The Apprentice Lesson 5 - “Listen To Your Team And Your Customer”
Episode 5 of “The Apprentice (Season 5)†has a very useful lesson.
Listen To Your Team And Most Importantly … Your Customers!
Forget about your ego or your product … there are times when it would do you good if you listen to your team and your customers.
Your team members (those in your own Mastermind group) brings various experiences and values to the group … only if you listen and act on those that will help in your project. Don’t let ego get in the way.
You should also listen to what your customers want. I have seen this happen a few times (including myself) where we fall in love with our own product and push it real hard to the market. Yes, sales will be made. But the effort needed is huge. Instead, seek out a market and give it what it want. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS.
Anyway back to this show.
In this episode, each team need to create a 30-second commercial promoting Norwegian’s Freestyle Cruising program. Two Norwegian executives would be judging the final products. The Teams only had three hours to complete the task because at 3:00 p.m. sharp, the cruise ship was setting sail. Time was of essence.
Below is what I found to be relevant lesson to our online business. Avoid the mistakes and model after the effective methods.
- “Gold Rush†did the following wrong this round:
The project manager took over the running of the whole project. He did not delegate enough to his team-mates and when suggestion were made, he just brushed it aside.
This was a wrong move considering that there was an ‘expert’ among them who could have done a better job. The killer mistake was when the project manager supported a view not to include voice-over in the presentation although it was supported by many members.
Lessons here is - Listen to your members. There are ‘gurus’ among them as well.
- “Synergy†did the following right this round:
Actually in my view, the team won this round becuase the team work more closely together. Though the project manager were not well versed in project management, the end-results presented was accepted.
Their winning edge in this task was that they had a voice-over in the presentation which clearly tell what the ads was about.
In the end, “Syngery†team won this round.
The results after this episode was “Gold Rush†- 2 and “Synergy†- 3
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.
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!
To Your Success,
Keith Choy
Tag: the apprentice, internet marketing
