You are being very pedantic, to be honest.

If I were told that the team with the "highest amount of sales" would win, I would know instinctively what that means.

I, as a business woman, would not need it spelling out to me like a child and for you to comment on it as though the competitors are all childrens is taking it a bit far.

That's not honest, that just an opinion.

And, with all due respect, a rather stupid one.


With perfect hindsight, I'm sure you would.

However, if you habitually assume people mean something other than what they specifically say you are a danger to yourself and others.


ROFLMAO!

And yet all the competotors made a complete cock-up of the task in a way that indicates that they didn't understand the implications.

So your comment is quite absurd! It flies in the face of observed reality.

Your continued inability to understand the task defies credability. It was perfectly clear what was required and they were given several clear hints as to how to go about it.

THe person that wins is supposed to play a key roll in the organisation and a six figure salary. They should be capable of grasping a task quite easily

That's really quite funny coming from someone who has repeatedly demonstrated (and does so again, above) that they do not understand the difference between 'revenue' and 'profit'.


Again (as I've already pointed out to you in very simple language): This thread is not about what the candidates did or did not do. It's about the fact that Sugar misrepresented the task.

The fact that you carry on blissfully unaware that he did so is actually quite comic.

The fact is that these people are meant to be some of the best business brains in Britain with the potential to lead successfully at the highest level.

They receive a written brief.

Those of us who run businesses and sell in the real world know exactly what is important - profit. Any monkey can sell something cheap and AS will not be paying peanuts so does not need a monkey.

Phillip's team started off understanding the task (they were sat trying to value things) but screwed that up cos they were too keen to get 'out on the road' before they knew what they were selling, for what price and to who.

"Cassandra" kept mentioning the rug (and the shoes apparantly) so she understood the importance of selling for the true value.

Even Ben's team went to see the book experts to get an idea of true value but lost patience and tried to sell everyone rather than work out the value.

Both teams clearly understood the importance of getting a true value.

Arguing that they were given the impression that revenue was the aim is a fallacy because you ignore the old adage

"Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity"

if you believe that AS would want anyone who thought revenue was the most important.

No business wants someone like that - why would AS?

It was clear to me from the start what they needed to do and anyone selected for the show should have been able to pick that up too.

Arguing that his words were not clear enough is like arguing that a football team manager would say "go out and score as many as you can" but not get upset if his team lost 9-7.

A professional football player would understand that his job was to win the game not just score goals.

What annoys me about this mish-mash of assertion and cod business philosophy is that it ignores two very salient points:

1) The apprentice is a game and normal business rules do not apply.

Anyone who thinks they do is sadly deluded.

In the catering task, for example, anyone who adopted the winner's profit maximisation strategy wouldn't last five minutes in the real world becase they would get no repeat business. And yet they won the task because They did what Sugar told them to do. They came back with the maxiumum profit.

They didn't second guess him and say: "We're the smartest young business brains in the country. He obviously didn't mean what he explicitly said because it doesn't make good business sense.

2) You seem to have made the exact same mistake that several others have made.

Whether the teams were working on profit or revenue, they still needed to ascertain the value of the goods they sold as accurately as possible because that is the only way to generate the maximum profit (oter than by fluke).

The only difference between a revenue basis and a profit basis would be the high level strategy adopted.


You miss the distinction between a real game and a training session.

'The Apprentice' is a game. The tasks are not realistic.

A football manager might well say during a training session (or when trying out players): "Go and get as many goals as you can" to get them to concentrate on attack rather than defence.

Obviously the players would know that in a real game they would have to place a lot more importance on defence.

But in a training session: "The team that gets the highest number of goals wins" is clear and unambiguous. It's the number of goals that counts not the goal difference.

I agree about the catering task. It still annoys me that a team win a task even though their service was so sub-standard just because it was a one off. If the task is repeated in the future, I hope that this is addressed - you're right, it has no relevance in a respected business.

