Companies must carefully interpret the sales data, however,
so as not to draw the wrong conclusions. Michael Dell gave this
illustration: “If you have three yellow Mustangs sitting on a dealer’s lot and a customer wants
a red one, the salesman may be really good at figuring out how to sell the yellow Mustang. So
the yellow Mustang gets sold, and a signal gets sent back to the factory that, hey, people want
yellow Mustangs.