How do you sell the absence of something? How can you convince potential customers and decision-makers that your system or idea will prevent incidents and accidents from happening in the first place?
One of my favourite books of all time is The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. In it, there is a chapter about a human bias called 'Absence Blindness'. It explains how humans tend to have difficulty realising that 'something isn’t there' and, in turn, how 'prevention' can often be 'under-appreciated'. This can be directly applied to air traffic management (ATM). The whole objective of the ATM industry is to prevent incidents, accidents or delays. So, how do we convince decision-makers to invest in something that prevents even more of these things?
Of course, we can't play 'the cost card'. It would be insensitive for a salesperson to bring up how investing in the system is more cost-effective than the cost of an accident. The same goes for trying to sell to someone straight after an incident or accident has occurred. It's bad practice to build a sales pitch around this kind of event, especially if a root cause hasn't been established yet.
So, how do those selling the absence of accidents achieve success? At FoxATM, we have some ideas and best practices around this. If you'd like to know more, don't hesitate to get in touch and we'd love to have a conversation about it with you.
If you missed Radar Contact podcast, you'll certainly enjoy our latest episode. We spoke to Juliette Bonet, Airside Operation Manager at Paris Airport, and Pierre Berolatti, Deputy Chief of Operations at DSNA. We discussed how Aéroport de Paris and the DSNA managed the traffic during the Olympic games in Paris this summer. You can listen here.
Please also note that the link we've included to The Personal MBA is an Amazon affiliate link, so we get a little commission if you decide to purchase via this link, at no extra cost to you.
Vincent