Every day this week, our campus has hosted prospective students and their families as part of Iowa Private College Week -- an event where each private college in Iowa hosts 10 open houses in 5 days (morning and afternoon each day) to allow students an opportunity to "check out" multiple campuses in a condensed time period.
This annual event is a delicate balance of cooperation and competition, as schools recruit many of the same students, but it brings visitors to campus who may not otherwise make the journey so everyone plays along. The pressure is on to make the visit to campus a) authentic and b) memorable as we suspect all of the schools blur together after doing too many visits back to back. It is a great way for students to compare the feel of one place vs. another though, and so they come in droves.
College fairs are another way that universities cooperatively compete. The Taste of ___ events are this type of an event for the restaurant owners. Job fairs allow job seekers to consider similar companies and their benefit packages in side-by-side comparisons. Car shows require cooperation from the auto makers to draw in prospective car buyers.
What can your organization do in cooperation, yet still in competition, with others in your same industry? There is power in numbers -- the number of you that play well together is often proportionate to the number of prospective buyers that will reward your efforts to do so.
-- beth triplett
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