LOVE, Kloudiia

 

Yes, that’s the lesson brought home when I watched the episode of America’s popular recruitment reality TV show produced by Donald Trump ”The Apprentice V” on Channel 5 last night.

The girls team Synergy won. They seemed to have started at a losing end as they didn’t get a single cheerleader (who ”sold” their exclusivity to the boys) and there wasn’t any pre-sales marketing involved like flyers, announcements and all.

But they won! The boys team Gold Rush lost by a huge margin of USD 1,000!

But Gold Rush had a spectacular turn-out at their booth, wasn’t it? Yes, they did.

They had games, wasn’t it? Yes they did.

They had 20 plus female cheerleaders in a football game, wasn’t it? Yes they did.

But the fact was, they lost. Period.

What made the boys lose? The strategy.

What made the girls win? The strategy.

Ok, aside from the never-say-die attitude of the girls even though they knew the boys had a good start and a strong competitive edge with the cheerleaders at their booth, Synergy adopted a new strategy on the spot.

They banged on human’s most latent weakness - laziness.

Their sales went up when they offered one thing that the boys team didn’t thought of (well, they were too engrossed with entertaining the guys in the games). 

Delivery service.

Hey people are lazy. Face it. I am lazy too I admit. Sometimes I would just forget about eating if I have to change and go downstairs my flat to buy lunch or dinner. If only I can order dinner back, but not Mc Donalds. Even if it means having to pay slightly more, I’d have gladly give it to them because it saves me time and it brings me convenience!

So there they were. The girls made use of this laziness, offered delivery service to wherever their customers were and charged a premium price of $5 for every item when the boys were selling $2-$3 per item. See, their profit margin was almost double that of the boys! Probably the boys sold almost the same quantity of food, but because every 1 item the girls sold was equivalent to 1.5 to 2 items they had to sell, that put them at a grossly disadvantaged position!

So what does this tells us? That we can afford to price our merchandise higher if we can make it up by providing extra value. But this value has to be something that your customer finds valuable, like convenience or excellent taste (in the case of food) for example.

There was one more factor that contributed to Synergy’s win, from what I observed. That is, besides delivery service, they had this.

Focus.

That’s right! They were focused on only selling food. No matter how much noise the boys booth were generating, how much hype they got and how big a crowd was always hanging around there (for the games or the cheerleaders), the girls were focused on making sales! Whereas the guys lost their focus on having to manage the game stalls and forgot their mission was to sell food and the amount of money they make will decide if they win or lose.

Focus is very, very crucial if you set your mind to do something. What goals have you set for yourself this year? How do you plan to achieve them? Do you already have a blueprint or action plan laid out?

Whatever strategy and plans you have mapped out, you need to focus on your aim of doing these. At times you may be sidetracked, that’s normal. But a really focused person will be able to jump back on track in no time than one who isn’t focused. That’s where the fine line comes in.

I’m not a millionnaire (yet), so what I say here may not be worth as much as what a millionnaire tells you about the art of doing business. But this is what I have observed and find to be very true in reality.

Stay focused. Create value for your customers/audience. Give your best shot and don’t admit failure just because you didn’t get as much resources as you would like to have. First or last, you never know until the game is finally over and you are still in the game.

For all you know, the best resource is already something you have all along and is with you every second as you are breathing.

That is – the right attitude, positive mindset and your brain! What else do you need?

[tags]The Apprentice, Donald Trump, strategy, positive mindset, attitude, millionnaire, business, lazy, focus, value[/tags]