Deep Green Crystals

So Trump says he wants to get into the water business. He believes his "brand" will transcend. Now I don't know what his mug does to make me want to drink the water, in fact I don't equate Manhattan with great water. His mug with the signature swooping hairdo is front and center on every bottle of "Trump Ice". The teams were Ereka against Heidi. Both teams did something I thought was stupid. They took multiple people on sales calls and they went primarily to retail locations. The task was to sell as many pallets of the damn stuff as possible. Hadn't anyone heard of distributors? I would have spent all my time there. And I would have sent one person on each sales call. You could make five sales calls instead of two. I also would have spent more time on the numbers, like Bill did. The first sales meeting with Ereka and Bill at a retail restaurant, Ereka's pitch was "we are trying to create a buzz" around the water. She was still trying the "smile and wear a short skirt" mode of selling that served her so well in the lemonade challenge. But this is selling to businesses who aren't really brand loyal and just want to make money. On the next sales call Bill pointed out that he could provide Trump Ice at half the wholesale price of their current water. Of course he got the deal. When it came time to add up the paperwork and present it for accounting, Ereka lost it and was totally frazelled. She stuttered and shook with fear that things weren't in order. Basically letting her emotions get the better of her.

Over on the other team, Troy was the "closer" and had two great insights. First, sell to distributors. He sold one five pallets. I was trying to figure out if that is a truckload, but it doesn't matter, it was the largest sale by far. His second insight was that you could write a PO for X number of cases per week for X weeks and you could effectively multiply your orders. It worked in a couple of accounts. Of course Troy and Heidi out-sold the retail focused Ereka by 50%.

So comes the boardroom. The team politics got hot and heavy. For some reason team leaders who loose have gotten it into their heads that they need to tell the people who they will be taking to the Boardroom before it happens. I don't think this is a good idea. It reflects the leader's desire to be liked more than their intelligent decision making powers. Leaders who are driven by a desire to be liked will always fail. So Ereka takes Nick and Bill. Nick was supposed to be such a great sales person and he totally choked. He didn't know his customer and didn't sell much. Ereka said she was taking Bill only because he was there when they lost the distributor order. She let Katrina off because she "didn't step up", but it looked like she was letting her off because she was a friend. Of course Katrina said glowing things about Ereka to re-enforce the feeling. I predicted from the start that Ereka would get fired because she was a bad sales person (relying on sex to sell) and she lost it under pressure. It was between Nick and Ereka, it was obvious that Bill shouldn't be there. Nick got feisty and didn't really do himself any favors, but in the end Ereka was much more at fault. Good riddance. I hope next week either Nick or Omarosa go.

My bets are on Troy, Amy and Bill to be finalists.