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

by Geoffrey A. Moore

To put it simply, the consequences of being sales-driven during the chasm period are fatal. Here’s why: The sole goal of the company during this stage of market development must be to secure a beachhead in a mainstream market—that is, to create a pragmatist customer base that is referenceable, people who can, in turn, gain us access to other mainstream prospects. To capture this reference base, we must ensure that our first set of customers completely satisfy their buying objectives. To do that, we must ensure that the customer gets not just the product but what we will describe in a later chapter as the whole product—the complete set of products and services needed to achieve their desired result, the thing we promised them to get the purchase order.