The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, Part III

Week 3 of The Apprentice started with Sir Alan wafting along in his roller and interrupting the apprentices who were busy eating dinner. This threw several of the apprentices into a flap panic. I understand respect but come on guys.. we all meet senior players and we need to demonstrate that we have gravitas not jump up and down, flap our hands around and screech.

How much money can you make in one day from £100?

After switching a few players around to even up the numbers Sir Alan continued his own mythology by regaling the teams with how 40 years ago he had set up his business with £100, selling car aerials. This week’s task was to start a business from scratch the very next day, do it for one day only and see how much money they could make from the initial £200 per team. The winning team would be the team with the most money at the end of the day.This was to be a true test of their entrepreneurial flair said Sir Alan.

The boys were off to a quick start electing Tre as PM and deciding that they were going to do gardening jobs. The girls took rather longer to vote Naomi in as PM and to decide that they were doing face painting – an odd choice I thought. Naomi piped up, “I’m not 100% confident about doing this.”

Organizing painting faces? I know trained monkeys who could do that Naomi. What exactly are you not confident about?

Out on the streets of Richmond things were not straight forward. The boys quickly found out that Katie and Paul could not “sell” for toffee. I’m not sure whether this was lack of ability or lack of application. I suspect the latter. They seemed to spend most of the day “cooing” at each other. They could have doubled their sales prospecting if they had split up and done one side of the street each. I would love to know how many doors they knocked on… not enough is my suspicion. Sales apathy is a killer! When they did sell they didn’t scope the job properly, under sold and negotiated badly! This lot need some sales training. Oh well!

The girls meanwhile were making a hash of selling face painting but with kids in school what were they expecting? Where’s your market?

By early evening the teams, who were allowed to make one change of business each, were struggling to decide what to do. The boys had an aborted attempt at selling DJ’ing, opting instead for singing to people in pubs. The girls went one better – selling kisses for cash. Frankly, an embarrassing decision and one which they should be ashamed of; not only because of the choice but because any self-respecting college night out could make more money than they made all day!!

In the board room things were not good. The boys won but it could hardly be called that. They returned with £389.29 and the girls with £265.04.

From the losing team, Naomi took Gerri and Jadine back to Sir Alan and, after calling Jadine disruptive and saying Naomi had lost control (but he thought she had “potential”), he fired Gerri. True, she mucked up venues (again!) but one did feel that she had been sacked just so that he hadn’t voted out 3 PMs in 3 shows…

Now let’s put things into perspective. The whole thing was a farce. Unleashed on the streets of London the boys made £189.29 between 6 people in 13 hours. That’s £2.42 per hour each. The girls made a staggering £65.04 between 7 people in 13 hours! That’s 71 pence each per hour! 71 pence!

They would have been better off begging in the subway.

They would have made more getting a temp job in Safeways. The boy scouts down our street make more than they did all day in 2 or 3 hours!

So what went wrong? In a nutshell EGO.

EGO is the salespersons worst enemy. EGO gets in the way of rational sales behaviours. EGO causes salespeople to be more bothered about having their own say, looking good and protecting their (fragile) EGO than they are about making the sale.

I’ve talked about it before and I’ll talk about it many times again. EGO stops you learning. EGO stops you admitting you are wrong. EGO stops you working as part of a team.

And these guys don’t work as a team. Not one bit. They are more interested in point scoring, back stabbing and finger pointing than anything else.

I didn’t think much of any of the ideas but it wasn’t the ideas that were to blame rather their inability to get their EGOs out of the way and actually act out any of their ideas.

With one day there is not time for that kind of trauma. You need to get out, get running and start making sales. I see salespeople have their own mini-traumas every day focusing on all the wrong stuff and worrying about stuff they can’t change when they should be doing tasks that lead to sales.

So maybe the PMs could have done better. Maybe they weren’t on track. But hey! If you’re given a job to do by your manager and clearly told what not to do you can hardly claim you are helping by doing something else now can you? Paul and Katie were told to sell gardening services but what did they do? They went off to Richmond in some aborted attempt to sell DJ-ing - a total violation of the team’s trust, an inability to follow instructions and an arrogant attempt to try and win personal glory. 

Jadine can’t take an order. Gerri wasn’t to blame. Apparently Tre “has nothing to learn”. Naomi was let down by Gerri… oh, yawn.

Who would want to manage any of this lot? Who would want to employ them? They all know that the losing PM is going into the room with Sir Alan so they heap blame, create disruptions and cause trouble.

Enough already. They need to start working as a team. None of them would pass an assessment centre behaving in this way.

This task was a sales task – simple as. Find something to sell. SELL.

They didn’t work out their markets right, they didn’t do enough prospecting and they under sold and under delivered. Worst of all, however, they didn’t work as teams.

To be a great salesperson in the real world you need to support your team. You need to work hard. You need to learn from mistakes. You need to leave your EGO at home.