Do you think he was smart or just lucky he got to sell the hot tubs? Like Daniel said...I get to sell a handbag that costs 50 quid whereas he gets to sell the hot tubs that cost so and so...

He was smart, and yes a bit sneaky but as he's the better seller it was the best decision for the team.

Good point

Saw the title and thought this was about him getting in and "modelling" it lol. Agree that he was sneaky but it proved to be the right decision in the end, Mark's sales technique is much better than Daniel.

I agree with the others Mark is indeed a sneaky character but he is a better salesman then Daniel . Daniel's full on technique maybe ok in some street market but not in most of the tasks set by LS .

Would have been interesting though, if he had been allowed sell the hot tubs, to see if he would have surpassed Mark's sales . I very much doubt it .

I think he was sneaky, he admitted as much himself, but it is clear that he is a better salesperson than Daniel. The hot tubs were high end items, not something someone would just buy on a whim I'd imagine so the hard, hard sell that Daniel favours probably would have been off putting for a lot of people. Mark is definitely calmer and seems to have a bit of rapport with potential customers before he goes into sale mode which I think does make a big difference, especially when you're buying something pricey.

It would have made no sense on Felipe's part to stick Dan with the hot tubs, had he done so and they'd lost I am sure he would have been fired in the boardroom for not putting his strongest sales person on the more expensive item.

The tasks before hand have proven one thing - Mark is a considerably better seller than Daniel. Therefore, it was vital that it was Mark and not Daniel selling the hot tubs. Was Mark sneaky in how he worked around Felipe? Yes. Was he slightly lucky to land that last deal? Definitely. But facts remain, he is the better salesman.

Felipe made the right decision to let Mark sell instead of Daniel. Mark might have manipulated Felipe to make the decision but i also think past weeks' sales record didn't lie.

Felipe didn't need to be manipulated. He'd have been insane to put the worst seller of the show on his big ticket product in favour of the best salesman.

Daniel's tantrum was dreadful. I can't believe he got sympathy from Sugar when he's not just repeatedly failed to deliver but is a proven liability on almost every task. Yet again last night he almost lost them a task with his useless approach to the vendors, which Katie saved. If they'd lost the tubs, they'd have lost the task.

Yeah I was thinking poor old Felipe not getting much credit for dividing the teams the right way, instead being portrayed as being manipulated.

Well, he was manipulated, albeit into doing the right thing... and if Felipe had had his way, they'd have swapped salespeople at half-time too...

Not Mark's biggest fan, if a fan at all. But he did a great job on the Hot Tubs. Something that did puzzle me was they sold 10 at 3k and their total was a little over 30K in sales, so what did Felipe and Daniel actually sell, or as the edit showed did they spend all day arguing.

Between them they sold £500's worth of hatbags and bike trailers. (the other team managed a grand+ of garden seats and wellies)

Being honest, the placement of the two teams secondary stalls were planned to fail. They were well away from the main drag and frankly of no use whatsoever in winning such a task as has been seen in similar scenarios throughout TA's history.

Now to Felipe's decision on Mark it was a no brainer imo.

Simply put Daniel has mouthed off how great a seller he is, and hasn't delivered. Mark is to me the best seller in the process, even though I personally would loathe working for or with him as he has shown a callous disregard for team members in the past, but fair dooos to him, he played to his strengths in last nights episode and the team won because of it...

I agree with what others have said. It was a sneaky move by Mark but also the right one for the team. Daniel's claim that not having seen the product on day 1 would undermine Mark's ability to sell the product knowledgeably was unfounded - Mark came across very well with customers.

One thing people seem to have overlooked is how big a risk that was for Mark. If Tenacity had lost as a result of poor hot tub sales, he would unquestionably have been fired for pulling that stunt. He could have played it safe and left it to Daniel to sink or swim, but he didn't. Instead he backed his confidence in his own abilities as a salesman - and delivered. Yes, the bulk sale at the end was lucky to a degree, but the two tubs he had already sold were enough to win Tenacity the task already anyway.

I'm not keen on Mark as a candidate (although I think he's been portrayed far worse than he actually is) but he deserves some credit for a bold move and a lot of credit for closing sales.

Felipe was an idiot. It was clear it should have been Mark and Daniel selling the hot tubs. Surprised no one in this thread has spotted that either.

It was Daniel that gave the spiel to get the hot tubs deal, so not sure why Roshin had to sell the hot tubs. It would have been much better for a female to help sell the female handbags and not two males. Putting Mark and Daniel on the hot tubs would have drove them to try harder, as they would want to beat the each other in sales.

Daniel may not be the best salesman, but neither is Roshin.

What, you are kidding right?....

Did you even watch the show, as you do realise Roisin was in the OTHER team ACU?.

On this task Felipe was far from an idiot. He got the sales mix spot on as he knows for all the mouth Daniel simply isn't a good salesman and teaming him with Mark would have been a disaster as he would have tried to take sales from Mark.

LS would have crucified Felipe for that misjudgement and rightly so. Daniel whined all through the selling part, and even if he would have had a point (he didn't as was PROVED by Mark and KATIE) he should be grown up enough to knuckle down and try to do the best he could with what he had to sell.

