The winning strategy does not just change as we move from stage to stage, it actually reverses the prior strategy.
Chasm crossing is not the end, but rather the beginning, of mainstream market development.
When pragmatists buy, they care about the company they are buying from, the quality of the product they are buying, the infrastructure of supporting products and system interfaces, and the reliability of the service they are going to get.
Entering the mainstream market is an act of burglary, of breaking and entering, of deception, often even of stealth.
By contrast, the early majority want to buy a productivity improvement for existing operations. They are looking to minimize the discontinuity with the old ways. They want evolution, not revolution. They want technology to enhance, not overthrow, the established ways of doing business. And above all, they do not want to debug somebody else’s product. By the time they adopt it, they want it to work properly and to integrate appropriately with their existing technology base.
The only suitable reference for an early majority customer, it turns out, is another member of the early majority, but no upstanding member of the early majority will buy without first having consulted with several suitable references.
One of the most important lessons about crossing the chasm is that the task ultimately requires achieving an unusual degree of company unity during the crossing period.
The company failed because its managers were unable to recognize that there is something fundamentally different between a sale to an early adopter and a sale to the early majority, even when the company name on the check reads the same. Thus, 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 projects rather than husbanding resources.
Surround your disruptive core product, the thing that got you to the dance, with a whole product that solves for the target customer’s problem end to end. That will keep you on the dance floor for a long time to come. The.
California is a bad influence.
Big enough to matter, small enough to lead, good fit with your crown jewels. If.
Positioning is the single largest influence on the buying decision.