Re: The Apprentice, Freeloaders!

michael adams goes:

"Alan Hope" <not.alan.hope@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:a3f3339p5mcj0u1clkiqcel8qp83rcpect@xxxxxxxxxx
Claret Zip goes:
On 25 Apr, 23:37, Alan Hope <not.alan.h...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Once again the task, when you take away all the window-dressing, came
down to a sales contest. Who made the most money? Nothing else is
being tested, since all you have to do is bring in the most dosh and
your performance will not even be looked at, let alone criticised.

Success in this task was also affected by making the right choice of
material to sell.

Not really.

...

Yes really. The main reason the "snotties" lost is because they were trying
to sell £1000 pictures inside a £50- £100 time frame and using £100 methods.
If they'd have had more time and were able to do proper marketing beforehand
then they may have been more succesful.

So the task was entirely unsuited to the sector it purported to be
about.

My point was that Tre sold more despite -- not because of -- the
material he had to sell. Here comes the paragraph where I say exactly
that. I'm surprised you missed it.

The person who sold the most was selling material he
vehemently opposed. He turned pictures to the wall, excluded some from
the hanging altogether, bad-mouthed the stuff from beginning to end
and even undermined the art by mocking it during the view.

The fact remains he was selling cheaper items more suited to that
situation and timescale.

But not to the art-gallery business. Which doesn't at all work the way
the task was set up.

Same as the car salesman. Ordinary car sales techniques are more suited
to £100 pictures than to £1000 pictures. The snotties had the right
general approach the drinky poos etc, but they didn't get enough of
the right punters through the door and didn't have enough time
to work on them. In real life they'd maybe be phoning back the next
days to complete a deal.

That's right. That's how the business works. Not the way the programme
required.

Despite all that, people decided to buy it, because it is good stuff,
and he takes the credit. Had his strategy been successful, not only
would they have sold nothing, but some Talibanis would have come
storming in and slashed all the titty pictures.

So it's a test of nothing.

Yes it is, The snotties chose the wrong category and price range of
merchandise for selling stone cold in a single evening to complete
strangers.

It's not a test of the business sector is was set up in. Far from
being pushed to rethink their notions of selling to suit a new
environment -- which you might think would be interesting for a
business programme to engineer -- they were thrown into an unfamiliar
milieu and forced to use techniques which don't differ from the
selling techniques used throughout the series, but which are utterly
inappropriate for the art gallery world.

A completely missed opportunity, in other words.


--
Alan Hope
http://sour-grapes.tumblr.com/
.

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