Sugar in the morning ...

My wife and I both love The Apprentice. We watch not only the Trump version, but also the UK version of Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar as the employer. I find the contrast in the approaches to business fascinating. I don't know how much of this difference can be attributed to real differences in business styles between the US and UK, but it seems to me that the idea of business as a engine of good is much stronger here than in the UK.

In a recent episode, a contestant on the losing team explained that she had a hard time selling the product because she didn't believe it was good. She said she had no problem with "selling," but just couldn't do it well when she didn't believe in the quality of the product. Sir Alan Sugar was outraged. He said something to the effect of "But this is the real world, luv. That's what businesses do every day. You think all the thousands of businesses really believe in the products they sell? No. That's what sales is about - being able to sell products that may be lousy." Of course, I was paraphrasing here, but the key points he made were that (a) you can't claim to be a salesperson if you can't sell products convincingly even if you don't believe in them, and (b) that most companies try to push products to people with the sole objective of making sales and not because they think the product is any good.

I wonder if this really is the case. I don't think Trump would react that way even if that is what he believed. It could be that Trump's Wharton education has taught him that the path to success is not to convince people to buy your product, but to build a product that people want to buy from you. Sir Alan Sugar does not have a college education and made his gazillions building everything up from scratch. He dropped out of school at 16 and it is possible that this attitude the business is about convincing people to buy your stuff is just his view and not how business is done generally in the UK. I hope it is not my academic, ivory-tower view that makes me believe that contrary to Sir Alan Sugar's assertions, most companies do believe that the products they sell serve some real need for the people buying them.

And the woman who had trouble selling a product she didn't believe in? She was fired!