I still think it's a moot point as to whether SAS mislead the teams. Obviously it was possible to misunderstand his statement (as the teams proved) but I think we can forgive him that if we assume that the written brief was clear. He is quite entitled to think that even if what he said could be taken more than one way, the teams had clear written instructions that informed them exactly what the task entailed.

However, what SAS did do is (potentially) mislead the viewers. We didn't get to see the brief. If it was possible for the teams to misinterpret SAS's verbal instructions, then it was possible for the viewers to do the same (as this thread shows). The viewers should be clear as to what the task entailed. A short voiceover to the effect of,
"The written brief clearly states that only sales will count towards the final total. Unsold items will not be penalised but items sold below the assessed price will - however, the teams have not realised this and seem intent on selling everything regardless of value," would have sufficed.

I am aware that the brief may not have made things clear either - we have no idea what it contained. I think what does seem to be apparent though is that neither team read it properly.

why thank you.


You use the term salient as if everyone should/does agree with you - they are not a given.


Unfortunately that's where you are wrong. The fact is there are many 'rogue traders' out there who continuously rip people off, provide a shoddy product and make a fortune because they have gone for a profit maximising strategy.

They survive through phoenix companies, hidden directorships etc etc

That is where you are sadly deluding yourself.

You only have to look in the overseas property, mortgage and home improvement markets to see where this goes on every day and even more so now.

Amstrad are/were not bastions of quality. They are not known as the British Sony (that's Wharfedale I believe).

In that way the show reflects real life - otherwise AS would announce that the team who provided the best business model/product/service/most professional image would win in the selling tasks - not the ones who made the most profit.


Again you miss the point, in that task they instinctively understood that it was about making profit - not repeat business or impressing the customers. They did not have to be explicitly told that.

They were told to host a great event for people in the city and provide a lunchtime service for the same type of person but they still knew they had to control costs and make a profit in order to win.

Why would it be different this time?

Did they really think AS had changed the show after 3/4 series?

Based on the fact that we have not heard anyone (but you) complaining I suspect that deep down they knew that is what they had to do but just had 2 crap PMs who ignored the basic premise of the show let alone the task.


I'll assume your use of the term profit above was unintentional and that you meant it was the only way to maximise revenue and that you weren't unintentionally proving that everyone knows that all business (and business tasks) are about profit.

That is where you keep making a mistake by underestimating how much importance AS places on profit and always has done.

Profit is not a high level strategy, it is the most basic one.

Granted, if you concentrate on revenue you just make sure that you sell as close to true value so that you do not knowingly undersell by more than the other team.

But you are still in competition with them and would be daft to assume they are just going to try and offload everything at whatever price.

Therefore you make sure you make more profit than them - always has been that way and again I would ask what makes you think that it hasn't.

If you really want to look at it that way it is no high level business strategy - it is a basic tactic to win a gameshow judged by AS. One where he has always gone on about selling loads, maximizing profit, minimizing costs and showing the product.


But that ignores the whole point of football - a football player does not need to be told that he needs to stop the otherside scoring as well - it is a given, a natural part of his makeup. It does not need to be clear and unambiguous.

A player on trial (or even in training) looks to show that they have the all round ability (where have we heard that on the show?) - that they can attack and defend - in the hope that they get picked for the team.

Again, anyone who has seen the show and does not pick up that AS is obsessed with the profit (and featuring the product in the advertising tasks) is going to have a very short stay on the show - even if they are after a media career.

Whether or not this is a rehearsal for real life with AS, whether or not the tasks are realistic, the objective is to make a profit (or feature the product) and always has been.

A fan of the show would know that.

A real business person would understand that - it is a given, a natural part of a true business person's make up. It does not need to be clear and unambiguous - even if you ignore the fact they are given a written brief.

ROFLMAO.

You obviously don't know what 'salient' means. Try looking it up while you have the dictionary open looking up 'stalking horse'.


I really don't think that 'The Apprentice' is a programme about how to be a dodgy businessman.


