Apprentice week seven: Bartering with the pros

2:15pm Monday 12th May 2008

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This week's phone call from the lovely Francis (Sir Alan's very attractive receptionist) sparked an unprecedented reaction of excitement from the candidates, most notably Jennifer Celerier who jumped around, screamed and shouted like she had just won the lottery.

Oh, if only she knew what was to come.

The candidates were flown out to Marrakesh and put up in a hotel overnight, the brief given to Michael the day before by Francis was to pack for a two-day business trip.

Little did they know they were about to embark on a treasure hunt around Marrakesh's famous five-mile stretch of market; the souks, where the candidates were sent into the bewildering world of haggling Moroccan-style.

The two teams lead by Jennifer Maguire and an over-excited Lee McQueen quickly adopted two very different tactics, Jennifer's team hastily headed for the markets with little planning while Lee's team spent time ringing around and finding places to visit for the items on the list.

The list of items was very specific, particular brands and colours of products were important and fines had been put in place for any mistakes made on the sourcing.

Overall Jennifer's leadership was scatty to say the least, at no point did she have a coherent strategy in place, nor did she have control over the other half of her team who even at one point resorted to attempting to bribe a shop assistant to hinder the other team.

Lee's team paid dividends for the their initial planning, locating the areas to visit to buy the products but more importantly paying attention to detail.

They did negotiate slightly better than Jennifer's team but the big difference in the final results was the fines given to Jennifer's team for sourcing the wrong products.

This week's boardroom was very dramatic, Sir Alan demanded the entire team came back into the final stage of the boardroom, only giving Alex the opportunity of returning to the house.

Initially Jennifer Celerier's boardroom tactic of using Sir Alan's word against people backfired and saw her fired very early on, although I think last week's environment card idea was perhaps behind it to a degree also.

There was no doubt that Jennifer Maguire did need to go this week, she was disorganised, and lacked leadership although there was almost a third in Michael Sophocles who at the last minute played the one extra week trump card of "Let me lead next week so I can show you what I'm made of."

Unfortunately, as I know too well, that does usually mean you only have another week in the competition, don't be surprised if he goes next.