See the lessons to be learnt from this week's The Apprentice

I've started watching this series of The Apprentice (against my better judgement) this week. The tasks are interesting, helped by the editing, and the characters are as comical as they have been for the past few series. I applied for the last series of the programme and got through to the audition process - the final few hundred from twenty-something thousand applicants I was told. The opportunity at the end of the process has far more value than the process itself.

The first task was a buying and selling task - go to the market and buy fish, turn it into products and then sell it in the city of London. One team made a profit of £1.87. And this is where the whole process falls down. If this were real business then there would be much more expense to take away from their paltry £1.87 profit-

Wages for eight team members

Production costs

They were given use of a facility to turn their raw fish into saleable products, and this also took energy for the machinery, cookers and lights.

A trading licence to sell food on the street

Purchase or hire if the stall

Hire or purchase of the cooking equipment

All in all, these tasks in isolation mean very little. I'd prefer to see a programme where the team develops a business over the course of the series. Given an amount of money st the start, they have to buy and sell cleverly to increase their money for the following week's task. Lord Sugar can still fire someone every week, but the team can work their way through.

So what's this got to do with me an independent retailer?

Well control of costs underpins every single business. And it's by looking at your costs and the effectiveness of every penny you spend that will allow you to succeed. And for every pound you save, you have three choices - pocket and extra pound of profit, reinvest another pound into area you know succeed or cut your customers prices by another pound.

Looking at all of your expenditure to ensure that it works as hard as you do is a fundamental part of running a business. I'd suggest three ways of ensuring you get this as right as you can.

Regular reviews of your costs

I'd suggest that you look at your expenditure and conduct a full review on a regular basis. Annually at least, every 6 months is better and in some instances quarterly. This ensures that things never get away from you. Having your finger on the cost pulse means that you never get to the point where you look back and think "where has all that money gone?" To be able to look at all the outgoings and see if savings can be made will work out for you in the long run. Going hand-in-hand with this is the expenditure on marketing.

Analysing the success of your marketing spend

If you take nothing else from reading this blog, then take this one piece of information with you. You need to account for what you spend. By this I mean that when you set out a marketing campaign, you need to have an idea of what business that campaign brings. To do this you have to speak to your customer at the first point of contact. It's from there that you will understand how they arrived with you.

For example, you spend £200 per month on advertising on a particular website and £100 per month on newspaper advertising. If the website brings you £2,000 in sales per month then it earns 10 times the spend. If the newspaper brings you £500 per month in sales then it earns 5 times the spend.

You will see that the website is twice as profitable in terms of marketing spend than the newspaper.

Speaking to people when the opportunity arises

I know that it's impossible to respond to every marketing call or email but there will be areas in which it's profitable to listen to people. The areas in which you want to talk to people will be dictated in part by the areas above. If you have identified an area in your cost review then this will prompt you talking to someone who contacts you. If you have an area of marketing success, then you'll want to be able to repeat this success. And in some areas you will just see an idea that you like and decide to investigate.

Avoid being an overspender like the contestants on The Apprentice and have control over your costs.