Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

by Geoffrey A. Moore

For selecting the target market segment that will serve as the point of entry for crossing the chasm into the mainstream market, the checklist is as follows: 1. Develop a library of target customer scenarios. Draw from anyone in the company who would like to submit scenarios, but go out of your way to elicit input from people in customer-facing jobs. Keep adding to it until new additions are no more than minor variations on existing scenarios. 2. Appoint a subcommittee to make the target market selection. Keep it as small as possible but include on it anyone who could veto the outcome. 3. Number and publish the scenarios in typed form, one page per scenario. Accompanying the bundle, provide a spreadsheet with the rating factors assigned to columns and the scenarios assigned to rows. Break the rating factors into two subtotals, showstoppers first, then nice-to-haves. 4. Have each member of the subcommittee privately rate each scenario on the showstopper factors. Roll up individual ratings into a group rating. During this process discuss any major disagreements about scores. This typically surfaces different points of view on the same scenario and is critical not just to getting the opportunity correctly in focus but also in laying the groundwork for a future consensus that will stick. 5. Rank order the results and set aside scenarios that do not pass the first cut. This is typically about two-thirds of the submissions. 6. In a 400-degree oven, bake . . . (Oops! ...