The lesson that I learnt in Episode 11 of “The Apprentice (Season 5)” is …

After you have generated massive traffic to your store or website, remember to  …

Planning your strategy to convert them to sales!  Loose sight of this and you are leaving huge chunks of money on the table.

In this episode, each team was to work with Outback Steakhouse on a tailgate party. Each team would have a different parking lot to sell Outback food at the next day’s Navy game versus Rutgers. The team that made the most money would win the task.

1. “Gold Rush” did the following wrong this round:

Gold Rush actually did very well in the initial stage of generating traffic to their booth.  They did the following:

• They planned a series of events that would draw in the crowds (eg. the eat-all-you-can competitions which to me was a mistake - more on this later).
• Obtain exclusive Joint-Venture deal with a third party (cheerleaders group) that would draw in the targetted crowd.
• Prepared their flyers in hand and distributed this during a pep rally to all the students.  They even got the rally MC to made a big announcement promoting the Gold Rush’s event. By the time, Sygnery were able to react with their team’s fliers, the pep rally was over already.  Gold Rush were able to capture the hot market in this case.
• In the evening while Syngery were still planning, Gold Rush were going around working up the crowd to draw them to their booth.

As a results, the Gold Rush’s booth were swarmed with thousands of people who were joining up into their events.

HOWEVER … this is where they fail …

The team did not focus on converting those traffic into sales.  In the all-you-can-eat-competitions, the customers were so full after the competitions that they would not be buying any more food (a big mistake).

Secondly, they failed to note that the traffic were also attending an sport events and hence were willing fork out a higer price for food during the event (which is normally the case). Instead of pricing their product at a premium, they priced it at a regular price of $2 ro $3.  As a result, their revenues were impacted even though they may have more sales.

Lesson at this point: The team has no doubt had a good marketing plan.  However, they have lost sight of the main goal in this task. They priced the product too low compared to their competitors. (sidenote: See the interview on “How High To Raise The Price Of Your Product Or Service Without Losing the Shirt Off Your Back” for how you can prevent this.)

They also did not focus on the strategy to improve their traffic conversion to sales.  This was a main reason that they failed in this task.

1. “Synergy” did the following right this round:

Honestly, I thought Synergy would be losing in this round as they did not have a good marketing plan.  They were late in going to the pep rally.  They did not have a hook to draw in the crowds. 

However, the team did not give up.  They did the following right.

Instead of waiting for the crowd to come to their booth, they went out to get the customers and promise to deliver on their orders. They focus on bulk sales and zoom into huge groups.  This was a great strategy.

They also priced their products at a premium of $5. This gave them the premium that they needed to win in this round.

Lesson at this point: Focus on the goal for your store or website. If it is to generate sales, then don’t put in all the unneccesary components (eg. flash ads) that doesn’t help in your sales proceses.  It is is to capture leads, then don’t put extra links on the opt-in page that lead your visitors away.  According to Alex Mandossian, in the online world:

• 1% to 2% - is average sales conversion on website
• 10% to 15% - is average conversion on opt-in page

With the above in mind, improve on your copy to improve your conversion. 

In addition, also remember to test your pricing point and be willing to change it after each round of testing.

At the end of this round, “Gold Rush” lost to “Syngery” by more than a margin of 57% even though “Gold Rush” has a lot more traffic to their booth.  That was a big difference.  The results after this episode was “Gold Rush” - 3 and “Synergy” - 8

Above are the main lesson that I noted in this episode that is relevant to Marketers and Infopreneurs. Tuned in next week for my review of the next episode.

You can check out the pictures from this official site.

Related postings:

• My Compilation “The Apprentice” Lessons
• Lesson 1 - Creating Successful Buzz
• Lesson 2 - Location, Location, Location
• Lesson 3 - Have A Theme And A Plan B
• Lesson 4 - Keep It Simple, Silly!
• Lesson 5 - Listen To Your Team And Your Customer
• Lesson 6 - Command Respect
• Lesson 7 - Be Decisive!
• Lesson 8 - Pricing
• Lesson 9 - Capture That Hot Market
• Lesson 10 - Generate Traffic And Upsell Like Crazy!

To Your Success,
Keith Choy, WealthMountains.com
The Regular Internet Guy

Tag: the apprentice, market capture, upsell, sales conversion