Jim Landers Jeff Lerner Review
Meet Jim Landers. This photography teacher had to make a pivot when COVID forced him to shut down his photography school. He then started teaching classes online and found ENTRE as he wanted to learn more skills to increase his income. What he stated to be a negative time in his life is proving to be the positive shift he needed.
Today’s guest on the Millionaire Secrets podcast is Rock Thomas.
Rock is a real estate multi-millionaire, author, and public speaker. His best-selling books include the amazing, Your Epic Life Blueprint. He also has over 100+ million views on the Youtube channel Goalcast.
He now teaches others on the importance of developing the right mindsets to create an epic life.
Rock started off life as a farm boy. Helping his father with the farm chores, he soon developed his ferocious ability to withstand hard work.
But his childhood on the farm is also the place where Rock feels he developed a lot of the negative mindsets that would hold him back early in his life.
Loneliness. Depression. Feeling ugly. Feeling stupid. Feeling like an outsider.
Ultimately - he developed a feeling of I’m not enough.
As Rock began to help others in finding and creating their own dream lives, he noticed that the feeling of I’m not enough is a common theme among many.
In this podcast, we talk about how the school curriculum fails to equip people with the right skills and mindsets to go out there and be successful in life.
We then talk about what those correct skills and mindsets should be.
Rock calls them cultivating your gardens - and we each have many of them.
There’s more…
We also discuss the importance of doubling-down on your work. Rock explains how everybody can find time now to work doubly hard for the next 5 years so that they can be free for the rest of their lives.
It’s a matter of priorities. Are you prepared to give up Tuesday night bowling league? Or Saturday shopping? Or Sunday on the golf course?
How much do you really want freedom?
The extra income you’ll have from working more now will pay dividends in the future.
Double-down now for 5 years - and be free forevermore.
Liste to the Podcast below to enjoy the full interview with Rock Thomas:
Check Out More of Rock’s Content Here 👇
💻 https://rockthomas.com/
💡 https://linktr.ee/rockthomas
🎙️ Podcast 👉 https://rockyourmoneyrockyourlife.com/
📒 Blog 👉 https://rockthomas.com/blog/
ℹ️ LinkedIn 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/rock-thomas-8bb146b/?originalSubdomain=ca
📺 YT 👉 https://www.youtube.com/c/RockThomas
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⌨️ Twitter 👉 https://twitter.com/rockthomas
📲 IG 👉 https://www.instagram.com/rockthomas/
📖 Your Epic Life Blueprint 👉 https://www.amazon.com/Your-EPIC-LIFE-Blueprint-Happier-ebook/dp/B072HRKHRM
Jim Landers Reviews
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Projects to Mainstream Customers
Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
Geoffrey A. Moore (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator), HarperAudio (Publisher)
4.3 out of 5 stars
This is the top-selling book that has created a brand new strategy for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm is now the standard for bringing cutting-edge products into ever-growing markets. This new edition offers fresh insight into the reality of high-tech marketing with a particular focus on the Internet. It's a must-read for all those who have an interest in the most fascinating market.
Diffusion of Innovations for Marketers
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2019
Diffusion of Innovations is one of my favorite books and crossing the chasm borrows the academic concepts in DoI towards a practical business strategy.
This is a MUST read if you work or are interested in start ups, business, and/or marketing.
The concepts it details are also applicable to many different problems that come around when a new idea is introduced into the world.
2 people found this helpful
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Pantheon of great tech business books
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2019
This is my second time through this canonical tech marketing book. The book explains the keys to bringing new tech to market. In particular, the ideas of narrowing to a nitche and assembling a whole product when crossing the chasm. This helps mainstream customers buy as they see a product as a market leader. This is when a category transitions from a product-focused sale to techies and visionaries, to a market-drive sale to more pragmatic and risk adverse customers.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2010
This book is about market segmentation and the challenge of retargeting a business from early adopters to mainstream buyers. I have seen businesses fail because of insufficient market segmentation, including my own business. One company I once worked for had about 30 software products (acquired through mergers) and perhaps $100M/year in revenue, but did not distinguish in its catalogs, presentation, or sales force training, between mainstream products and experimental (buggy) early adopter products. Within a year they had failed. If they understood this book they would still be around.
