Didn't make any sense.:yawn:

I agree that was the key impression I was left with - an extremely short sighted approach ....but to be honest I think many of the candidates this time round share the same flaw....a focus on their individual performance often at the expense of their team/task. Not great.

To understand why Alan (And if you notice Lucinda and a few of the others) were so shocked you have to understand the role of the agent in this task and what an exclusivity deal means for the farm.

The agents were there to represent the interest of the farm, and as such they were there to make the best deal for the farm. The deal was clearly not done with this intent as exclusivity to 12 small cinemas, unless at a massive premium, was only in the interest of making a quick sale. As Sir Alan said, you can sell anything if you say "I'll give you a free Rolls Royce", which the team effectively did.

This is without getting into the legalities of offering these deals without any authorisation at all and without informing either the farm (Who may have been organising exclusivity deals themselves) or the other team, who may have made a deal to another chain already.

did one of the teams not sell kisses in one of the tasks last series? and I don't think he reacted that badly to what is a low level form of prostitution....

The only criteria for winning the task was 'most money made on the day'. You can't arbitrarily introduce additional criteria mid-way through. Or worse still, in the boardroom.

Unless they were expressly told they couldn't sign exclusivity deals, I don't agree with his nit-picking.

Afterall, they're not 'real' contracts; just scenarios for a reality a TV show.

Siralan needs to get over himself already.

The purpose of the task was to improve the farmers business, by offering an exclusivity clause that wasn't backed up by a premium for transferral of rights, they had effectively grossly limited a major market for the farmer. From a business perspective, I'm with Sir Alan and his advisors - it was neither necessary nor good for the long term business they were charged with kick-starting. The team were focussed so much on winning in the short-term they lost sight of the long term impact of their decisions. I've seen many 'projects' damage a company's bottom line and reputation because of this type of negotiating. It's generally accepted to be a 'bad thing'.

The exclusivity on a fixed-term was a good move, as it enabled a deal to be done, yet the restriction was for a very short period. That was good business sense, so for me it was a shame that Lindi got kicked, however she was 'in charge' (as much as anyone can be of Jennifer - talk about loose cannon!) of the sales team, and had hyped herself up over it all that no-one else could be blamed.

Now that'll never do...your post makes far too much sense!

Seriously though, I think it's pretty clear why the exclusivity deals would be a no-no and I and others said as much during the live show thread.

People sometimes look so hard to find a conspiracy that common sense goes out the window!

My apologies - let me just add.

Wibble, flibbertygibbet and cranklehoo.

Aah, much betterisk

A sales manager should understand the basic law of agency - in other words, know without being told that they can't offer restrictive contractual terms without authority or they'll get their pants sued off! This isn't 'additional criteria' - it's the very basis of the business they do and are supposed to be experienced in.

Let's face it, if they'd won SAS would congratulate them on their shrewd exclusivity deals.

It's made up as it goes along... and considering every other task so far has been based on results during the limited time given (1 or 2 days) and I don't recall this sort of constraint being an issue when other companies have been involved with tasks.

This program is showing more and more signs of very creative editing.... like all these long silent bits where a PM speaks and everyone is silent for what seems forever.....

Anyhoo... it's just TV ultimately.

Spot on.
It was a two day competition to raise the most money.
In that situation, I wouldn't have given a hoot about the people I hadn't had time to visit.
Take the money and run

They were salespeople, not manufacturers. Yes, they were tasked with manufacturing the ice cream for one day but they are hardly going to hang around and manufacture hundreds of litres and they were not supplying the ingredients.

Salespeople act on behalf of the manufacturer and have to abide by their selling conditions. One thing you don't do to a small business is limit their choice of potential outlets. If someone demanding exclusivity can make it worth your while, ie offer to pay you way over the odds so that it would make very little difference whether you sold anywhere else or not, then fair enough but if not, it's economic madness to agree to exclusivity.

The funniest thing is you could see in the guys' faces, both the restaurateur and the cinema chain manager, that they were thinking "What are you doing?" but of course they can't say anything.

The difference here is that they weren't gambling with Sir Alan's money, but the farms. Did you notice that there was virually no (if any) haggling over price, just whether they would take the product or not. This is almost certainly because they didn't have the authority to do so.

And that's why the sales team were stupid thinking you could sell to people who manufacture their own, as the farms would have to factor in additional costs such as delivery (from the countryside) and labour, so were never going to compete on price.

You also can't go around offering exclusivity without checking that the rest of your team haven't already offered it to someone else.

That's why he considered the two people who sold the most to be the biggest 'sales' failures, because they got the sales process all wrong, and could have landed someone with a lawsuit. Hardly making it up as you go along on his part.

First of all, I take it you see nothing wrong with lying to customers to get a sale. This is the basic reason SAS hammered them (not hard enough imo). Not sure which dictionary you are using, but exclusive to me means they get soul rights to sell that product.

