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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

Companies crossing the chasm, coming from success in the early market with visionary customers, typically have their products priced too high. Price does become an issue with the pragmatist customer, but when the channel feeds back prospect resistance and uses comparable products as evidence of the expected pricing, companies too often argue that they have no such competition, and that the channel does not know how to sell the product properly. However, products can also be priced too low to cross the chasm. The problem here is that the price does not incorporate sufficient margin to reward the channel for the extra effort required to introduce a disruptive innovation into their already established relationship with a mainstream customer. If the channel is going to go out of its way to take on something new, the reward has to be significantly more attractive than whatever is available from business as usual.