If I had read this book ten years earlier I would be much wealthier than I am today. The book is packed with examples, strategies, tactics and marketing insights which are not easily sumarized in a brief review. It is a pleasure to read and will withstand several re-readings. I highly recommend it to any businessperson, engineer, entrepreneur or investor.
2 people found this helpful
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A book for ever startup in tech
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2019
This is a solid text book on structuring a start up to obtain success. Especially companies in the software tech space. All of the examples are obsolete from the point of view that many of the companies mentioned no longer exist, but if you have knowledge of the history in this space, the lessons to be learned still apply today.
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A classic in business analysis
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2001
This book works best when read in combination with Inside the Tornado. These two books have also been updated and integrated into Moore's latest, Living on the Fault Line. Crossing the Chasm, like the other books, is about and for marketing within high-tech enterprises. Moore's view is that high tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. The "chasm" is the gap between sales to technically literate buyers and mainstream buyers. Moore's book provides well thought out strategies for bridging this gap. Moore disputes the prevailing view that rapid mainstream growth can follow continuously from early market success. Quite different strategies are needed and Moore provides them, illustrated by examples of companies and products that have successfully crossed the chasm. This is well worth reading, though if you read only one book by Moore, make it his latest, Living on the Fault Line.
10 people found this helpful
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Even if you think you know it, you should read it
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2013
I had heard of this book so many times during my MBA and startup days so I always wanted to read it. But because this book is so highly quoted, I had also read various summaries and articles written around it. Reading these gave me the feeling that I know enough of what this book is all about and so perhaps I can give it a skip.
Turns out I was wrong. No matter how much you think you know it, this book is still a goldmine. In spite of knowing the basics of diffusion curve and the way innovation spreads, I still got to learn many new things. Just to highlight a few:
- Why do products with better features don't always end up winning the market?
- What are the peculiarities of users in each segment of diffusion curve?
- Difference between a sales driven and a market driven company and which one you should be?
- The importance of hitting the right pain point and choosing the right niche
Certain not so good things about the book:
- Most examples are bit dated as this book was written quite sometime ago so young folks might not have heard of these companies
- Certain parts of the book specially the sales strategy seem to be applicable more to the B2B businesses and less for B2C type consumer internet businesses
- Also certain portions of the book, specially the last chapter or so, seems like a little outdated in present context of 2013
Nonetheless, overall this book is a must recommend for all entrepreneurs, technology enthusiasts and product managers. It should be a part of your library as there will be times when you will have to look back and reference certain parts of it.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2007
Having already read the sequel, Inside the Tornado, I wondered whether this book had essentially been summarized in that one. While the basic premise of the technology adoption lifecycle is common to both books, this book, as the name implies, gives much more focus and detail to the stage of "crossing the chasm". This translates to the time between the first few big sales (from innovators) and the point where there are steady (and growing) sales (from pragmatists). This is a particularly troubling time for most companies because what worked on those first few will FAIL on the next customers, because they are more risk-averse. This book does a fantastic job of not only explaining what needs to be done, but WHY as well.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2003
There are plenty of long reviews on this, so here's just a short synthesis. This is considered the Bible of marketing thought for early stage, technically-oriented products. It describes the phases of customer thinking, and how you have to appeal to them, including some non-intuitive but dead-on approaches for making the leap to the Early Majority.
For some reason, this second edition seems to have been edited poorly though, with grammar erros and such. Unfortunate for a great work.
One person found this helpful
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Phenomenal book - highly recommended
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2020
Profound
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The chronicle of every startup
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2020
this book with the Innovator dilemma is a must read for every startup founder...
Very insightful for new Product Manager
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2013
As an application engineer on the verge of making the transition to Product Line Management, this book has been very enlightening and insightful. While there are several marketing nuggets, I found the commentary detailing how to categorize prospective customers based upon their risk tolerance very interesting. In an effort to come up to speed quickly, I've read several interesting books over the past several months but "Crossing the Chasm" inspired the most thought as its definitely a theoretical read with a nice mix of real-world marketing examples and company references.
