A summary of things you should know about Crossing the Chasm according to Geoffrey Moore:

Introduction

In this episode Geoffrey Moore shares all his insights on his bestselling book, Crossing the Chasm, where he discusses his revised and updated expertise on marketing and selling disruptive products to mainstream customers.

In his book Moore provides dozens of successful high-tech marketing examples, his in-depth research on technology adoption models for high-tech consumers, and many new marketing strategies that are specifically built for bring high-tech products to larger markets. The goal of the book is to help you master the Technology Adoption Life cycle and accelerate your marketing efforts.

This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are selling high-tech products that are new the market and need help broaden their marketing efforts to cover all segments of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.

The Book’s Unique Quality (3:35)

Most of the books in high-tech marketing understood that there were early adopters but they hadn’t recognized that there was this chasm separating the early adopters from everybody else. And as a result they thought they could just transition across very smoothly but in fact we lost many high-tech startups to the chasm.

The Best Way To Engage (4:08)

I designed the book to be read from front to back.

The Reader’s Takeaway (9:46)

The notion that when you are crossing the chasm you have to show up with a complete solution. The only way that is really feasible is if you specialize in one particular use case. So it’s the idea of pick a single use case and make sure it’s one that’s very urgent and compelling.

A Deep Dive Into The Book (5:01)

The key thing of the first part of the book is that we use a framework called the Technology Adoption Life Cycle to help entrepreneurs understand how high-tech markets develop. The key idea that we insert into it is this chasm idea which is the early adopting market really aligns with the entrepreneur very voluntarily. And the chasm then separates them from the rest of the marketplace which is more skeptical and pragmatic. So the strategy for marketing high-tech changes dramatically when it’s time to cross the chasm.

The last 2/3 of the book puts out a playbook and it’s organized around five key principles, there are five chapters in the playbook. The first chapter is when you cross the chasm you have to go initially to a very targeted niche market of people who have a very urgent and compelling use case for your new technology. The next thing you have to do is sit down and work through the target customer and the compelling reason to buy.

That lets you go to the third chapter in this book which is called Symbol the Invasion Force. The idea here is to bring together the other partners in the ecosystem that are necessary to work with you in order to solve that use case that the target customer has.

Once you have that then you can go to what we call Define the Battle which is the fourth of these chapters. And that is who is your competition and how are you positioned differently?

The last one is launching the invasion which has to do with your distribution strategy and your pricing strategy and how to pull that together to make that work.

NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:01

Notable Quotes From The Book (10:40)

“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” – Geoffrey Moore

The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author (1:21)

I have an academic background originally; I was going to be a professor of English. But back in the 70’s I moved out to California, joined a high-tech firm, and been involved in tech marketing and high tech strategy since 1978. In the late 80’s I worked with a company called Regis McKenna and it gave me a chance to write this book which originally came out in 1990-1991.It’s about marketing and selling products to mainstream customers.

It was that high-tech firms would have experience of having early success with a handful of customers who were very enthusiastic about their disruptive innovation and that would make them think that they were ready to pour on the gas. And it just felt like the marketing kept on collapsing underneath them every time and this happened often enough that we knew we needed to find a solution and tell others about it.

Other Books Recommended By The Author (11:35)

The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
The Regis Touch by Regis McKenna

More Information About This Book and The Author

Buy Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore on Amazon today
Visit GeoffreyAMoore.com to learn more about Geoff and his book
Follow Geoffrey Moore on Twitter and LinkedIn

More Information About This Episode

Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud

Related books:
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
The Innovator’s Method by Nathan Furr
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan

Relevant advice and tips:
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding

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Wade Danielson

Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.