Melody Hossaini, a candidate in the last series of BBC TV’s The Apprentice, social entrepreneur and founder of InspirEngage International, blogs about the third episode in the new season of Young Apprentice:
Week three task: £800 to start up their own floristry businesses. Each must pitch to three corporate clients set up by Lord Sugar, and also spend a day selling to the public. Who knew flower-arranging could be this exciting?! This was also the first week the teams were mixed.
The central point of this task was pricing. It seemed that from the beginning however, the two teams were a little lost.
Hannah Richards’ team secured two out of three pitches and then went onto sell well to the general public but with low prices. Lizzie Mgee’s team, on the other hand only secured one pitch but sold at triple the costs, therefore making the most profits.
Team Atomic’s lower price meant that they sold a higher volume of flowers, but this task is won on profit, not volume.
In the briefing in the beginning of the task, they were told that they could expect to triple their prices of sale. If you don’t go for the higher-end prices in central London then where can you expect to sell them high at?! No brainer.
Once you’ve set the prices, you can always bring it down but you can never put them up. A strategy, which we employed in week one when I was PM in the fruit task, and even when Nick questioned me about selling a fruit pot for £2.50, I stuck with it and we won just based on fruit pot sales.
A leader
Riiing – Riiiing. Riiing – Riiiing! Sorry that’s just the sound of Lewis’ phone ringing! (To be fair to Lewis, the phones we get on the show are very fiddly so easy mistake to make!)
Something that came out of doing the rubbish task in week six of our series was that not only were we considering the actual price of the products we were removing but also what I was keen on, was to charge for service. The same is true here, they shouldn’t have only been considering a mark-up on the flowers but also accounted for the time it takes to arrange and deliver.
I must mention James in the car saying they should make the bouquets out of “cheap sh**e” and when they delivered them, it was clear that they went with his suggestion! @GavinSteele26 tweeted: “@Melody_Hossaini Agreed, I wouldn’t even have that in my bathroom.”
In the boardroom Hannah’s team Atomic made a profit of 450.96 whilst Kinnetic made 463.52. Close one!
I don’t think there’s anyone who would disagree with the fact that Hannah is a very capable young lady, and I actually thought she would get very far. However, the mistake she made as PM was choosing to bring back Harry Maxwell and Zara Brownless into the boardroom. @DwainReid tweeted: “Wow Hannah really put herself on the line with her choices of who to bring in to the boardroom.”
Harry M and Zara were the most proactive and most certainly two of the strongest contenders in the process.
Back at the house, Lewis Roman stormed off in a paddy! I tweeted: “I think either Lewis really fancied Hannah… or he just really disliked Harry M! :)” All of you replied with: “It’s both!”
Leadership: I always say, if everyone likes you then you’re not a strong enough personality. Zara is an extremely strong personality. She is definitely a leader, not a follower. She took a risk not following the PM’s instructions with regards to pricing, however that same leadership quality also resulted in her being proactive throughout and securing majority of sales.
@MarkTassell thought: “Zara has 3 p’s. She is very professional, presentable and polite!”
Week three lessons learned:
- Get the pricing right (Think profit, not volume)
- Take the right people into the boardroom (view the task in its entirety)
- Be a leader and show initiative.
- Switch phone off in pitches! 😉
Next week: Join me for live tweets and another blog post as the teenagers venture into the over 50s world!