One person found this helpful
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More widely applicable than just tech
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2013
Written specifically for the tech industry and still relying heavily on 1990s examples, this book in many ways is still extremely relevant to any startup business. Chapters 1,3, and 7 are the keys to any business while the remaining chapters have great insights for those in tech in the 90s.
Still relevant. Still pointing out ridiculous things companies do as they grow from startup to a larger company.
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Old classic book, still a must-read for any business person
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2014
I recommend this book to anybody whose profession is even marginally liked to sales. It's not only about selling technology. It's about selling today with the compressed product life-time we experience, and on the need to have a sales and marketing plan. To think it, design it, keep yourself flexible but effective. It's one of the best business reading I made in the past several years. Read it on my Kindle, then bought the paperback for reference.
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Nothing short of stellar, 13 years later
Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2012
Before I get to the praise -- and there is praise -- it is important to realize that this book was last updated in 1998. Some of the examples might be software you have never heard of because they didn't become "household names" even if they were wildly successful in 1998.
It doesn't matter. It's still amazing.
This book is a classic for a reason. Well-written, organized simply, very easy to follow and understand, and contains a mountain of experience and insight, all boiled down into something anyone can digest.
I read this book over a few 1-hour flights, and afterward I went back through it and made notes. I was able to apply some lessons to a real-life plan immediately after reading.
Highly recommended.
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The CMO of my company recommended this three times. The third time, I bought it.
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017
Its one of the first Marketing books I've read that didn't read like a self-promotional circlejerk. The topic is broken down in a way thats easy to understand. Theres a ton of useful, insightful, and valuable content in here.
If you work at a growing startup, even if you're not on the marketing side, you owe it to yourself to read this.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2019
Great book that ever startup should read
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Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2014
Great book. Every software development manager should read the section on Pioneers and Settlers. It really explains what is fundamentally wrong in the software industry.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2013
Very insightful. I read this book a number of years ago and I keep purchasing copies to give to clients to gain insight into how to manage technology assets for business.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2012
As leader of a business launched recently with Kickstarter, I was reminded of this work by a respected Professor at MIT. Don't worry about the age of the edition: the book is sensible and timeless (though perhaps some of the examples/cases might seem old).
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2018
Excellent book, highly recommended for any entrepreneur.
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2017
Great book recommended from my professor at Cornell.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2014
This is a classic that is well documented. The most successful people learn to think in terms of process, not black versus white or even gray. Life is more dynamic than that.
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Ever wondered why the start-up that makes you work twenty ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2014
Ever wondered why the start-up that makes you work twenty hours a day does not make it rain? Read this book.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2015
brilliant book. got it for a marketing class, and still use it as my bible for marketing
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Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2006
I've been reading this book and since I bought it in July, every chapter seems a good lesson for every enterpreneur who really wants to go into high-end tecnology market. I also teach enterpreneurship at a college in my city and my pupils are computer science students. Because of this book, I decided to change the metodology which I teach them. Really a good choice !
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2014
I'm not good at marketing. It's very easy with this book. A lot of things actually makes sense thanks to it. Thanks Geoffrey Moore!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2013
Timeless guide to marketing for startups. A must read book for anyone looking to build a successful company. I use the book now as a reference guide.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2016
breaks down the proces. loved it
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great explanation of marketing in common sense language
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2013
Just what I needed. No abstract hi-flying marketing theory - direct, practical and everything explained in a common sense way.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2015
Item was delivered as advertised and on time.... Thanks....
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2010
reading this book was an assigment within the program Im attending to be a product manager .. and this book is really really good .. helps you see the process flow .. Im totally satisfied with this purchase .. and Im planning to read the book again very soon .. this book gonna be one of the very important books on my product management bookshelf for reference and refreshing in the future ..
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Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2013
So integrated into tech by now some pieces seem obvious. Especially interesting to think about how a visionary buys and pragmatist. Excited to read through the balance of the Geoffrey Moore library.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2011
This is THE original innovation book in my mind. Yes, it seems to apply most aptly to the high tech adventures in silicon valley but those are just dramatic examples.
