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Episode 10
It's About Time, You Meatball!
Time management … so much of our business lives today is focused on managing our time. In fact, as I write this, my Outlook is telling me I've got incoming mail and reminding me not to forget my 10:30 appointment. In this week's task, The Apprentice wannabes worked for Dominos Pizza, a company that has made millions and millions of dollars by revolutionizing the pizza delivery business and helping customers save time.
If you were to talk to all the top CEO's at all the top companies, they would tell you that making efficient use of their time in front of their customers, with their employees and managing stakeholders is crucial to their success. The Apprentice tasks each week place a high value on managing time and this week was no exception.
At its core, Dominos Pizza is a distribution-centric company where efficiency is everything. And this is where one team succeeded and one team failed. The teams came up with practically identical products featuring meatballs as the primary pizza topping. While the star of Magna, Tana, came up with a better name: Manga Meatball than Net Worth's Meatball Masterpiece, at the end of the day this was not a branding exercise. This task was about promotion and distribution. And while we didn't get to see a lot of strategic planning in these areas one team succeeded -- Magna, and one team failed -- Net Worth.
Stephanie killed herself and her team by not focusing on the efficiency of their promotional efforts and their distribution channels. In a task where the difference between winning and losing is literally 10 to 20 pizzas you have got to concentrate on customers that are geographically accessible. In other words: hour long trips on the subway to a construction sight ain't going to get it done! And, while I commend Stephanie's concern for customer satisfaction, at the very least delegate the delivery to someone else! In a war, you don't see the general leading the charge up the first hill; the last guy who did that, General Custer, didn't fare so well.
This lack of time management as well as the failure to analyze the distributions and sale opportunities in the area, i.e. Union Square, led to the team's demise. In the end, Magna trounced Net Worth winning by over $100 in a task where total sales were just over $650 … a LARGE margin in a short amount of time. Carolyn saw this clearly and Mr. Trump fired the right person … in a timely manner.
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