Next Monday, August 21, there will be a solar eclipse that will totally blacken the sky in parts of the United States. This is the first time a total solar eclipse has crossed the U.S. in 99 years. This offers a rare moment and scientists across the country are lining up experiments during the 2-1/2 minutes of total darkness. That includes studying behavioral changes in cows, measuring the impact of bacteria tied to balloons launched into the stratosphere, and recording the sound that is made by the eclipse. You read that correctly. A group of students from Austin Peay State University are doing an experiment for NASA to record low-frequency radio noise during complete darkness. I did not know that there was a difference in sound when it is sunny compared to when it is dark outside. There may be so many scientists lined up from Oregon to South Carolina that the only sound the students will record is the noise of petri dishes and test tubes bumping into each other!

Total solar eclipses are so rare because they involve three celestial bodies lining up perfectly: the sun, the moon and the earth. Now let’s relate that to what happens in business. To get to a sale, you have to have three items in a line: your customers’ needs, your business offerings and your marketing. It really does you no good for two of those to line up without the third. If you have identified a customer need and your product fixes their problem, but you have no marketing to tell them about your product, you have a disconnect. Likewise, if you have a great product and you market it well, but it does not take into account what the customer needs, you have misaligned yourself. Remember that lining up two of the celestial bodies is commonplace – it happens all the time. You can draw a straight line between any two of the spheres any time. They are in alignment. Getting the third to be in sync with the other two is rare.