Loved this summary of last week’s Apprentice. Once again Wadds manages to make simple the complex (and surreal) kindergarten that is Sir Alan’s latest up market take on reality TV.
He makes the point that in the cleaning task the motley crews had to endure this week, the real coup was agreeing a bulk car washing deal with a car hire company. The programme glossed over the success of the teams in opening up such opportunities, which we assume was because the programme’s producers set it up. There was certainly some product placement action going down for Addison Lee, so we can see why they let the film crew and a bunch of idiots highly professional executives invade their back lot for a day.
In previous series, the whole point of the task has been that most difficult of all business tasks, that of making sales in the first place. Certainly in the current business climate, it’s even tougher than normal. Not sure how the lady “negotiator” thought she was going to succeed in telling her prospect that he was either deluded or lying. I won’t be adding that to our top tips for pitching…
I wonder what the car hire company’s normal car wash outfit thought of the programme?
1 response so far ↓
1 Lucy // Apr 7, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The key problem highlighted in both programmes so far has been a sheer lack of product or service understanding. Episode one: turning up to a clients premises to perform a cleaning job without checking if anyone knows how to work the equipment. Episode two: catering for a corporate event when clearly neither team has ever clapped eyes on a canape before.
Poor team communication, or specifically not asking the right, if any questions of each other, is why the early episodes (everyone playing their cards close the their chest and waiting for someone else to mess up) make such toe-curlingly great viewing.
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