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Flying Chickens
Written by: Paul LaniganArticle Overview: If anything can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood. Read this laugh out loud story that illustrates this point perfectly
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Free Download - How the deal was lost By Paul Lanigan |
Flying Chickens
Engineers at a major British Aerospace company were instructed to test the effects of bird-strikes (notably geese) on the windshields of airliners and military jets. To simulate the effect of a goose colliding with an aircraft travelling at high speed, the test engineers built a powerful gun, with which they fired dead chickens at the windshields. The simulations using the gun and the dead chickens worked extremely effectively, happily proving the suitability of the windshields, and several articles about the project appeared in the testing industry press.
It so happened that another test laboratory in a different part of the world was involved in assessing bird-strikes - in this case on the windshields and drivers' cabs of new very high speed trains. The train test engineers had read about the pioneering test developed by the aerospace team, and so they approached them to ask for specifications of the gun and the testing methods. The aerospace engineers duly gave them details, and the train engineers set about building their own simulation.
The simulated bird-strike tests on the train windshields and cabs produced shocking results. The supposed state-of-the-art shatter-proof high speed train windshields offered little resistance to the high-speed chickens; in fact every single windshield that was submitted for testing was smashed to pieces, along with a number of train cabs and much of the test booth itself.
The horrified train engineers were concerned that the new high speed trains required a safety technology that was beyond their experience, so they contacted the aerospace team for advice and suggestions, sending them an extensive report of the tests and failures.
The brief reply came back from the aero-engineers: "You need to defrost the chickens...."
Maybe you don't sell military planes, high speed trains or chickens for that matter, but if something can be misunderstood, it will. Then the game starts...."well you didn't tell me I was supposed to defrost the chickens (or backup first or read the manual or have V2.1 installed first, etc.)" and what started out as you 'helping' your customer ends up with you sitting on the 'naughty' step.
Article Tags: Assumptions, chickens, games, laugh, selling
Referred by: http://www.wall.sandler.com
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About the Author: Paul Lanigan RSS for Paul's articles - Visit Paul's website Paul Lanigan is MD of Sandler Training (Ireland) www.sandler.ie. Paul's specialty is gaining the respect and attention of your most demanding team members to gain a level of buy-in you never believed was possible. In his fast-paced and riveting program, Paul will arm your team with precise tools you need to achieve greater revenue, higher margins and fewer discounts. He counts some of the worlds most successful businesses amongst his clients (Oracle, IBM, BMC, Computer Associates, EMC to name but a few. Visit his Blog at www.paullanigan.com His company website can be found at www.sandler.ie Join his linked in group at http://tinyurl.com/p56c9n Click here to visit Paul's website Unmasking the peoplelovetobuytheyjusthatetobesoldto Myth How the deal was lost High Fliers and Low Bidders Fail Your Way to Success Your Selling Comfort Zone |
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