No, you have got it back to front.

They did what Sugar told them to do, not what they would need to do to start a viable business.

You are actually arguing the completely opposite case here to the one you are arguing elsewhere. Here, you say they instinctively knew that they should do exactly what Sugar said rather than what they should do if they were in a real business situation.

Elsewhere you are arguing that they should ignore what Sugar said and do what they would in a real business situation rather than what he told them to do to win the task.

Can you not see that all you are doing is using hindsight to make it look as if you know what you're talking about when, in reality, you weren't even aware that you were absolutely contradicting yourself.


Look at the fish task at the start of series 4.

How was it scored?

Clue: In exactly the way that he said that this task would be scored.

Where is the change?


Read the thread before posting incorrect nonsense like this.


No, I did not mean revenue. I meant profit or revenue according to the task set. You actually show your own lack of understanding here by thinking that subsituting 'revenue' for 'profit' would have made the sentence make sense. It would not.


There is no mistake on my part.

You are, as Bob22A before you setting up a straw man argument. This thread is not about what is important. It is about what Sugar said.

He stated, quite clearly and unequivocally the the winners would be the one who came back with the highest amount of sales not the highest profit.

There really is no point in discussing the matter with people who are so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between 'highest amount of sales' and 'profit'.



Yet another stupid straw man argument.

I'm not talking about what was important, I'm talking about what he SAID.


You completely misunderstand the level of strategy I'm talking about. You are looking at a simplistic and obvious point regarding excess of selling price over buying price. I was talking about the strategy of how to use two teams in a very limited amount of time to accurately price the right articles and sell those.

It's a lot more subtle than you seemto realise.


Well, I can promise you with 100% certainty that a player who ignores the instructions of the manager when undertaking a test is not going to end up on any team.


This is just more bluster and stating the obvious.

It does not address the fact that Sugar said the task would be scored one way and in fact it was scored another.

You can witter on as long as you like stating the blindingly obvious: that real business is based on profit - as if you are in posession of some secret knowledge, but that was never the point of the thread.

Just to be pedantic, SAS may have profit at the forefront of his mind much of the time but he is not always obsessed with it; it is not always the principal objective. If he was, neither Tim in series one or Michelle in series two would have been hired as both made less on the final task than their rival. Indeed, in series one, Tim made a significant loss on the final task but was still congratulated on his long term vision. Saira had exactly the same idea as the above poster; that SAS was obsessed with profit and that was, therefore, her primary objective also. It is quite probable that SAS had all but chosen his apprentice prior to the final show but there is an indication here that short term profit is not always SAS's immediate aim.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/salient?view=uk


The fact that you used salient implies that you think your points were "of notable significance".

to be so they would have to be indisputable or at least have the weight of popular suppport behind them.

Your points are not and do not.


is insignificant and of no relevance as they are given a written brief as well as the brief from SA.

we do not see that brief and SA's verbal brief will be edited so we do not see all that was said.

Even if you persist that they based their conduct on that one word that we saw of the brief given, it would no more important than knowing the show, the contestants would/should know that he always looks at profit.


This point cannot be salient as it notably significant to you alone and is a matter of opinion not fact.


Oh I am cut

This is a fair point that I accept to a degree but only in so far as the way that the final task is judged.

I would argue that those who know the show will realise he has a history of judging 'normal' tasks on the profit.

In the final task SA needs to make a value judgement on the way the task is conducted because the winner will represent his companies in the viewers' minds but until then he does not have to... and does not.

ROFLMAO. Yes, I already knew what it meant.


True. They were fairly fundamental


Sorry, that is where you go right off the rails. Salient describes the importance of the point under discussion. It has no bearing on the outcome of discussing that point.

e.g. In a murder trial whether the defendant plunged the knife into the heart of the victim is a salient point.

Whether you were arguing he did or did not you would still be correct in describing the point as 'salient'.

Hope that helps.


What a wonderful vote face!

