When functioning at its best, within the limits just laid out, direct sales is the optimal channel for high tech. It is also the best channel for crossing the chasm.

Of course, talking this way about marketing merely throws the burden of definition onto market, which we will define, for the purposes of high tech, as • a set of actual or potential customers • for a given set of products or services • who have a common set of needs or wants, and • who reference each other when making a buying decision.

There are four fundamental stages in this process, corresponding to the four primary psychographic types, as follows: 1. Name it and frame it.

How wide is the chasm? Or, to put this in investment terms, How long will it take before I can achieve a reasonably predictable ROI from an acceptably large mainstream market? The simple answer to this question is, as long as it takes to create and install a sustainable whole product. The chasm model asserts that no mainstream market can occur unti

To reap the rewards of the mainstream market, your marketing strategy must successfully respond to all three of these stages. In each case, the key to success is to focus in on the dominant “adoption type” in the current phase of the market, learn to appreciate that type of person’s psychographics, and then adjust your marketing strategy and tactic

In other words, during the chasm period, the number-one concern of pricing is not to satisfy the customer or to satisfy the investors, but to motivate the channel.

“Never attack a fortified hill.” Same with beachheads. If some other company got there before you, all the market dynamics that you are seeking to make work in your favor are already working in its favor. Don’t go there.

First you divide up the universe of possible customers into market segments. Then you evaluate each segment for its attractiveness. After the targets get narrowed down to a very small number, the “finalists,” then you develop estimates of such factors as the market niches’ size, their accessibility to distribution, and the degree to which they are

To sum up, whole product definition followed by a strong program of tactical alliances to speed the development of the whole product infrastructure is the essence of assembling an invasion force for crossing the chasm. The force itself is a function of actually delivering on the customer’s compelling reason to buy in its entirety. That force is sti