So this begs the question, how can it be an exclusivity contract; when they are selling it to multiple businesses? Cinema's, restaurants and small businesses were targeted by Alpha, so how does this make it an exclusive contract. As SAS said, if they had got an exclusive deal with UCI for every cinema in the UK, this might have been a shrewd deal. It wasn't, it was a small chain of cinema's (7 locations mentioned in the London area only, I think), which make this a very poor deal for the farm; who are now unable to make the nice deal with UCI to sell them ice cream as well. That is why it was a piss poor deal and why the pair of them should have been fired.

There is also the matter that SAS brought up, Alpha were only representatives of the farms - they had no authority to offer an exclusive contract for the farm produce. That just over steps the boundries too far and both Jennifer and Lindi should have been fired for it.

Anyone who says "but there was nothing in the rules about not offering exclusivity" is so wide of the mark they've just disqualified themselves from ever entering The Apprentice.

Do you think that when he's offered whoever it is the job plus £100k, he's then going to babysit them for the next 365 days, forever giving them explicit instructions about what they can and cannot do? Of course not. Yes, in real life, things are more deliberated, full of meetings and such, but none the less, he'll be expecting them to do a job, and use their initiative, while having confidence they've not going to do something stupid. After all, I imagine the rules didn't say "you may not take a dump in the other team's ice-cream machine" but you'd expect their to be trouble in the boardroom if one of them did.

Don't know if you've ever seen Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, but there's a fantastic episode of that where he explores the making of elimination shows like The Apprentice. He asks his 'apprentices' to go out and get five blue things as part of 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'. One of the 'apprentices' there interprets the request by buying five blue WKD alcopops.

Charlie notes that actually this was not against the rules, and it happened because of ambiguity in the task - ie., it was not the fault of the contestant, but of the production staff in not being explicit with the task. It allows him to really have a go at the 'apprentice' that was responsible, even though that person didn't go outside what had been asked for.

Essentially the same thing happened in this episode of The Apprentice. At no point were the contestants told not to broker deals that gave exclusivity; it wasn't outrageous that they should do so (even if it's a bad idea in business, it wasn't against the task rules and so wasn't something that should have been deducted from the group's takings). Despite the fact that the team didn't know it was against the rules, Alan and the producers decided to make a big deal out of it to create some drama and allow an opportunity to berate the candidates.

Lindi offered exclusivity to a pub chain that she shouldn't have offered as nothing was done to ensure it. The fact that Lucinda on the other team sold to another chain of pubs highlights that they basically lied... offered exclusivity but made no effort to ensure it WAS exclusive.

If you were the person whose product they were selling you would think it was a big deal that you had been tied in to numerous exclusive deals I assure you....They had no right to offer exclusive contracts without getting agreement from the manufacturers.

I think people forget that this isn't a game show with imaginary scenarios. This is reality where real money is involved, with real customers and real businesses. Al ltransactions are subject to UK law, fair trade etc.etc.

So the idea isn't to be a bunch of cowboys out the get a fast buck. (Thought sometimes I do wonder!)

IMHO there were effectively two rule breaks here.

The first is that they entered into a legal contract with terms and conditions with a customer which they then failed to fulfill. This left the manufacturer vunerable to legal proceedings, who then in turn could have sued the BBC. - dependant upon what their terms and conditions with them were.

The second is on a business front they made executive decisions without consulting the manufacturing companies management.

Are you sure? Has anyone gone back and checked that those flavours are on sale in those establishments?

:0) Dave

They did not have authority.
Have you ever bought a car in a dealership?
If you try to beat the salesman down, after a certain point he will consult with the sales manager, who may in turn consult a higher authority. You might not see it happening, but it always does, or should do.

They should have consulted Lucinda, who in turn should (and probably would) have consulted the farm.

I don't understand why people are saying it should have been set out in the rules. It's not a rule of the game, it's a rule of business, which, if those two were as great as they make out, they should have known. In this case it wasn't a 'game' anyway.

They may have made up the flavours, but they tied the farm into supplying them to the customers long after they'd swanned off back to London and their insular little worlds.

Sure. I wouldn't like it, and I'd probably cancel the deals they'd made which gave exclusivity. However, the contestants were obviously not told they that they were not allowed to make exclusivity arrangements. That's my point; I'm not arguing that it was a good business decision, just that it was obviously not something they were aware of and therefore something they should not have been penalized for so harshly.

But if they are the high flying Sales personnel they claim to be they should be fully conversant with Contractual Law.

i.e.when an Agent is authorized to act on behalf of another (called the Principal) to create a legal relationship with a Third Party. (see wiki).

Only the most naive would believe they had the authority to tie the farmer to a legally binding contract.

Yes there is the assumption that what we are seeing isn't just a set up with actors portraying customers.

I often wonder why we never see them blagging to the customer about the free publicity they will get by being on the programme.

I bet it happens though.