The concepts in this book are fundamental and pervasive in many walks of life. A valuable read. The Book on Business from A to Z: The 260 Most Important Answers You Need to Know.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2016
Vital knowledge for anyone who wants to understand how paradigm shift markets come into existence, especially if one needs to plan, build or market within them.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2014
This book helped me target the market for my software tool ('The Network Strategizer (TM)'), I highly recommend it! Read it to understand innovators, early adopters, and the early majority. These are critical for capturing a market niche.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2010
It's a bible for entrepreneurial marketing. I strongly advise to get it to the Marketing &Strategy specialists in different sectors how to learn redefining targeted customers on action plans via creating loyalty&profit maximization. Also, a good open-minder book on how to differentiate your company against high-tech solution providers' competitors in the market.
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The bible for product development in tech
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2019
Strong explanation of product development cycle behaviour
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Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2014
Really enjoyed Moore's story telling perspective.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2015
Essential reading for anyone who is serious about hi tech marketing. Highly recommended. Doing the targeting exercises made a difference.
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Excellent read for anyone that does high-tech marketing
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2014
I'm an engineer by trade and am a founder of a tech company. The concepts and vocabulary I learned from this book were priceless and have sparked some excellent discussions for my team and me.
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2015
I like this book because it gave me confidence and guidelines on how effectively build and sell your product to more profitable market which is mainstream market. It helped to make a better plans to become profitable company.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2015
Good and cheap
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Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2013
Useful for those who support sakes in the tech market but don't have business degrees. Recommended to me by a veteran of sales and explains why tech companies do what they do.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2012
I bought this book because I was lloking any book referring in how to sell high-tech products, and this is the answer. Great, Great, Great Book!!!
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Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2013
Classic. It is not anything similar to manual or ready solution. You should read it and make your own decisions.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2010
I am a newbie in this space. The most imp thing I like is the examples provided. Good read to know American business history.
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Time-tested solid framework for thinking about marketing challenges
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2013
If your background is in engineering or mathematics, you probably have enough prejudice against marketing books full of hype and buzz. Especially if you've been in the field and observed many a brand come and go throughout the last 20 years, you will really have a hard time reading marketing books with big words, let alone recommend them to your peers. Fortunately, Crossing the Chasm is a rare book, or should I say an outlier in this respect, that goes to the heart of the matter, and in a few pages shows what the real challenges are for a new high-tech company when it comes to marketing and establishing a brand.
There are a lot of important lessons to learn from this book and I think even the simplest lesson, that there is a big chasm to be crossed, where exactly it is placed, why it exists, and you better be aware of it for your own good, is enough reason to read this book. But of course the book does not stop there, and continue with important topics such as what companies should do in each phase of their life-cycle, what types of users / customers are there, what kind of strategies you need to employ for which type of user and when you should do that, what the whole product means versus the core technology itself and a few other important points. Another lesson that is crystal clear: The enthusiasm and the bright energy of the starting point, all of those technological innovations are great and cool, without them you cannot start any high-tech product but it is also sad to see that they are not enough for being really successful and establishing the product as the dominant brand in the sector.
The no-nonsense approach of the author, as well as the striking and famous examples he uses to convey his messages are very well thought out. The book never gets dull and I have earmarked many pages, underlined many sentences and could not help myself for applying the principles to other technology example I have witnessed practically during the last 20 years. What I really liked in the end is that it gives me a time-tested solid framework for thinking and analyzing many cases and focus on what not to do, as well as things to be done.
It is a pleasure to see that so many years after its publication, the basic principles and lessons of the book are still very much relevant. I will not hesitate to recommend this book to my peers and keep it hidden from my competitors.
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#1 HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWER
Get ready to cross the chasm or you'll fall into it
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2001
Most people who do marketing are familiar with the adoption curve (i.e. Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.) Companies who create technological products frequently have brilliant success with the first two groups and then fall into a pit trying to get to the pot of gold on the other side of this rainbow, selling to the rest of the curve.