Yep Daniel was annoying last night, he should of knuckled down and flogged his guts out. As it was their sales were poor and spent most of they day "bitching".

Something I did notice was how crap the stalls looked, I mean they looked like a boot sale, and a pretty poor one at that. How an earth do you sell and or demonstrate a bike trailer, without even having a bike attached. Where was the POS (point of sale) items, posters, leaflets anything.

If Felipe made an error, it was in not sending Mark down to Somerset on day 1. He's proven to be a skilled, amenable negotiator (remember Blenheim Palace) - Daniel hasn't - and it would have prevented the unpleasantness that ensued.

As I've said elsewhere, in the real world procurement (securing the vendor) and selling are two different tasks with different skill sets (although both require negotiating ability) often carried out by completely different people/teams. For Daniel to assume that doing the procurement entitled him to sell was erroneous and, frankly, childish.

You are spot on Philip.

These "secondary" stalls are actually a joke.

Their position was well away from the main drag, and the total lack of POS material did make them look really tacky.

I cant remember any of these type of "big ticket" tasks being won by the "B" team, they are there more for the comedy (or in Daniels case the tantrums) than to seriously boost the sales.

Agree with your take on Daniel.

Anyone who manages in any business knows to use their staff in the best way, and I have to give kudos to Felipe in not crumbling to Daniels childish "me me me" rant. When I managed a shop I knew I wasn't the best salesman but was much better at organising than anyone else, so we all played to our strengths, something Daniel really doesn't seem to understand which is strange as he is supposed to be a boss of a business.

Daniel was given quite an easy time in the boardroom for the edit, perhaps because they didn't want to waste time on the edit. At the end of the day, the bike attachment should have sold decently (you can hardly move for them in the Lake District), and if he's a great seller he should have been able to swing up to a couple of grand for the team. Instead he griped and bickered with Felipe (putting off customers), who wasn't giving in an letting him go and ruin a sucessful team. He should have been caned for that, not allowed to whinge that he was 'stitched up' for losing the hot tub. They couldn't all sell the best items, and Mark is clearly the better seller. I don't think Sugar has ever fired someone for selling a low-price tag item very well on this sort of task, so he should have focussed on that.

Absolutely. A good PM makes decisions and utilises his team's strengths to their utmost. Whether Felipe was manipulated by Mark or would have made the same decision himself, he did make the right decision. James, on the other hand, refused to take on board anyone's advice other than his own. The result? Catastrophic failure.

Personally, I did think Felipe was a bit weak as a PM, and I think he made a mistake in not sending Mark instead of Daniel to Somerset, but that's just a matter of opinion. However, he was spot on in letting Mark sell the hot tubs, no matter how much Daniel complained.

I'm not sure about the details of Daniel's business (something to do with pub quizzes, right?), but he's either a one-man operation or he runs a small team, and it shows in the way he interacts with people. The same is true of James.

One area where Mark has a clear advantage is that he clearly works in a larger organisation (he's a sales manager at a digital marketing agency, I believe). That means he's used to working with and managing professional teams, and dealing with professional, business customers.

For all that Mark has been portrayed as scheming and sly to get what he wants (and I think the edit has played that up a lot), is that really any worse than James' autocratic style or Daniel's self-delusion and sulkiness? And yet Mark has become the pantomime villain of the piece.

I think both sub teams missed the point really. It wasn't going to be just on a monetary level that they would be judged but on actual items sold. No one would expect you to sell 500 handbags at £60 a pop to compete with 1 sale of a hot tub. But they should be judged on the fact they failed to sell even 10 handbags. With maybe some 30k potential customers it's very embarrassing to be literally out sold by a hot hub in quantity sold alone.

Psst ... 50 @ £60 = 1 hot tub @ £3,000, not 500.

But your fundamental point is right. What was important was (a) to be seen to be making a good effort with the smaller items and (b) how you sold relative to the rest of your sub-team.

For Summit, it wasn't the fact that Sanjay sold only 3 pairs of wellies that looked bad - it was that Bianca sold more, while Solomon sold boots AND that God-awful hanging chair.

As for Daniel and Felipe, I can't believe they sold so little. I thought both their products had potential for decent sales at this sort of a show, and yet they bombed out largely because Daniel was whining that he should be selling hot tubs instead.

I agree. Particularly your last paragraph. Never in a million years would I work with or employ Daniel or James. Both are completely without merit in terms of business skills and neither seemed clever. Mark at least has those in abundance.

None of the three is likeable but James was one of the worst ever IMO: by turns an autocratic bully, a hyperactive child who didn't care about anything or anyone else enough to even listen, an obnoxious 'clown' who bordered on unprofessional, and someone who seemed to adopt a cheeky, faux boyish persona to disguise his inner thug.

Daniel acts like a bumbling buffoon, similar to James in being childish and self-centred, and delusional about both his ability and his contributions.

All that said, I wouldn't want to work with Mark either. His ambition seems to outstrip his integrity. But I might invest money in him if he had a sound idea. He does deliver.