Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers [Paperback]

Moore suggests remedies for the problems that can help businesses meet their long-term goals. He coaches marketing professionals on how to move slowly through the gulf, teaching them to create profiles and target specific segments of the population rather than trying to plough right into the mainstream. He cites examples of successful chasm crossings by such companies as Apple, Tandem, Oracle and Sun, showing what they all had in common and exposing the different weaknesses in their strategies. Moore also assigns responsibility for success to programmers and developers by suggesting they design a "whole product model." Here, because integration tasks are daunting to the mainstream market, all the components of a technological product must be in one package. Moore also describes strategies for competing with rival companies and assessing the best distribution channels for penetrating the target market.

Written not just for marketing specialists but for all employees whose futures ride on the success of a technical product, Crossing the Chasm delivers crucial information in an engaging, readable tone. --David James

"Crossing the Chasm should be the Bible for high-tech companies looking for direction with marketing and distribution challenges." Robert K. Weller, Senior Vice President, North American Business Group

"Geoff Moore's book is full of good medicine for bad marketing." ComputerLetter

"Crossing the Chasm... will change the way you think." Regis McKenna

If Bill Gates Can Be a Billionaire

There is a line from a song in the musical A Chorus Line: 'If Troy Donahue can be a movie star, then I can be a movie star.' Every year one imagines hearing a version of this line reprised in high-tech start-ups across the country: "If Bill Gates can be a billionaire...' For indeed, the great thing about high tech is that, despite numerous disappointments, it still holds out the siren's lure of a legitimate get-rich-quick opportunity. But let us set our sights a little more modestly. Let us say, "If in the 1980s two guys, each named Mike Brown (one from Portland, Oregon, and the other from Lenexa, Kansas), can in 10 years found two companies no one has ever heard of (Central Point Software and Innovative Software), and bring to market two software products that have hardly become household names (PC Tools Deluxe and Smartware) and still be able to cash out in seven figures, then, by God, we should be able to too."

This is the great lure. And yet, as even the Bible has warned us, while many are called, few are chosen. Every year millions of dollars - not to mention countless work hours of our nation's best technical talent - are lost in failed attempts to join this kingdom of the elect. And oh what wailing then, what gnashing of teeth!

'Why me?' cries out the unsuccessful entrepreneur. Or rather, 'Why not me?' 'Why not us?' chorus his equally unsuccessful investors. 'Look at our product. Is it not as good - nay, even better - than the product that beat us out? How can you say that Oracle is better than Sybase, Microsoft Word is better than WordPerfect, Cisco's routers are better than Bay Networks', or that Pentium is better than the Power PC?" How indeed? For in fact, feature for feature, the less successful product is often arguably superior.

Not content to slink off the stage without some revenge, this sullen and resentful crew casts about among themselves to find a scapegoat, and whom do they light upon? With unfailing consistency and unerring accuracy, all fingers point to - the vice-president of marketing. It is marketing's fault! Oracle outmarketed Sybase, Microsoft outmarketed WordPerfect, Cisco outmarketed Bay, Intel outmarketed Motorola. Now we too have been out-marketed. Firing is too good for this monster. Hang him!

While this sort of thing takes its toll on the marketing profession, there is more at stake in these failures than a bumpy executive career path. When a high-tech venture fails, everyone goes down with the ship - not only the investors but also the engineers, the manufacturers, the president, and the receptionist. All those extra hours worked in hopes of cashing in on an equity option - all gone.

Worse still, because there is no clear reason why one venture succeeds and the next one fails, the sources of capital to fund new products and companies become increasingly wary of investing. Interest rates go up, and the willingness to entertain venture risks goes down. Wall Street has long been at wit's end when it comes to high-tech stocks. Despite the efforts of some of its best analysts, those are traditionally undervalued, and exceedingly volatile. It is not uncommon for a high-tech company to announce even a modest shortfall in its quarterly projections and incur a 20 to 30 percent devaluation in stock price on the following day of trading. There is an even more serious ramification. High-tech inventiveness and marketing expertise are two cornerstones of the U.S. strategy for global competitiveness. We will never have the lowest cost of labor or raw materials, so we must continue to exploit advantages further down the value chain. If we cannot at least learn to predictably and successfully bring high-tech products to market, our counterattack will falter, placing our entire standard of living in jeopardy.

With so much at stake, the erratic results of high-tech marketing are particularly frustrating, especially in a society where other forms of marketing appear to be so well under control. Elsewhere - in cars or TVs or microwaves - we may see ourselves being outmanufactured, but not outmarketed. Indeed, even after we have lost an entire category of goods to offshore competition, we remain the experts in marketing these goods to U.S. consumers. Why haven't we been able to apply these same skills to high tech? And what is it going-to take for us to finally get it right?