Crossing the Chasm details the important gap between Innovators and Early Adopters and then outlines a campaign strategy for crossing that chasm to mainstream marketing success. The book gives many examples of products that crossed the chasm successfully (such as Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft.)
Time and time again, technology companies fail because they are concerned with sales numbers (to please shareholders or investors) or because of a bean-counter mentality or simply insufficient funding. The author Geoffrey Moore uses D-Day and the taking of Omaha Beach as a powerful metaphor for how to establish a beachhead before assaulting the mainstream. Like the beaches of Normandy, high cost and certain losses can be essential to establishing the toehold that stages victory. Also important is the idea that to reach the mainstream market, vendors must provide the a complete solution, including support. This is an area that high-tech companies typically want to skimp on; the Innovator and Early Adopter types are natural pioneers and self-sufficient. These buyers accept a higher level of product problems and work-arounds. The mainstream majority buyers are pragmatic; they buy a product not for its own sake, or because it is "cool." They buy to get a job done and want a product that does the job and does it trouble-free. A lack of service and complete solutions is one big reason technology firms fall into the chasm with an initially hot-selling product.
The book is not tremendously detailed, but gives clear, understandable examples of how to set up a strategy in order to target a market and select a "must-have" value proposition suitable to drive in a wedge. The most valuable part of the book, in my opinion is the advice on weathering the ongoing pressure of executive management reviews, which can constantly threaten to derail a bold yet workable plan.
This is must reading for anyone in the high-stakes technology market. It's an exciting game, and this book provides important strategies to win.
17 people found this helpful
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Helpful Revision of a High-Tech Marketing Classic
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2001
Crossing the Chasm deserves more than five stars for putting "a vocabulary to a market development problem that has given untold grief to any number of high-tech enterprises."
Crossing the Chasm is the most influential book about high technology in the last 10 years. When I meet with CEOs of the most successful high technology firms, this is the book that they always bring up. What most people do not realize is that Geoffrey Moore did an excellent update of the book in a revised edition in 1999. If you liked the original, you will like the revision even more. It contains many better and more up-top-date examples, and explores several new ways that companies have crossed the chasm that he had not yet observed in 1991 when the original came out (such as "piggybacking," the way that Lotus 1-2-3 built from VisiCalc's initial success).
If you plan to work or invest in any high technology companies, you owe it to yourself to read and understand this book. The understanding won't be hard, because the material is clear and well articulated.
The book's focus is on a well-known psychological trait (referred to as Social Proof in Influence by Robert Cialdini). There is a potential delay in people using new things "based on a tendency of pragmatic people to adopt new technology when they see other people like them doing the same." As a result, companies must concentrate on cracking the right initial markets in a segmented way to get lots of references and a bandwagon effect going. One market segment will often influence the next one. Crossing the Chasm is all about how to select and attack the right segments.
Many companies fail because innovators and early adopters are very interested in new technology and opportunities to create setrategic breakthroughs based on technology. As a result, these customers are not very demanding how easy it is to use the new technology. To cross the chasm, these companies must primarily appeal to the "Early Majority" of pragmatists who want the whole solution to work without having to be assembled by them and to enhance their productivity right away. If you wait too long to commercialize the product or service in this way, you will see your sales shrivel after a fast start with the innovators and early adopters.
The next group you must appeal to are the Late Majority, who want to wait until you are the new standard and these people are very price sensitive. Many U.S. high technology companies also fail to make the transitions needed to satisfy this large part of the market (usually one-third of demand). The final group is technology adverse, and simply hopes you will go away (the Laggards).
The book describes its principles in terms of D-Day. While that metaphor is apt, I wonder how well people under 35 know D-Day. In the next revision, I suggest that Desert Storm or some more recent metaphor be exchanged for this one.
The book's key weakness is that it tries to homogenize high technology markets too much. Rather than present this segmentation as immutable, it would have been a good idea to provide ways to test the form of the psychological attitudes that a given company will face.
The sections on how to do scenario thinking about potential segments to serve first are the best parts of the book. Be sure you do these steps. That's where most of the book's value will come for you. Otherwise, all you will have added is a terminology for describing how you failed to cross the chasm.