In your last post you went on and on and on about the teams knowing what was correct and the importance of the fact that AS deem profit to be of extreme importance.

Now you dismiss what he says as of no importance.

Classic!


And now you're back to 'they must know because he always looks at profit'.

You really are having trouble knowing what you think, aren't you?


BTW, I notice that you have avoided answering the point I made about the fish task in series 4 in answer to your erroneous assertion that tasks are always scored on profit.

No, but you argued that concentrating on profit alone does not reflect the real world (because the task winners would not have retained customers) and I simply countered by pointing out that it does in some cases.


No, as you argued that "it's only a game show" I was arguing that - knowing the show - they knew to go for profit even if that was at the expense of quality and despite it being the opposite of what they would do in real life.

That means that - knowing the show - they would instinctively know to go for profit in all tasks.


No, at all times I was arguing that whether they were looking at it from the point of how to win the show or from the point of how to make it a successful business they should know that it was about making money on the items they were selling not just getting rid of them.


Not hindsight I'm afriad. Like most people I watched the show thinking

"they're f'ing this up by not finding out how much something is worth cos AS will sack them if they lose him money"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_App...UK_Series_Four)



Funny that, I have not heard anything from the contestants, Adrian Chiles, guests on your fired, the media, anyone at work, anywhere arguing that the task was incorrectly described - just you and this thread.


ahh bless

I thought you were arguing that they were pricing things up because they had to work out how much revenue they could potentially generate, not how much they needed to sell at to make a profit.

Shame as that was the only way in which I was willing to concede you may have had a point.


aah bless. Now you're smarter than everyone else.

The fact is, in winning the tasks in the show, in winning in business; profit is what everyone knows counts and it always has done.


But what you think he meant by what he said is irrelevant because his verbal brief is not the only brief they receive, is edited before we see it and is only interpreted the way you have, against the whole premise of the show.


while I doubt you have ever used a team to do anything in any timescale. You (at best) over complicate a very simple show and task and (at worst) do not have the common or business sense to understand that using those teams in that show in the best way possible would always be about making more money (profit) than the other team.


and so is the player who does nothing in training but exactly what he is told - they are expected to know their role and the ultimate goal of the manager's strategy.


You can witter on about the intepretation of a single word with no regard for context all you like.

The candidates knew what was needed, so did most other people. Otherwise where is all the other comment making the same point - even if it was just from Nooral?

I did wonder


To you, yes.


But the salient point is that the victim had the knife plunged into their heart. That is an indisputable fact.

You argue that the show does not reflect real life - that can be disputed.

You also argued that I (and others have made a mistake) - that too can be disputed.

The only salient point you make is by reporting the word he used - not it's interpretation in the context of the show or task.

Hope that helps.


Because the show (and business) are based upon making a profit and you are the only one interpreting his brief in that way.




Not really. I just have a problem in knowing what you you think you are proving other than you have no common or business sense.

They (and you) must have known that in AS tasks and real life business all that matters is profit.


Oh, ok.

You still don't really understand the meaning of the word, do you?

Yes, it can be disputed but it is a fundamental point in the argument.

If the show represented real life then they would always be charged for the things that they sell.

If the show represented real life then they would always be scored on the likelyhood of repeat business not how much profit they managed to blag from some poor suckers with their appalling food.

If the show represented real life then they would actually have to account for the labour costs rather than beingtold they made a profit when if they's charged the labour involved at even minimum wage they would have almost invariably have made a stonking great loss.


And you still don't understand that just because something can be disputed does not stop it being of fundamental importance.


You claim to have some involvement in business.

Of course, that could be selling matches outside Victoria Station.

If you are ever to be a success in business you have to be able to make a very important distinction: That between revenue and profit.

It's one of the first things they would teach on any business course.

Only a complete idiot would try and contend that the words: "amount of sales" could possibly refer to profit.

It is the exact definition of revenue.

