Raj Dhonota

Episode 11. Developing and opening a new fast food outlet and pitching it to industry experts. Jim Eastwood was team leader for Venture. Helen Louise Milligan was project leader for Logic. Logic Win. Natasha Scribbins is fired.

I hate to say I told you do but…I did! A few blogs ago I predicted that the first chance Lord Sugar gets, he is going to fire Natasha. Low and behold, he got his chance to day and took it.

Clearly Lord Sugar can justify his decision anyway he likes because there never seems to be anyone analysing his performance in the boardroom – apart from me perhaps! Today Lord Sugar felt that with Natasha he couldn’t “reconcile some of the things that happened today.” We didn’t get to find out what he meant because there was no further clarification from Lord Sugar. To me it seemed like another one of those vague criticisms to which there was no substance; made only to enable Lord Sugar to say something critical for the sake of the camera in order to fire someone when in truth it probably was not justified.

After firing Natasha, he commented that it was a tough process and if the candidates could not hack this process, it showed him that they were not capable of being his partner. Honestly, it’s not a tough process at all. The only challenge is the continual race against time and I can’t help but feel that this was another firing on the advice of the producers. Perhaps Natasha wasn’t as big a personality for them hence her card being marked early on? You would think that looking at the task, the biggest failure was from the project leader Jim Eastwood who failed (or so it was made to appear) to formulate any kind of strategy or run the numbers to see if their business was a viable one. Had Jim analysed the figures he would have known what quantity he needed to sell every hour, and this would have enabled him to select a better/easier product to make. Focusing on what he needed to sell each hour would also have indicated to him that the process he had in place to produce the food was too slow. But other than a passing criticism, this seemed of no importance to Lord Sugar when deciding who to fire.

When Natasha tried to justify her position by pointing to the fact that she had fulfilled the responsibility she was given, Lord Sugar retorted “ah ah ah you’re all in the same boat. Don’t give me ‘my responsibility’. Everyone was supposed to pipe up to make the team win.” So today Lord Sugar was looking for the “we, we, we” approach; on numerous occasions before we have seen him advise the candidates to forget the team approach, in favour of the individual approach. Karen Brady and Lord Sugar spoke about the impact of the ‘gruelling’ process on the candidates. Personally, I’m not surprised that after so many weeks the candidates are looking bewildered; but I think it perhaps has more to do with the fact they don’t know what’s coming next from Lord Sugar, than any task they are being asked to perform!

In this episode we also saw another side to Karen. Her psychic side! In the boardroom she stated that Susan had pointed out how to improve the process in the kitchen. However, Karen was not even in the car when Susan suggested it! Clearly, she must psychic powers to have known this; unless of course, it proves my point that it’s the producers who provide the main feedback to Lord Sugar! I’ll let you decide.

Episode 10. Buying merchandise at wholesale prices. Selling it. Reinvesting in further stock. As lord Sugar put it, smell what you can sell. The team with highest combined value of sales and surplus stock win. Melody Hossaini was project manager for Logic, Natasha Scribbins project manager for Venture. Venture win. Melody Hossaini, Helen Milligan and Tom Pellereau end up in the boardroom. Melody Hossaini is fired.

To start with, it did make me laugh when Lord Sugar confronted Susan about her feeling that he had supplied the candidates with, in his words, “a load of tut”. I remember thinking the same once!

In the boardroom we saw Lord Sugar criticise Helen for never having been self employed, telling her that “you don’t just spring out of bed one Monday morning and say ooh I fancy starting a business….you have to have an idea and more to the point you have to have experience.” For sure you need an idea, and I’m glad Lord Sugar cleared that one up for us! However, I thought it was wrong of Lord Sugar to assume that just because someone has been employed their whole career, they either do not have the ability or know-how to start a business. I also disagree that having experience is a must have. Yes experience would be advantageous, but there are plenty of businesses like my company Life’s Dream, that help and support people without experience to start their own business. In fact, because Life’s Dream gives people the opportunity to start their own business part time or around existing commitments and without the need for any kind of investment, most of our enquiries come from people who have been employed their whole career. And if anything, this proves to be an advantage because their desire and willingness to build their knowledge makes them extremely receptive to the training we provide to bridge any experience gap. Franchises are another example where people are able to start their own business with the help and support of the Franchisor to bridge any lack of experience or knowledge. So in short, yes experience is useful, but not having any is not really a hindrance if you have the right support structure available to you.

Finally, we get to the firing. Despite Lord Sugar repeatedly telling Tom that were he to appear in the boardroom again he would be fired, that there would be no more chances, Tom escapes and Melody is fired. Hmmm? Ditto everything I have said before about the lack of consistency in the boardroom…

Episode 9. Creating a new brand of biscuit. Pitching it to three major supermarkets. The team with the most orders wins. Helen Louise Milligan was project manager for Venture, Zoe Beresford project manager for Logic. Venture win. Zoe Beresford, Susan Ma and Melody Hossaini end up in the boardroom. Zoe Beresford is fired.

In this episode we saw how difficult it is to pitch to major retailers. These major retailers source products from across the world to ensure that they purchase products that offer them the highest return in the shortest possible time. Imagine the responsibility on their shoulders for getting a decision wrong. I wonder if the person who chose to stock Lord Sugar’s Emailer plus is still in a job?! Only joking Lord Sugar!