I also commend the brief sections on how finance, research, and development, and human resources executives need to change their behavior in order to help the enterprise be more successful in crossing the chasm.
After you finish reading and employing the book, I suggest that you also think about what other psychological perceptions will limit interest in and use of your new developments. You have more chasms to cross than simply the psychological orientation towards technology. You also have to deal with the tradition, misconception, disbelief, ugly duckling, bureaucracy, and communications stalls. Keep looking until you have found and dealt with them all!
May you move across the chasm so fast, that you don't even notice that it's there!
18 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2006
While this book (as Moore states) is unabashedly geared toward the high tech industry, I believe entrepreneurs in general, and anyone engaged in bringing forward innovative products, services or ideas will probably find some value here. Given that high tech is, as Moore describes, a "microcosm of larger industrial trends," the marketing strategies are relevant to almost any organization that seeks to create or increase demand for what it sells.
This book requires careful, but not arduous, reading. Brilliant analogies, dry humor, accessible examples and very lucid explanations help to drive home the concepts. Outside of high tech, those engaged in B2B marketing will more readily be able to translate the concepts from this book into their environments. Others will need to translate more heavily to apply the wisdom found here. You will probably be challenged to rethink, not only how you expand your company's presence in the marketplace, but how you define your market (or target audience). You may end up with something much different than you would have thought.
One very key concept is that the way you market your product to win early acceptance will be vastly different from how you market that same product (and might I add service?) to cross the chasm to the mainstream market. Mainstream does not necessarily imply "the masses," but rather the long-term users of your product. In fact, the decision-maker you are targeting at one stage is completely different than the person that you are targeting at the next, and the two have a completely different mindset, completely different objectives and a completely different approach to buying into innovation. The difference is so great as to be very astutely called a "chasm." Yet, crossing that perilous chasm is the only way to ensure viability over the long-run. As Moore succinctly states, it's "a do-or-die proposition for high-tech enterprise." This could be said of many other enterprises as well. Moore cites examples of how, often, it is not the superior product that wins out, but the one that most successfully crosses the chasm.
As someone who highly values the entrepreneurial and the innovative, and the types of people who embody these attributes, in reading this book I am reminded that the strategies required for an organization's long-term success may not be those that are naturally derived from an entrepreneurial mindset, as much as I hate to admit it.
Of the many eloquent analogies found in this book, perhaps, my favorite is the one that Moore uses to launch the discussion of how to successfully cross the chasm. Using the analogy of D Day (Chapter 3), he talks about the need to "concentrate an overwhelmingly superior force on a highly focused target" to secure the beachhead and expand from there. Brilliant! This chapter alone makes the book worthwhile.
5 people found this helpful
The Bible for High-tech Entrepreneurs
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2001
This book is absolutely amazing. I'm really knocking myself on the head for not purchasing it a long time ago, but I'm glad I did now. Currently, I'm Chairman and CEO for a new high-tech startup and after reading this book, I'm going to redesign our approach to marketing with my other officers. Even though we have not hit the chasm period, we will soon and I feel we are better prepared.
The book is actually very simple. It just defines what the chasm period is, who is involved, how to define what markets to attack, how to direct your marketing/advertising, how to assemble alliances and partners and even how to prepare your staff during this period.
The author does an excellent job being honest and sincere, explaining the good with the bad. This is truly great as he won't leave your company in the dust when you see big problems after when crossing and after you cross the chasm period. For instance, I would not have thought my pioneer sales staff would be not as effective and slightly frustrated after we haved breached into the mainstream market. After Geoffrey's discussion on compensation and staffing after crossing the chasm, I was convinced that I had not even thought about how each employee would be affected. Some solutions are brutal to fix the problem - but honest.
The book clearly identifies crossing the chasm as a war - and that it is indeed. Marketing, especially in the high-tech field, is warfare. This book will give you the strategies and tactics to launch this type of war campaign. Read it and read it again and then give it to your senior officers to read.
One complaint about the book, is that this clearly focuses on companies building software, hardware, electronics, and etc. that will appeal to multiple markets. If you are building software that you can only clearly see one industry adopting, you basically have already segmented your market. You may choose to segment your target market even further, perhaps by location to go with the book (that's what we did). This book does little in talking about that type of innovation, but if you do some thinking and apply the core principles of the book, you should be able to develop a strategy that works really well.