Granted, if he'd said 'the best sales' or 'the most impressive sales' you could certainly claim that it was open to interpretation and I would agree that it would be pretty obvious he was talking about the most profitable sales.

As it was he was very precise. He used a form of words that exactly define revenue.


The whole point of the thread is that his brief was unambiguous and unambiguously wrong.


In reality all you are doing is showing that you don't understand the distinction between a game/test and real life.

As demonstrated by the way you fairly passionately argued two completely contradictory positions a post or so back.

It is so obvious that real business is all about profit that I can't imagine why you think - even with your poor understanding skills - that anyone was suggesting for a moment that it wasn't.

It is also extremely obvious to most people that TA is not in any way an accurate reflection of the way real life businesses work.

Yawn - you really bore me now.

All that guff does not change the salient, factual point that everyone knows SA judges performance in all these tasks on profit alone. Profit based on simplistic calculations that may not reflect real life, but a profit calculation all the same.

In that one way the programme reflects the real life aim of every business.


and you still don't understand that the only person who finds your points salient is you but that does not mean that the rest of us are wrong.

I do not think they are factual so I do not see them as salient as they have no relevance to the veracity of your incorrect and misguided interpretation of the rules of the task based on a single word.

You telling me they are does not change that.

The only way I could not be reasonably allowed to deny that they are salient is if they could be proven to be facts.

Let's assume we were debating how to restrict the spread of Swine Flu.

If I were to claim that swine flu is transmitted by mosquitoes and that we should eradicate mosquitoes in Britain - would that be a salient point just because I thought it was true and important.

Or would the fact that swine flu is not transmitted by mosquitoes make it an assertion that was of no relevance or importance to the real matter at hand and therefore not salient?


Or I could be your boss/biggest competitor/biggest customer.


Thanks for that.

I do seem to remember making the point that

"Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity"

in my first post in the thread, but you have either not seen it or understood what it means.

but to be a pedant - amount of sales is not neccesarily revenue. It could also be the number of customers sold to or the number of items sold.

In that case who would be the winner - the team who sold all items to one customer or the team who sold 7 items to 7 customers?


The whole point of this thread is that you are one of very few people who see it that way.

That does not make everyone else wrong.

It just makes you a pedant looking for an argument.


But I do understand the difference.

I am the one arguing that whether you look at it from a point of view of winning the show or one of business sense the answer is the same - he was talking about profit.


Because you suggested that in a business related show anyone would think it would be about revenue and used the argument that "it's not real life" to argue why someone would set such an illogical task as one based solely on revenue.

Where is the challenge, skill or entertainment in that?

Who on earth would ever think that revenue was something worthwhile to judge anything by


Really?

I'd better backtrack on that offer to put all my staff up in a penthouse apartment then.

Although I do quite like the idea of ringing them up at five every morning telling them to meet me at some landmark.

They were so looking forward to the treat for the winners each week. It was going to be almost like a bonus to them.

Guess we'll just have to go back to the weekly boardrooms, ahem.. team meetings, then.

Can we stop all this b/s now?

To save me from having to read the above if nothing else.

I blame mysef for getting sidetracked by all your nonsense.

This thread was never about either:

a) Whether profit or revenue are the most important thing in business.

b) Whether or not the candidates read the written briefing or not or should or shouldn't have reinterpreted what Sir Alan said.


It was purely pointing out that his initial direction for the teams was at odds with how the task was eventually scored.

Only a complete buffoon could possibly believe that 'amount of sales' could be interpreted as 'profit'. What he meant is neither here nor there. The thread was merely pointing out what he actually said.

No it was not.


So AS, the production team, the contestants, Adrian Chiles, the guests on You're Fired, the media and everyone else are complete buffoons.

No wonder you're the only one to have spotted it.


I would have thought using the term 'mis-directed' means exactly that what he meant was important.

If he meant what you said he mis-directed them.

If he meant profit he did not.

If you were merely reporting what he said you would have to admit it was a daft reason for starting a thread.

