The Apprentice buying task claims two victims – but did the right people go?

This week saw a twist on the popular buying task, but this time the candidates had to negotiate discounts with various high end suppliers for a daily discounts site.

Strategy was key in this task as you only had a limited amount of time. I remember when I did the buying task, the first thing we did was sit and plan our approach – do we go for high volume or high discounts? Do we go for the big deals or do we go to boroughs where you could tick off multiple items, but perhaps at lower discounts? Setting the strategy allows you to ensure the team is focussed on the same goal. Plus, it also helps in the boardroom as you can show clear intent.

Managing the optics in the boardroom is often just as important as the task itself. If you can show that you were structured and decisive, this may be your saving grace if even your decisions went the wrong way. I felt for Stephen this week as his decision to not go to the far away spa came back to bite him, but it could have just as easily gone the other way, in terms of wasting all that travelling time and taking a big gamble on one vendor.

Secret dossier?

The candidates must have been given a list of vendors to choose from, or at least pre-arranged vendors, as they kept referring to their dossier when discussing options. I was also surprised that restaurants would bother offering a free meal to, what are essentially, door to door salespeople. Ricky‘s progressive meals of scallops was hilarious and I couldn’t help but wonder if the production team had something to do with that.

Gabrielle seemed to lack energy this week, which is most unlike her character, so she could either have been a victim of editing to justify her firing, or perhaps she really was exhausted. It’s a gruelling process and sometimes that doesn’t come across to the viewers. From my experience, the toughest bit was the complete lack of down time – working for 18 hr days non stop for 7 weeks (the tasks are often back to back) can take the best out of most people.

In the end, I felt that Stephen’s strategy of going for multiple deals was the better strategy, but they should have focussed on a higher quality of vendor offering. Stephen and Gabrielle were never going to win, so I felt that they had to go this week. Ricky did quite well and I’m starting to really warm to him.

This is actually my final blog on this series as I will be travelling for the next 2 weeks. I’ve really enjoyed the series and I hope you have enjoyed following my blog.

My money is on either Nick or Ricky to win. Who do you think will win? Let us know below.