One other point, by no means a flaw, is that it does little explaining what goes on before the chasm period (hints here and there). If you are even unsure has to how to start a new high-tech business, I suggest that you should read this book but look elsewhere for other resources and perhaps find someone with that knowledge that can help.
All in all, this is one amazing book and I highly recommend it to any high-tech entrepreneur. Now I'm going to read Geoffrey's other book, Inside the Tornado.
7 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2002
Both the Chasm and the Tornado books deal with the fundementals of how technology companies either do or should come to market. As so often with work like this it is often bought and a few pages read - and little is taken on board as to how to implement the ideas.
In my previous role in BT both these books were heavily promoted by PA Consultants who did a load of marketing training for us - but you tell me if you think they were read with any real insight?
The recommendations and points discussed relate to coming to the market through the early adopters and visionaries - then if successful we should be able to move to the mass market. Unfortunately even though we know this to be true intuitively and can prove it's true in the real world - most marketing departments want to go big, mass market, fast.
This is a bible for visionaries, innovators, start-ups, small businesses with a focus on customer relationships - if your in a big corporate, forget it. Nobody will let you proceed like this - it will be too contra to the arrogant,internal focus most corporates have.
If you consider yourself a visionary, manic business missionary - then this is the book for you (just don't expect your friends in big companies to understand what your talking about as they burn their way though millions of unfocused marketing budget!)
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Marketing and Selling Tech stuff to Consumers-- THE BIBLE
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2006
Yep, that's what this is the BIBLE for marketing and selling tech product to mainstream customers. Foreword by Regis McKenna -- the guy who launched APPLe...A great book that covers such topics from the basics of tech marketing including the revised technology adoption lifecycle from innovators to early adopters to early majority, late majority and laggards (the people still not using the Internet today)....so what is the chasm-- according to WiKIPEDIA it is:chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). He says tgat visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations. The book outlines techniques to successfully cross the "chasm", including choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building a marketing strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing. Critics criticize the book because it deals with adoption and not profit. Not all products that get across the chasm make MONEY! by 2002 -- more than 300,000 of these books had been sold according to various sources on the web. If you're in Silicon Valley you better know what CROSSING THE CHASM means and take a look at buying his next book too....and if you don't know what an early adopter is ---well don't bother to try to market a tech product!
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Useful strategies for the next step.
Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2000
I don't want to suggest that this book will "revolutionise" the way you do business, because that would consign it to the trash can with all those other "revolutionary books" in my mind. This is a clear and concise workaday book that will help you to develop sales strategies that will deliver on your targets.
We all know about the early adopter strategies, but few people concentrate on what happens next. Crossing the Chasm identifies solutions for chopping up the majority markets into bitesize pieces that you can hand out to your sales force and expect them to hit.
This book gives you control over the targeting of your market and the realistic strategies that will capture market sales. If you are having problems hitting your targets, hit this book, and it might be the solution you needed.
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Must read for anyone in high tech marketing
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2008
For a book on high tech that was first published nearly two decades ago to feel so relevant today is a testament to the ideas and writing of Geoffrey Moore. Its frankly pretty amazing how Moore seems like he's discussing the various success and failures of the social networks and their adoption issues (friendster, myspace, and facebook).
The genius of this book is not the discussion of how technology adoption follows a normal distribution. The genius is in Moore's research around how to increase your chances for taking a technology or idea from its early nascent days to mainstream success. The key as Moore lays it out is in the attitudinal differences between members of the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. The early adopters he argues are typically Technologists and Visionaries, and can see the possibilities of what a technology represents. They are more willing to play with immature technologies (in the case of Technologists, it's a geek thing we wouldn't understand, in the case of visionaries, it's about pushing what's possible further along). In order to continue to grow the business beyond this early set of customer you have to prove your value to the pragmatists that make up the Early Majority who want to go with a proven leader. This is the chasm, to shift from the Early Adopters to the Early Majority if you will. This is where a great number of companies falter and don't last.