Think I might start one reporting that he meant James was a village idiot when everyone knows he was asking Ben if he believed that James was a village idiot.

by the way, you're not a Geordie Estate Agent or someone who won a scholarship to Sandhurst* are you?

You seem to have a vested interest in excusing the terrible failure of the teams in this week's task.

*if you are ... did you go?

I find it difficult to be too judgemental about what was left in to the final version of the programme. There have been many comments about how long it takes to record the sequences in the boardroom, so who knows what SAS said on any of the opening boardroom sequences - he may have said profit in some of them. Admittedly "sales" is what was left in to the final cut, and this has obviously confused some viewers (at the time, or after reading this thread?).

I understand that there is a comprehensive brief which the teams should read and follow, not some odd comments made by SAS on the broadcast programme. On the assumption that the teams were charged the value of the goods, which was the same for each team, and that they would not be credited for any unsold items, the team with the highest sales would also be the team with the highest profit (or, in the event, lowest loss).

If this assumption is correct, SAS would have been correct whether he used sales or profit, and when he made his comment he may well have known what was in the brief.

Let's face it, both teams were very poor in the way they carried out the task - what made Phillip think he was an expert at valuing rugs for instance?

Deleted as I was being a bit brain dead trying to see it from all sides and putting together an argument that may support the decision as unfair.

Only because you still don't understand the definition of 'revenue'. Let's just add it to 'stalking horse' and 'salient', shall we?


Which planet are you living on?

I've no idea what sort of weird logical fallacy you are employing there (possible most of them at once) but yopu seem to believe that the fact none of them mention the definition of revenue means that they don't understand it?

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen anyone say.


Another elementary logical fallacy: Just because I'm the only person you've seen report it does not mean I'm the only one who spotted it.


Then you would have thought wrong. The teams are given a written brief which supercedes what AS said on the introduction.


No, you direct non-telepaths by what you say, not by what you mean.


No, you think it was a daft reason but then you have managed to tie yourself in a series of knots trying to understand it.

Others have admited to some confusion because the narration did not fit with what AS said.


Go ahead. You seem to be somewhat expert at asserting, with no evidence, that AS means something other than what he says.


Had you actually read (and understood) some of the other threads here you would have very easily spotted that I am extremely critical of the way that poltroon fouled up the last two tasks.

But feel free to not read them and come out with more stupid questions based on nothing whatsoever.

(Clue: They get a written brief so what he said excuses nothing.)

This is indeed true.

It's actually a sensible point on which to argue that the title of this thread might be wrong.

Not that I'm the one trying to argue that revenue is a reasonable measure to use when proft is the better one.


It means they understood that they had to sell the items for their true worth and not lose money.

Only the world's greatest fool would think they just had to sell the items for whatever price they could with no regard for it's true value.

AS even says at the beginning there is a twist and not to take anything at face value, Ben says he has to work out the fair value for everything, Phillip argues that the rug is worth nothing - they are all patently aware that they will lose if they sell for less than it's worth.

That means they knew that they faced a penalty for undersales and would be judged on some kind of profit/loss calculation not the value of their sales/turnover/revenue whatever your little mind prefers.


But you are the only person arguing that they were misdirected.


which does not contradict what you say how?

Surely if the written brief supercedes what AS says then the one word you have picked on has less significance as to whether they were misdirected or not.


and the whole of your words say much more of meaning than one single one.



Well then "others" have mis-understood something as simple as you have.



I am sure he meant what the teams actually did in the end. Did you see any looks of puzzlement when the final figures were read out by nick and Margaret.

They seemed to understand where they came from, I'm pretty sure most people did.


You fundamentally mis-understood the nature of the task and because you were confused you think everyone was and decide to blame the "mis-direction" given by one word.

and you have really lost it if you really think I believe you are Ben or Phillip and have to defend yourself against my good natured ribbing about being one of them - don't take yourself and your opinions so seriously. Are you not used to be challenged even when you are so wrong?