I suspect if the TV cameras hadn't been there they might have been asked to leave on the strength of that initial offer. How could they possibly have known what to spend in the warehouse with no idea on sale price and turnover? What could be more basic than profit and loss?

For my money shoe shining was a far better bet. Fast, simple and cheap to provide.

Tom.

Tha women come across as….. well words fail me,looks like they have been picked for reasons other than business acumen.

Also the places where they did their business ,looked set ups to me.I said to my wife the minicab company will be ……….. (not giving them a plug) they love the publicity.

In all honesty i thought the whole thing was nonsense, such a shame.

Totally agree with you about the boardroom farce. The girls last night were just rowing. I was quite surprised that Sir Alan put up with it for as long as he did!

Mona with the limo guy was the embodiment of someone only interested in her side of the "negotiation". You're quite right that she told him he must be wrong about the price, appalling.

She also kept stating her personal situation as if this should influence him i.e. When she was saying "well we're here now" or words to that affect, she meant so you might as well pay us our asking price. She was so stuck in her own argument and the fact that they were already there that she couldn't see the irony that this should actually be his argument … "You're already here so you may as well do it at a discount rather than have a wasted journey!"

Of course, you are right. If you don't have a guide or a map to follow then sometimes you have to improvise and correct your course rapidly as you are going. My point in relation to this group was that they really didn't get going, always seeming todo things the complicated way. One of the groups had only cleaned one car 3 hours into the task, that's clearly not the best route to market.

One day when I was quite young a friend and I decided to knock doors and clean cars and we did 6 in 3 hours… That would have been a heck of a headstart on the efforts of last night! Many of the Apprentices make the mistake of trying to "show" how clever they are rather than getting on with a job that just does not require that much cleverness. Sometimes, things really are that simple!

Don't you find that many salespeople do that too? Sitting around making things complicated when their best bet would be to just pick up the phone, or make the call, or attend that networking event…