Lessons Learned

This landmark episode with its unprecedented firing of four candidates taught some great lessons about why teams win, why teams fail, and where a team's focus belongs when the going gets tough. As Trump has observed during the show, you have to push your team, and then push again, if you really want results. Let's learn some lessons.

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• Step up to the plate. If you sit around waiting for a perfect opportunity, you'll be on the bench for years. Make your own breaks by seizing opportunities. When Alla became Capital Edge's project manager this week, she brought a tigress-like aggression to the job. She had no sports background. She knew nothing about golf. Yet, her intense focus made up for her shortcomings.
   

• Button it! There are things you can say in business and things you cannot say. Know the difference. You don't have to love everybody, you just have to work with them. When Alla attacked Clay by saying "Clay is not a man. He is an insecure, bitchy woman times 1,000!" she veered way out of bounds and said something that would get her fired in business or trigger a lawsuit.
   

• Stifle your stars. Before you all fall in line behind an expert, make sure his or her skills match the critical task at hand. A leader isn't a leader if he or she takes you the wrong way. Clay showed strong retail expertise and helped his team concentrate on sales. In contrast, James dazzled everyone with baseball smarts that had nothing to do with selling. He led his team down the wrong path.
   

• Yell STOP! When your team is marching lockstep behind a big mistake, be the first person to say, "We need to pull the plug." Having that kind of guts makes you a standout. When a batting cage arrived that was miles too big for the baseball diamond, members of the Excel team commented on it, but nobody said, "This thing has got to go!" It pulled customers away from buying and sank the team.
   

• Show me the money. When you need cash fast, sell to your customers. Implement more sophisticated strategies, like event marketing, later on. When members of Capital Edge worked the crowd and sold directly to customers, they took immediate action to reach their goal of increasing sales for the day.
   

• Lose with class. When you remember this episode after the season is over, you'll remember that Josh lost like a pro, and that Jennifer lost like a crybaby. Losing well is better than losing badly. Even when Josh knew he was about to be fired, he continued to explore why his team had failed. He kept his business focus. Jennifer, also with her head on the block, fell apart, attacked her teammates, and started to lie.
   

• "Close the sale: Excel's main problem was not that people weren't attracted to its display; it was getting the people who visited the display to buy something. Sometimes, in any area of promotion, it's easy to get caught up in the creative development of the strategy and forget that in the end, it's really all about making sales.
  
  The bottom line: It's not enough to conduct a great promotional event, or develop a catchy ad phrase, or even make a good sales presentation. Sales have to be closed. Someone has to ask for business and a commitment from the consumer. Otherwise, the promotion does not achieve the ultimate effect.

The Endangered species list

The following people are on this week's endangered species list, based upon the likelihood that they will incur Trump's wrath in the near future:

• Clay (Capital Edge): He is becoming particularly bothersome. As a rank-and-file teammate, and as a project manager, he has shown that he is extremely intolerant of views that differ from his own.
   

• Markus (Excel): His performance is simply too inconsistent to warrant taking him off the list.

Gold Stars:

There are no gold star recipients for this week's episode.