#SalesFails from the Apprentice

Love it or hate it, the Apprentice is back on our screens, and I for one couldn’t be more excited. I always find it a great insight into how people think, behave under pressure and respond to others. It’s also always reminds me of so many big ‘sales’ lessons!

This week the teams were in South Africa – one team selling a safari experience, the other a wine tasting! For me there were at least three big lessons from this weeks episode…

Don’t overpromise – and speak your prospects language!

I was literally yelling at the telly as the boys team confidently committed that the participants would see ‘the big five’ on their safari – despite having been explicitly told by the people running the tour never to do this as they couldn’t be sure this would happen! I think we have all been in the position of being overpromised (at best) or lied to (at worst) by an over-enthusiastic salesperson. And in the long run it destroys trust with the business and the individual – and indeed they were called out on this in the first five minutes of the tour, leaving the tour guides feel awkward as they experienced only 3 of the ‘big five’ promised. And while we are at it…. What even are the ‘big five’??? There was a huge amount of assumption made that people would know what this meant – in the group I was watching with there was enough debate (especially about number 5!) to remind me that just because YOU know what this means doesn’t mean that the person you are talking to does!

Remember you are the Expert

The girls team fell foul of not having done their homework. It was frankly embarrassing to watch them stumbling around the vineyard looking for the ‘cellar’. I was dying inside as I saw their credibility with participants completely disappear as they squabbled amongst themselves and finally ended up delivering a talk about a wine cellar in the fermentation room…. With a crowd who clearly wanted to just ‘get to the wine’ they were so sick of being trailed around the villa (something I think we were all feeling by this point in the proceedings). Their pricing strategy was also a shambles with late buyers getting a reduction of over 75% from those buying early in the day – unsurprisingly those paying more for the tour went for a refund which could well have lost them the task – as well as the trust of their buyers… how could they forget that people talk!?

Pushy might work – but it doesn’t make people like you…

My biggest ‘cringe’ moment however was Thomas playing the hard man – ‘negotiating’ with a gift shop to get a cut of the proceeds. I have never felt so uncomfortable as he bulldozed the owner into a significant cut of the profits – an owner who would no doubt never want to deal with him again and eventually agreed a deal with his team-mate – in my eyes just so that she didn’t have to deal with him anymore. Increasingly in this day and age it is people and relationships that make the world go round – and maybe on a ‘made for TV’ negotiation you can get away with riding roughshod over how people feel about dealing with you – but in REAL life if you want an ongoing business relationship this kind of behaviour is not going to help you.

So, it’s already shaping up to be a fun series, and of course we have yet to get to my favourite part of the show – the ‘come up with a crap name for your team’ portion – and I’ve yet to settle on a favourite to win. One thing’s for sure though – there’s going to be some more giant sales fails along the way!