A highly enjoyable episode this week, with the teams trying to build a new business by selling £250 of assorted stock donated by Lord Sugar and then replenishing stock of the best sellers from local wholesalers. The team with the highest combined cash and stock value would be the winner.
Getting the strategy right
The key challenges were:
- finding the right sort of customers for the variety of goods that the team started with
- identifying what was easy to sell
- buying more of it
- selling it again
- repeat the above as many times as possible!
It sounded simple but some of the budding candidates for leadership development made the task surprisingly difficult. Melody Hossaini, leading Helen Louise Milligan and Tom Pellereau, lost the plot by trying to sell goods to retailers rather than direct to consumers. Helen blotted her copybook by persuading Melody that this retail strategy was a good idea. When they ended up trying to sell £25 watches to a pound store it should have been apparent that the strategy was not going to work. The distraction cost them the task and Melody got fired by Lord Sugar in the boardroom.
Helen was perhaps fortunate to survive her first visit to the boardroom but having won the last 9 tasks she was entitled to the benefit of the doubt on her first loss. On balance Melody did deserve to go, having failed to get to grips with what to do as project leader. When Tom Pellereau pointed out what had sold well, Melody totally ignored this and bought completely unrelated electronic products. This may have been a brave entrepreneurial gamble that backfired but having ignored the input from Tom and then lost, Melody really had no one to blame but herself.
Natasha Scribbins led Susan Ma and Jim Eastwood to victory although the win was possibly despite Natasha rather than because of her. Natasha was another of the candidates who missed the point of the task and was reluctant to reinvest in more stock, despite pleading from Jim when his stock of nodding dogs and umbrellas had been exhausted. Has she been brave rather than cautious then the team’s win would have been even more comprehensive. As a punishment for not following his instruction to keep reinvesting in stock, the team got a £100 fine from Lord Sugar and lost out on the treat normally given to the victorious team. Had Natasha lost then she would certainly have been the one fired. Both Jim and Susan demonstrated their ability to sell when armed with the right products for the right customers.
We are now down to the last five and it is likely that the candidates own business plans for Lord Sugar’s investment will start to feature in the board room decisions.
Tom Pellereau and Helen Louise Milligan are still top of the Righttrack Apprentice winner’s poll.
Vote here for the person you think will be the Apprentice winner.
By Jon Davies | Righttrack’s Digital Marketing Manager