I recently finished (for the second time) Geoffrey Moore’s book entitled “Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers.” What a great book. Although it was originally written in 1991 and revised in 1999 (now ten years ago), it still offers some great insight into converting sales in the high-tech and emerging markets. I’m putting some of my favorite quotes from the book in this post. You’ll will also see me quote him regularly at the digital signage blog.

“The point of greatest peril in the development of a high tech market lies in making the transition from an early market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a large block of customers who are predominately pragmatists in orientation.”

“If prudence rather than brilliance is to be our guiding principle, then many heads are better than one.”

“What happens more often is a desperate attempt to recreate momentum, typically through some highly visible form of promotion, which ends up making the company look like Tarzan frantically jerking back and forth trying to get a vine moving with no leverage.”  Just a caviat: This reminds me of Wireless Ronin, who is the lead sponsor of the next digital signage expo. It would seem that their bleeding company is currently acting as the frantic Tarzan…

“Each of the gaps [in the technology adoption life cycle] represents an opportunity for marketing to lose momentum, to miss the transitions to the next segment, thereby never to gain the promised land of profit-margin leadership in the middle of the bell curve.”

“The key to winning over [the pragmatist] segment is to show that the new technology enables some strategic leap forward, something never before possible, which has an intrinsic value and appeal to the nontechnologist.”

“Transitioning from the early to the late majority, has to do with demands on the end user to be technologically competent.”

“At a time of greatest peril, when the company was just entering the chasm, its leaders held high expectations rather than modest ones, and spent heavily in expansion rather than husbanding resources.”

“To reap the rewards of the mainstream market, your marketing strategy must successfully respond to all three of these stages.”

“Marketing professionals insist on market segmentation because they know no meaningful marketing program can be implemented across a set of customers who do not reference each other. The reason for this is simply leverage. No company can afford to pay for every marketing contact made. Every program must rely on some ongoing chain reaction effects–what is usually called word of mouth. The more sefl-referencing the market and the more tightly bounded its communications channels, the greater the opportunity for such effects.”

“In every case, [visionaries] took significant business risks with  what at the time was unproven technology in order to achieve breakthrough improvements in productivity and customer service. And that is the key poit. Visionaries are not looking for an improvement; they are looking for a fundamental breakthrough.”

“The key point is that, in contrast with the technology enthusiast, a visionary derives value not from a system’s technology itself but from the strategic leap forward it enables.”

“At the end, you need to be very careful in negotiations, keeping the spark of the vision alive without committing to tasks that are unachievable within the time frame allotted.”

“In terms of communications, typically you don’t find [visionaries], they find you.”

“Visionaries are the ones who give high-tech companies their first big break. It is hard to plan for them in marketing programs, but it is even harder to plan without them.”

Problem: “a company sells the visionary before they have the product.”

“It is crucial, therefore, for any long term strategic marketing plan to understnd the pragmatist buyers and to focus on winning their trust.”

“Marketing leadership is crucial, therefore, to winning pragmatist customers.”

“[Pragmatists] get measured year in and year out on what their operation has spent versus what it has returned to the corporation.”

“Overall, to market to pragmatists, you must be patient. you need to be conversant with the issues what dominate thier particular business. You need to show up at the industry-specific conferences and trade shows they attend. You need to be mentioned in articles that run in the magazines they read. You need to be mentioned in the articles that run in the magazines they read. You need to be installed in other companies in their industry. You need to have developed applications for your product that are specific to the industry. You need to have partnerships and alliances with the other vendors who serve their industry. You need to have earned a reputation for quality and service. In short, you need to make yourself over into the obvious supplier of choice.”

“It is to high tech’s inability to transition its marketing efforst effectively between the pragmatists and the conservatives that poses the greatest threat to its well-being.”

“In a sense, this is a pity because skeptics can teach us a lot about what we are doing wrong….Steamrolling over the skeptics, in other words, may be a great sales tactic, but it is a poor marketing one.”

“You must get into a mainstream market segment soon, establishing long-term relationships with pragmatist buyers, for only through these can you control your own destiny.”

“To enter the mainstream market is an act of aggression…You are an invader.”

“Focus an verabundance of support into a confined market niche.”

“Companies just starting out, as well as any marketing program operating with scarce resources must operate in tightly bound market to be competitive.”

“We do not have, nor are we willing to adopt, any discipline that would ever require us to stop pursuing any sale at any time for any reason.”

“The consequences of being sales-driven during the chasm period are, to put it simply, fatal.”

“Numerous studies have shown that in the high-tech buying process, word of mouth is the number one source of information busyers reference, both at the beginning of the sales cycle, to establich their ‘long lists,’ and at the end…”

“The key to moving beyond one’s initial target niche is to select strategic target market segments to begin with.”

“Make a total commitment to the niche, and then do your best to meet everyone else’s committment to the niche, and then do your best to meet everyone else’s needs with whatever resources you have left over.”

“The companies who failed had overdesigned for the target market because they were hedging their bets. Ironically, in the get act of trying to reduce their market risk, they actually increased it.”

“Applications are what an end user sees…Platforms, by contrast, are multi-purpose by definition…When markets go mass, platforms have the advantage.”

“You need to understand that informed intuition rather than analytical reason, is the most trustworthy decision making tool to use.”

“So the rule of thumb in crossing the chasm is simple: Pick on somebody your own size [when target marketing]”

“Create a marketplace in which your product is the only reasonable buying proposition. That starts…with targeting markets that have a compelling reason to buy your product.”

“Real techies don’t need whole products.”

Continue Reading with Crossing the Chasm Book Review part II and part III.