- The basics of Crossing the Chasm. Geoffrey Moore in his book "Crossing the Chasm"talks about a common pitfall, or common obstacle that many startups encounter as they progress from selling to the early adopters, to their mainstream buyers. So let's talk about that and more in the context where you as a startup are probably at, at this particular moment.
- You've already sold to the early adopters in a very successful way.And you've gotten great feedback from them. And they've showed you how their product actually helps them from a strategic value to actually benefit their business, to grow their business by differentiating against competition within their market space.
- Now, your sales team is encountering a different type of buyer, the pragmatist buyer.And the pragmatist buyer is much more practical in their needs.They're looking for a way to basically enhance their business, not to revolutionize it.And they're also looking for a whole product, which is something you didn't really deliver to the early adopter. So you're now confronted by a chasm, the inability to bridge between your early adopter and the early majority buyers.
- So let's sort of dive down into why that might be. And the best place to talk about that is why are the buyers on each side of the chasm very different. Remember, on the early adopter side, you're dealing with visionaries. They're very intuitive, and they're very revolutionary. They're looking for things and ways to really sort of boost their business to the next level, to give them a competitive sort of leg upon the competition within their market.
- So as such, they're risk takers. They're willing to work with you and to promote a product within their environment that might not be really quite ready. So again, their driver is strategic, how do they take their business to the next level?
- Compare that to the pragmatists, they're more of our herd animal. They're very analytical, and they're always looking for ways to improve their existing environment. So in that way, they're evolutionary. They're also conformists. And that's why I sort of called them a herd animal, they look to others to provide validation for the purchases of technology that they make. They're very risk averse, because they really don't wanna put a monkey wrench into something that already works. So as such, they tend to be very tactical.
Now, your goal, because you're in the chasm, is to now find that first buyer, that will be willing to take a chance on your product, and to then leverage that buyer, that pragmatist buyer to now reach other pragmatist buyers in the market, and really expand the market to all the mainstream prospects within the market to make your business successful.So it's really about securing a beach head, a niche market that will lead to other mainstream customers. Now, let's start with differences around product perception.
- The core product is great for the early adopter, because, again, it's 80% of what they need, but they're willing to wait for the other 20%or actually to use the product without the other 20%because it gives them immediate strategic value. Now remember, the pragmatist is a little bit different, he thinks he needs a whole product solution.So not only do you need your core product, but you need to augment it with other things that make it a true solution for his environment.So that may mean things like adding services around system integration, providing training and support for both pre and post sales.
- Actually helping them set up the solution. So installation and debugging might be something that they're also looking forward to making a whole product. Standards are very important for them because they wanna know that whatever they buy is good for the long term. And all of this, ultimately is probably augmented by a collection of hardware and software from various partners that you need to identify to deliver a whole product to the customer.
- Now, remember that we said that the beachhead market is niche market. Why is that important? Well, the niche market allows you to focus and focus on some very specialized needs of the companies within that market. So you can now focus on just building the minimum viable product that actually allows you to then create a whole product for the customer.
- So it's about the level of effort that you need to go, go to in terms of winning a customer niche, versus having to build a product that would be more appealing to a broader product.Now, the other thing is think about the niche, its probably a close knit community of buyers.
- And they tend to talk to one another. And that's just basic behavior for the pragmatists. So think about the buzz that you're gonna create by actually winning deals in this market. That then gives you the word of mouth, ability to now go out and talk to other customers outside the niche. And eventually we'll see that becomes an important component of actually scaling within, from the beachhead to the larger market
