What About Late Adopters?
If you have been in involved in any facet of technology the last 30 years - you will know there’s always someone in the mix who’ll buy anything new. But those people only account for about 20% of the total buying marketplace.
They are the early adopters and they should not be the focus of your entire sales efforts. The ones to really focus on are the late adopters - the people who will consider buying something once it’s been around a while.
However, there is an even more important component to late adopters and that is HOW they buy. Even though you may be selling a “new” technology, late adopter buyers out there don’t buy the same way early adopters do. This is where most sales managers fail to help their teams properly segment selling behaviour.
All of this thinking comes from one of my favorite books, Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore. It is one of the recommended 10 resources you’ll learn about in New Economy Selling. You must read this book.
Anyway, my point is this - if you can’t learn how to sell to late market buyers, you will meet with limited success. Here’s a basic premise in Moore’s book, which is even more true today with the Web 2.0 movement than when Moore wrote the book: Late market buyers need help seeing how they will use your products and services. Early market buyers have already figured it out. Early market buyers are not as loyal and don’t often make the best customers to build a business around.
Selling to them is more like order taking…like a transaction. Late market buyers…late adopters are loyal and less likely to switch vendors. If you can learn how to sell to them, you will be more successful and so will your company.
Why? Because they make up 80% of the buying market place. Now, what if you had 9 other critical resources like this to help you improve your sales?
You can - I’ve got them listed in New Economy Selling.