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First problem: The company simply has no expertise in bringing a product to market.
The basis for reform is the principle that winning at marketing more often than not means being the biggest fish in the pond. If we are very small, then we must search out a very small pond, a target market segment that fits our size.
A second problem: The company sells the visionary before it has the product.
Caught in this situation, the entrepreneurial company has only one adequate response, a truly unhappy one: shut down its marketing efforts, admit its mistakes to its investors, and focus all its energies into turning its pilot projects into something useful, first in terms of a deliverable to the customer, and ultimately in terms of a marketable product.
Problem number three: Marketing falls prey to the crack between the technology enthusiast and the visionary by failing to discover, or at least failing to articulate, the compelling application that provides the order-of-magnitude leap in benefits.
Not compelling enough for the visionary
The corrective response here begins with reevaluating what we have. If it is not, in fact, a breakthrough product, then it is never going to create an early market.
If that is indeed the case, then the right response is to swallow our pride, reduce our financial expectations, and subordinate ourselves to an existing mainstream-market company, which can put our product in play through its existing channels.
Alternatively, if we truly have a breakthrough product but we are stalled in getting the early market moving,
get very practical about focusing on one application, making sure that it is indeed a compelling one for at least one visionary who is already familiar with us, and then committing to that visionary, in return for his or her support, to removing every obstacle to getting that application adopted.
The biggest problem is typically overly ambitious expectations combined with undercapitalization
If they are installing a new product, they want to know how other people have fared with it. The word risk is a negative one in their vocabulary—it does not connote opportunity or excitement but rather the chance to waste money and time.
If pragmatists are hard to win over, they are loyal once won, often enforcing a company standard that requires the purchase of your product, and only your
product, for a given requirement.
It is crucial, therefore, for every long-term strategic marketing plan to understand the pragmatist buyers and to focus on winning their trust.
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. In other words, they are planning on living with this decision personally for a long time to come.
Pragmatists tend to be “vertically” oriented, meaning that they communicate more with others like themselves within their own industry
This means it is very tough to break into a new industry selling to pragmatists.
catch-22 operating: Pragmatists won’t buy from you until you are established, yet you can’t get established until they buy from you.
the path into the pragmatist community is smoother if a smaller entrepreneurial vendor can develop an alliance with one of the already accepted vendors or if it can establish a value-added-reseller (VAR) sales base.
Pragmatists want to buy from proven market leaders because they know that third parties will design supporting products around a market-leading product. That is, market-leading products create an aftermarket that other vendors service.
Pragmatists are reasonably price-sensitive. They are willing to pay a modest premium for top quality or special services, but in the absence of any special differentiation, they want the best deal.
Overall, to market to pragmatists, you must be patient.
In short, you need to make yourself over into the obvious supplier of choice.
This is a long-term agenda, requiring careful pacing, recurrent investment, and a mature management team.
The importance of the product itself, its unique functionality, when compared to the importance of the ancillary services to the customer, is at its highest with the technology enthusiast,
and at its lowest with the conservative.
The key lesson is that the longer your product is in the market, the more mature it becomes, and the more important the service element is to the customer.
vendors must design out as much as possible the service demands that derive from installing and implementing their products successfully.
when vendors address the second goal of making the service yield an improved user experience, then there are smiles all around.
the primary function of high-tech marketing in relation to skeptics is to neutralize their influence.
instead of rushing to rebuttal, we were to explore the merits of the skeptic’s argument?
the service that skeptics provide to high-tech marketers is to point continually to the discrepancies between the sales claims and the delivered product.
The basic flaw in the model, as we have said, is that it implies a smooth and continuous progression across segments over the life of a product, whereas experience teaches just the opposite.
the spaces between segments indicate the credibility gap that arises from seeking to use the group on the left as a reference base to penetrate the segment on the right.
markets—particularly high-tech markets—are made up of people who reference each other during the buying decision.
If we look deep into that chasm, we see four fundamental characteristics of visionaries that alienate pragmatists.
it is painfully obvious that visionaries, as a group, make a very poor reference base for pragmatists.
This situation can be further complicated if the high-tech company, fresh from its marketing successes with visionaries, neglects to change its sales pitch.
It is fundamentally a problem of time. The high-tech vendor wants—indeed, needs—the pragmatist to buy now, and the pragmatist needs—or at least wants—to wait. Both have absolutely legitimate positions.
Our long-term goal is to enter and take control of a mainstream market (Western Europe) that is currently dominated by an entrenched competitor (the Axis).
we must assemble an invasion force comprising other products and companies (the Allies).
goal is to transition from an early market base (England) to a strategic target market segment in the mainst...
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Once we force the competitor out of our targeted niche markets (secure the beachhead), then we will move out to take over adjacent market segments (districts of France)
Concentrate an overwhelmingly superior force on a highly focused target.
The efficiency of the marketing process, at this point, is a function of the “boundedness” of the market segment being addressed.
Companies just starting out, as well as any marketing program operating with scarce resources, must operate in a tightly bound market to be competitive.
Most companies fail to cross the chasm because, confronted with the immensity of opportunity represented by a mainstream market, they lose their focus, chasing every opportunity that presents itself, but finding themselves unable to deliver a salable proposition to any true pragmatist buyer.
by focusing our entire might on such a small territory, we greatly increase our odds of immediate success.
Trying to cross the chasm without taking a niche market approach is like trying to light a fire without kindling.
it is here that high-tech management shows itself most lacking. Most high-tech leaders, when it comes down to making marketing choices, will continue to shy away from making niche market commitments, regardless.
Observation, high tech leaders fail to commit to a niche market and fail
