do business in a newly accessible Eastern European territory. Players act as the head office planning team and have to put together an itinerary for his forthcoming week-long trip. They are provided with information on the purchasing patterns and idiosyncrasies of a number of potential clients, but Osborn will not have enough time to visit them all, so players have to choose which customers to target, and in what order. Teams have access to a computer program which tells them exactly what orders (if any) Osborn will achieve if he follows their proposed itinerary, and they are allowed to test their decisions a pre-set number of times before submitting their final itinerary to the facilitator. The winning team is the one which enables Osborn to generate the most revenue in the 40 hours he has available.

What participants will be doing

Evaluating a sales territory situation using written information in conjunction with a screen diagram. Discussing potential strategies and experimenting with various iterations. Formulating a final itinerary based on the lessons learned and conclusions drawn from their experiments.

For what levels is it appropriate?

All those who have to plan the activities of others. Especially relevant to students and practitioners of sales and marketing.

The Package
Includes tutor manual, player instructions, program disc and all supporting documentation.