Week 7
This week the teams were sent to Budapest to create and sell one day excursions to tourists. It was an interesting task as one half of the team had to create the tour while the other half had to sell tickets. The following day, they then had to deliver the tour with some additional activities. The team with the most profit won.
As ever with this task, the problems are created by the sales team failing to sell sufficient tickets for the required price. While we do not see most of their efforts to sell tickets, there are some immediate problems created by their approaches.
The tour is for the next day. Potential customers are never approached with the opening question of “what are you doing tomorrow?” By asking this question, you can immediately qualify out anyone who is busy. If they have no plans, then you can immediately introduce the opportunity to sell the tour. Qualifying people out is often easier than qualifying them in so this is a great way to start.
The second tactic that they fail to use is in pricing. Tickets are always priced per person. However, no one goes on these tours on their own so in reality, they need to offer a price for two people. They should quote a price per person but then “offer a discount” for buying two tickets. This makes the customer feel like they are getting a good deal but actually are just paying what they should be paying.
As a result of these poor tactics, the teams struggle to sell tickets and have to heavily discount them towards the end of the day to try to sell all of them. However, they end up charging wildly different amounts to each person depending on when they bought the tickets which could easily back fire on them if the customers are not happy and discuss among themselves what they paid. The teams also tend to over sell what they are offering, including using the words “Michelin Style” for one tour, whatever that might mean!
The other significant element of the task was to negotiate the price of the tour from the supplier. One team negotiated down from 900 Euros to 350 Euros, offering almost nothing in return which was an amazing deal. The other went so low in their opening offer that they annoyed the supplier and they got a worse deal. While aiming low in your opening offer is a reasonable tactic, too low can be insulting and result in a bad deal.
When it came to delivering the tours, the teams did reasonably well, apart from the team leader who changed the teams around resulting in a poorly delivered tour. Using the right people to deliver a project is crucial to its success and that was a poor decision, although not fatal in the end.
More next week.
Episode 8 – Advertising
In this episode, the teams were given electric vans to brand and advertise. They were required to create a brand, a 30 second advert and then pitch their brand to experts. Safe to say, neither team covered themselves in glory!
As the series is coming to an end, there are not many general comments left to make. However, at the start of every episode, when someone answers the phone, they then go into everyone’s bedroom to announce where they are off to. I’m not quite sure that’s appropriate but they all seem to be happy with it. Anyway, what did we learn from this week?
Firstly, none of the teams know how to brainstorm. They are tasked with coming up with a brand name of their van and are devoid of ideas. They are trying to think of the perfect name just like that. However, when brainstorming, quantity beats quality to begin with. Start with as many ideas as you can and then see where they take you. Your first idea will never be right but will set you off on a line of thought that takes you to where you need to go.
Beyond that, as usual, when creating tag lines, logos etc, the decision of a committee is always worse than the decision of one person. There are too many compromises made when multiple people are doing this. One group’s logo was so obscure that it needed to be explained which is never a great result.
Neither advert was particularly great. The losing team’s advert never showed the vehicle in motion for which they were roundly criticised. However, as it is an electric van, would seeing it moving make much of a difference? The winning team’s advert barely showed the vehicle moving either but was not subject to the same criticism.
Neither side had a great pitch to the experts. They made some preposterous claims, such as claiming that the van was self charging. All vehicles charge their battery while moving so could claim to be self charging. To claim anything more could be considered to be wildly misleading.
When it came to the time for one candidate to be fired, it felt like the whole situation was engineered to get rid of the project manager. While she had the vision for the advert and it was not great, the other side was worse in other aspects of the task. She was talked over and possibly bullied during the boardroom scenes and given little opportunity to defend herself. While she was not a great leader, I am not sure she deserved that.
More next week.
Week 9 Shopping Channel
This week, the teams had to sell products on a shopping channel. There is not a lot of business skill on offer apart from sales so this is a great task for me to watch and learn from.
Before I get into that, it is worth noting that the teams have to appear in front of the cameras and sell products with barely any training or experience. Performing on television is a skill in itself and takes a lot of time to get good at. Added to that, they are needing to talk to the viewers and listen to the producers at the same time which is a further complicated skill. Even the candidate who claims lots of television experience struggled to deliver a coherent pitch.
Before they started selling, they needed to choose which products to sell. This is a tricky decision as the team which sells the most wins. There are a range of products, some expensive and some cheap. Cheaper products have a wider appeal but you need to sell more of them to generate lots of revenue. Expensive products are more difficult to sell but if you get it right, you can easily win the task. I suspect that the best approach would be to have a range of price product items so some high and some low.
When it came to selling, there was chaos!
Only one candidate started their time with the reasons as to why you might be interested in the product. He talked about the reasons for needing it. Despite being on the losing team, he was singled out for praise and easily saved.
The rest of the sellers never talked about why you might want their product or about its value. One team was selling a LED face mask and never one explained why you would use it! No one is going to buy something that looks like a welder’s mask with some lights inside it without knowing why they would use it.
When selling a product, it is so important to explain the why not the what. Focus on what the product does for you rather than what it is.
More next week.