First People First

Many of my clients - especially tech clients - want a lot of sales, fast.

I totally understand why. We all do.

But that simple propensity often becomes the single most common point of failure - focus.

Not being able to focus on the right audience at the right time.

Using the Diffusion of Innovation model above, most clients think that they are smart enough to first tackle the 34% of the market that are Early Majority adopters. Sadly, few people, if any, are smart enough to make that step one and it’s often an inadvisable strategy anyway. Scale-up is even harder than start-up!

In the early stages of starting a business, the key is to find those 2-3% of the available market that are the Innovators. Those people who, even though they are lawyers or accountants, still have a strong innovative streak in them. They are mavericks.

Find them. Serve them. Listen to them. Relentlessly.

They are your future!

Once you have a product that those Innovators are raving fans of, use that momentum to attract the Early Adopters. Those who want to be on the leading edge but choose not to for whatever reason (budget, risk, availability, etc.).

After that, the Early Majority pick it up. Then the Late Majority. But by then the industry is mature and you’ve evolved several times since then.

Doing the hard work to say no to the majority of your customers - for now - is your key to success as a startup.

Give us a call to talk more about focusing messages and campaigns at those maverick Innovators.