Here are some more great quotes/words of wisdom from “Crossing the Chasm.”

“For those who wish to take a more prudent course, however, whole product planning is the centerpiece for developing a market domination strategy. Pragmatists will hold off committing their support until they see a strong candidate for leadership emerge.”

“The contract does not require the company to deliver on this promise–but the customer relationship does. Failure to meet this promise in a business to business markethas extremely serious consequences.”

“By solving the whole product equation for any given set of target customers, high tech has overcome its single greatest obstacle to market development.”

“Every additional new target customer will put additional new demands on the whole product.”

“If you leave your customer’s success to chance, you are giving up control over your own success.”

“The fundamental rule of engagement is that any force can defeat any other force–if it can define the battle. If we get to set the turf, if we get to set the competitive criteria for winning, why should we ever lose? The answer is depressingly enough, is because we don’t do it right…we misinterpret what our target customers really want.”

“If you are fresh from developing a new value proposition with visionaries, that competition is not likely to exist–at least not in a form that a pragmatist would appreciate.”

“Unfortunately where there is no competition, there is no market.”

“Resistance has been a function of intertia growing out of commitment to the status quo, fear of risk, or lack of a compelling reason to buy.”

“Pragmatists work to educate the company on the risks and costs involved. Visionaries counter with charismatic appeals to taking bold and decisive actions.”

“…there are not enough visionaries to go around.”

“In the pragmatist’s domain, competition is defined by comparative evaluations of products and vendors within a common category.”

“Pragmatist buyers do not like to buy until there is both established competition and an established leader, for that is a signal that the market has matured sufficiently to support a reasonable whole product infrastructure around an identified ceterpiece.”

“Competition, therefore, becomes a fundamental condition for purchase. So, coming from the early market, where there are typically no perceived competing products, with the goal of penetrating the mainstream, you often have to go out and create your competition.”

The four domains of value in high-tech marketing:

1. Technology

2. Product

3. Market

4. Company

“Skeptical generalists may not take an interest in an unproven company buy are always interested in new market developments.”

“Develop a mainstream market by demonstrating a market leadership advantage and converting it to company credibility.”

“We must shift our marketing focus from celebrating product centric value attributes to market centric ones.”

“You choose your competition to help you define the niche market you will dominate. As long as they are well behaved and stay out of your niche, you go out of your way to honor their achievements elsewhere. If they should stray into your niche, on the other hand, you must defeat them totally. The beachhead segment must be your niche and yours alone, separated from all others by tall barriers to entry. Just remember your Robert Frost–’Good fences make good neighbors.’”

“Just as football coaches have to make half-time adjustments to their game plans, so do marketers.”

“Marketers revisit the same audiences many times over during the life of a product. Establishing relationships of trust, therefore, rather than wowing them on a one-time basis, is key to any ongoing success.”

“It is not that we lack for ideas, usually, but rather that we cannot express them in any reasonable span of time.”

“A product with an uncertain position is very difficult to buy.”

“The key is to define your position based on the target segment you intend to dominate and the value proposition you intend to dominate it with.”

“Remember, the goal of positioning is to create and occupy a space inside the target customers’ head.”

“It’s like a telegram with less than one line. If you don’t make the choice to fill the space with a single attribute, then the market will do it for you.”

“Positioning is not about hype. It is about clear and precise direction.”

“The toughest thing about high tech marketing is that just about the time you get the hang of something, it becomes obselete.”

“To the pragmatist buyer, the most powerful evidence of leadership and likelihood of competitive victory is market share.”

“Finally, communicating via the business press has to be done within the framework of a big idea.”

“For a technology story to be a business story, it has to be about something that transcends high tech.”

“Decisions in both distribution and pricing, therefore, have enormous strategic impact, and, with distribution in particular, there is typically only one chance to get it right.”

“The most consistently successful channel in high tech has been the direct sales force.”

“The direct sales force is optimized for creating demand.”

“When functioning at its best, within the limist just laid out, direct sales is the optimal channel for high tech. It is also the best channel for crossing the chasm.”

“All other things being equal, direct sales is the preferred alternative because it gives us maximum control over our own destiny.”

“Retail distribution is structurally unsuited to solving the chasm problem.”

“Retail simply cannot sponsor discontinuous innovations.”

“Today, the domain between $10k and $75K is where the structural problem is high tech distribution is taking its greatest toll.”

“There are not enough VARs to go around.”

“VARs tend to be people who perceive themselves not as salespeople but as problem solvers. Often technical in orientation, they perceive selling as a necessary evil, what you have to do in order to get the “real work.” This service oriented rather than sales oriented self perception results in a channel that is not very good at selling, further contributing to its inefficiency.”

“VARs are problematic as mainstream distribution channels.”

“[Integrators] are…an important part of the mainstream marketing program.”

“It is critical for company crossing the chasm to work with systems integrators.”

“The most important marketing contribution to ensuring effective working relationships with systems integrators is a communications task, not a selling one.”

“Local VARs are not as a rule very good marketing organizations.”

“The OEM sales force is likely to be focused on the big-ticket products that come out of the company’s own R&D labs, not the add-on product coming in from another vendor.”

“Cosell with a whole product partner…sharing leads.”

“Selling partnerships, in other words, are good for priming the pump, but not for the long term.”

“Outbound retail sales forces…do not meet the chasm criteria.”

“The internet is a superb channel, for it gives visibility to no-name companies at a very low cost.”

“Crossing the chasm requires face-to-face meeting swith the target customer to help diagnose their problem and prescribe an herefofore unavailable solution.”

“In sum, it is hard to imagine going to market in high tech without making the internet medium part of your marketing mix. But for direct sales of chasm-crossing offers, you can ignore this channel entirely.”

“You simply cannot afford to lose one day of opportunity, and the only channel that would ever be that responsive to your needs is your own.”

“You start the fire. Once the fire is lit, however, then your job is to spread it as rapidly as possible. This is a totally different problem, and often the people that are good at the one are not good at, indeed often resist transition to, the other.”

“They have waited a long time before buying the product–long enough for complete institutionalization of the whole product, and long enough for prices to have dropped to a only a small margin above cost. This is their reward for buying late.”

“Avoid making the wrong kind of commitments in the prechasm period.”

“The dream of getting rich on equity is only an excuse, something to hold out to your family and friends as a reationale for all this otherwise crazy behavior. So early market entrepreneurs are not called to focus on, nor are they oriented toward, making money.”

“Only the most successful high tech companies have achieved such a state; most continue to fluctuate more dramatically than the financial community can understand, with the result that their stocks routinely take a vicious beating at the slightest indication of bad news.”

“The great benefit of adopting the discipline of profitability at the outse tis that you do not have to learn it later on. All too frequently, even when they are led by experienced managers, enterprises that are funded for long periods of time fall into a ‘welfare state of mentality.’”

“The explosion of the internet has created a land-grab mentality herefofore unknown, and everyone is racing to beat out competitors in captureing market share.”
See Crossing the Chasm post I

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