The key per Moore, and frankly it jives really well with my admittedly anecdotal experience, is to focus on a small segment, while keeping your end goal in mind. To do this, you have to pick the right segment to focus your efforts on in order to build out the product. Moore argues that in order to know whether your segment is the right size or is truly a segment, you have to a small enough community that can generate word of mouth completely on its own. To me this is sound advice no matter the truth of whether technology adoption occurs this way or not, as it forces companies to focus on a relatively small group of customers with common concerns, which in and of itself is a great thing. It means that the service/product is going to get developed completely for a group of people instead of trying to be all things to all people.
Moore has a great analogy, to describe this strategy. He calls it D-Day. Your end goal is the liberation of Europe. In order to do this, you need first to get a foothold in Europe. To do this you must gather all of your resources and position them to come out of the early adopter market (England) and send them onto a focused point (Normandy) in a rapid manner in order to cross the chasm (English Channel), and ultimately to success (mass market appeal).
There are tons of other great insights in this book (from understanding the need for a larger ecosystem of companies to define a value chain, to positioning yourself relative to your competition).
Complete review of this and other interesting non-fiction can be found at [...]
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A Classic that stands the test of time!
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2011
If you are a technology executive and have not read this book and internalized it's learnings you have missed out on some fundamental understandings about the nature of the industry in which you operate. Like any good business book it will somehow have you saying "I knew that" and "Now I get it" all in the same breath. There are a mountain of failed technology companies (and products within large companies) that have failed by either ignoring or being ignorant of these concepts. I personally used these concepts to build a $150m+ business. It takes focus and discipline. If my bookshelf only had room for 4 business books, Chasm would be one of them along with The Innovator's Dilemma, Good to Great and now the fantastic new book by Eric Ries - the Lean Startup.
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Perfect for professionals dealing with discontinuous innovation
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2009
There are very few texts that do a good job dealing with how to convince the market to adopt new technologies. The standard TALC (tech adoption life cycle) texts have serious flaws when it comes to discontinuous technologies. Geoffrey Moore nails it with Crossing the Chasm. If you are an executive or marketing professional introducing high tech products you will be well served by this book. It will help you understand if you cross the line into discontinuous innovation and need to adopt chasm approaches to your customer base. Even if you don't deal with discontinuous products you will learn a lot of the different types of customer demographics encountered by any high tech marketer.
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Really changed my life about technical sales
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2003
There are some rare books that create revelations, and in my professional career, this is one of them. Now it is obvious why I often failed to connect with "Pragmatists" and other customers, who didn't seem to get it like the other "Visionaries" and "Technofiles" I had little trouble selling to.
I was the one who didn't get it!
In addition, marketing and sales books can be such dull tomes, but Moore's professional experience and accesible manner makes for an interesting read. His "lingo" has been picked up but many professionals, to the point where you need to read Moore just to be up to date. But the good news is, you will be much more effective in technical sales and marketing after reading this book.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2001
Almost every thing have been said and written about these 2 books ("Crossing the chasm" and "Inside the tornado"). These are really about the best business books ever, but I would like to add one point :
This book is compulsory reading for IT consultants and system integrators, without it, you will never understand how to manage your technology "partners" (or why they treat you so poorly !). Once you will have read it, you will understand their goal, their lifecycle and your role in that game. If you deal with the SAP, Siebel and Oracle of the world (the gorrilas), you will start to decipher their strategy.
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A new description for a proven paradigm
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2006
Geoffrey Moore puts into words what many entrepreneurs have long known but until now no one has been able to thoroughly describe. That is, there are many differences between early adopters and the mainstream markets. This causes problems because the early adopters are the ones who "sell" your product to the rest of the market, yet at the same time the characterists they look for in a product are much different than what everyone else looks for. Without pleasing the early adopters you are dead in the water, but what pleases the early adopters may make your product unpalatable for mass consumption. Crossing the Chasm for the first time teaches entrepreneurs how to reconcile these differences, in a way that is almost incontrovertible. One of the most useful business books ever published, and well worth a careful reading.
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