Ways To Improve Your Chances
of Winning Order of Preference Competitions
Yes, there are ways, and you'll hardly believe how simple they are.
We have already established that you are different from all the people who never win competitions. You are a potential winner, you maybe just don't have all the skills to make it happen, so read on and you will get them.
Read The Instructions
You'd be surprised at how many people ignore this simple requirement.
Competitions are usually promoting some consumer product or other and whoever sets the competition usually thinks of some connection between the product they are trying to promote and the competition.
What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that once again you have weeded out all those of your fellow entrants in the competition who just won't pay any attention to the question. They will answer the question they want to answer, not the question they were asked.
Why is this important? Well, a typical competition may ask you to put in order of preference the key features of the product they are promoting, say it is maybe a new fitted kitchen.
So, you look at the five, or maybe seven, points they have listed and you put them in order of preference. No, you don't do that, you are a serious comper. What does a serious comper do to improve their chances of winning?
They read the question! The question was not whether you fancied a new kitchen and why. What was it then?
The question was more likely to be something like what would a health conscious family with young children choose in a new fitted kitchen. Are you a family with young children? Thought not, so your opinion is worth diddley squat, as I am sure they say somewhere.
A family with young children probably doesn't put the under-cabinet radio preset to Radio 4, as its first priority, does it? How about the built in smoothy dispenser? Yes, that could be one of the important ones.
So, read the instructions, are they asking for your opinion? Probably not.
Now, just by reading the question, you have once again increased your chances of winning.
Multiple Guess
You know these multiple choice questions, where you can exclude one of the four altogether as being completely daft, and a second as being most unlikely, so narrowing down your choice to only two, which gives you a 50/50 chance of being right, instead of three chances in four of being wrong?
Well, you can apply the same principles to order of preference competitions. One of the five, or seven, or whatever, is probably so unlikely that you can just put it last.
If it is a quality hardwood, fitted kitchen, then furnishing a budget family first home is a complete non-starter, so put it last in your first sift through. Quality hand built craftsmanship just has to be more important. How many people think of that, though?
Multiple Entries Too
So, lets think about numbers. Yes, too difficult again, just what we want!
Let's say there were five key features to be put in order of preference and you have one "banker", which you know is last.
Can you work out how many entries you need to make to be sure of getting it right? Yes, and it is quite easy, too. You just multiply the numbers of points by themselves. No, it is easy, really.
Say there are five points to put in order, the maximum number of possible combinations of these points will be five times four times three times two times one. I know, you multiply by one the get the same as you started with, but it is to show the principle of working it out, stop being so pedantic.
The answer, for the calculatorly-challenged is 120. That is quite a lot of entries, a lot of stamps.
But, you decided one is bottom of the list for sure, so the number is more likely to be four times three times two times one.
Now, you only need to send in 24 entries, that's better. So, if the rules allow multiple entries, send in twenty-four. It is all about improving your chances of winning competitions, this is how we win.