Clearly, pitching to large retailers is an area Lord Sugar has a lot of experience in. No doubt he was speaking from experience when advising the candidates that “if what’s in the box is rubbish,” the packaging does not matter. In essence the lesson here is the same as it was in the pet food task; that first and foremost the product has to be right. Without the right product, you can do all the marketing in the world, but you are likely to fail. That’s not to say marketing is not important. If you have a good product but the marketing is totally wrong, you stand to fail just as fast; but with the right product you can work on and improve the marketing a lot easier than having to change a product that is flawed.

Many people feel that wining a contract with a major retailer would be a massive step to success and overall there is little you could disagree with, but it is certainly not the be all and end all if you fail to get a national retailer on your books. These retailers may buy volume quantities but they will also drastically squeeze the profit margins of anyone supplying to them because of their buying power. So it’s not always the pot of gold it seems – pretty much like the £250,000 on offer on The Apprentice! An alternative would be to target multiple smaller retailers who may not buy as much, but where the profit margins are higher than would be the case (per unit) when selling to major retailers. For example, take our end to end ecommerce platform. Not only does it let people set up and run their own online store for less than the daily cost of a bar of chocolate, but it also allows suppliers from across the world sell to retailers across the world – giving suppliers increased orders and buyers the benefit of reduced prices. Vendimal even lets buyers sell supplier products without having to buy them first – a great way to start a business with very little money.

On to the firing. From what we saw Zoe’s fate was sealed because Lord Sugar believed that her failure to use her experience by going to the bakery personally was the reason the team lost. Ultimately the underlying justification cannot be doubted, but given how random the firing decisions appear to be, you can’t help but wonder whether had she gone, and then lost because of the marketing, Lord Sugar would have gone down the road of “So you went for the easy route did you. I see. You had experience in this field and did not want to take the risk of taking on something new. This is a business you know. And people will need to do tasks they are not used to doing. You haven’t shown me you can do anything else and I have to start thinking about who I want to go into business with. I’ve come to the conclusion…Zoe you’re fired.” But he did not so this could be a historic moment – is that two or three decisions during the series where Lord Sugar appears to have made a decision based on what actually happened during a task? That could be an Apprentice record!

Episode 8.  Selling unique business products to French retailers.  Each candidate is given a sales book in which they must record their sales.  Tom Pellereau was team leader for Logic.  Susan Ma was team leader for Venture.  Venture win.  Leon Doyle, Tom Pellereau and Melody Hossaini end up in the boardroom.  Leon Doyle is fired.

Eight weeks in and I have become both bored and frustrated with the consistent inconsistency in the boardroom.  The candidates may be better off playing the lottery than trying to determine what the rules of the game are.  On the one had Lord Sugar states at the beginning of each episode that he is “not looking for a bloody sales person.  [He wants] someone with a brain.”  Yet here he is again analysing the level of people’s sales as an indication of their performance.  Holding Tom’s sale book up in the air he criticises Tom saying “No sales Tom….No sales Tom.”

Then we have Karen Brady criticising Melody Hossaini for individualism, asking Melody “did you not understand this was a team effort.”  Has Karen not been listening to Lord Sugar or is she confused with the whole process too?  You can’t blame her really, she can only go by what Lord Sugar says, and that seems to change by the week.  One week they are criticising the “we we we” i.e. team approach, and next they are criticising someone for not taking the “we we we” approach.  Board stop yo-yoing around and make up your minds about what it is that you are looking for.  This level of inconsistency would never stand up in the real world.

Finally, having made selling a mandatory requirement in this task from the outset with the sales book, Lord Sugar decides not to fire the only person in the final with zero sales! Instead he chose to fire Leon on gut instinct.  It’s comical!

At the beginning of the episode Lord Sugar stated the reason for sending the candidates to Paris was that he did not want “any new business of [his] restricted to the UK market alone”.  That’s ambitious given the prize on offer may be nowhere near a £250,000 cash injection.  But more importantly, he seemed to be unaware of what it takes to sell internationally in today’s global marketplace.  I say this because selling internationally is what my businesses do day in day out, and I therefore have real experience in knowing exactly what is required to be successful in the global marketplace.  It is fact that when selling internationally buyers are three times more likely to buy from businesses that sell to them in their native language, as opposed to selling to them in a language that is foreign to them.  This is not only validated by my own experience, but has also been shown to be fact by respected market research companies such as Plunkett Research and Forrester Research.  Clearly, Lord Sugar was unaware of this; had he been aware, he would not have criticised Leon for letting Melody use her French language skills to sell to the French and therefore would probably not have fired him either.

Further when criticising Leon, Lord Sugar gave the example of when he first started out in business and had to communicate with suppliers from China, Korea and Japan without knowing their language.  I feel it’s a bit of a misleading example because buying from a seller (which Lord Sugar was doing) and selling to a customer (which the candidates were doing) are two different worlds.  In Lord Sugar’s case, when he started out, the reliance would have been on the supplier’s from China, Japan and Korea being able to converse with Lord Sugar in English.  And you can bet they did a good job of communicating with him in his native language because he ended up buying from them! In short, it’s the ability of the seller to be able to communicate effectively with the buyer that increases sales.

So all in all, did we learn much from Lord Sugar today?  In my opinion it is impossible to decipher any lesson with such inconsistency being displayed in the boardroom.  What we can conclude fairly however, is that if candidates are being judged on a task,  the very least you would expect is for Lord Sugar to understand the principles of selling internationally in today’s market and therefore not criticise candidates without merit.