Execution and performance

Welcome back! I'm Ed Addison with NC State University. This is managing new product launches Session 10. Here, we'll talk about execution and performance. It is assumed that you've now raised your capital and you're ready to run your business.

For the next few minutes, I'm going to talk about three topics. I'm going to talk about how to execute your business, how to achieve growth in your business and your exit strategy. That's a lot in a few short minutes. This is intended only as an overview introduction. You can always take a much deeper dive on these subjects through reading books and attending seminars after this program.

I'm going to begin by talking about a concept called Crossing the Chasm. In fact, there's a book called Crossing the chasm written by Geoffrey Moore. A quote here from Geoffrey is that the chasm crossing is not the end, but the beginning of a mainstream market development. So, what do we mean by crossing the chasm?

It is often the case that new companies, especially tech companies or new products will come out and they will achieve revenue growth like a big bang. Then, after a period of time, all of a sudden that revenue stops for a little while or even drops. So, what happened? Crossing the Chasm is a theory and a book that attempts to explain this for tech marketing. This came out in the 90s, but it's just as true today. Innovators and early adopters love new things. They talk to each other. On the other hand, mainstream buyers are very conservative people. They tend to only talk within their industry. This creates a chasm between the early adopter buyer and the early majority buyer. If you look at this diagram, time moves to the right. Your first sales will go to techies and early adopters, and you'll get sales growth out of that. These are people who love new things. They attend conferences on technology. They talk to each other and you probably do the same and it will create an early buzz about your product, but now you're ready to sell it to the enterprise. The enterprise consists of many different markets like Telco and energy, and pharmaceutical. If your product is applicable to all of them are distinct market segments and they tend not to attend the same conferences or reference each other. You almost have to create a vertical product for each market or at least a vertical services offering. Focus on that market segment and win over that market segment to continue growing and then move to another one. So, you must focus on the needs of the market segment. In order to achieve that continued execution and revenue growth, you'll need to branch out to other markets and learn them, and market to them separately from your early adopter marketing.