The Bowling Pin strategy
cdixon.org
cdixon.org
Usually, he would get 2-3% of the houses he knocked on to buy his services. He would install the peep holes in 15 minutes and be off.
He later managed to get this 2-3% to 20%. What he did was revisited the houses that had refused his offer during the first time - and told them: so and so of your neighbour installed it. Would you want to install it too?
He later on bumped that 20% to an insane 90%! How? Got endorsement letters from the local fire houses. And from the homeowner's association.
The strategy teachers may call this the Bowling Pin strategy. He simply called it "saturating an area." And getting approvals from the influentials.
However, the "bowling pin/alley" strategy mentioned in the articles applies in the slightly different context of a disruptive product. A peep hole is not a disruptive product.
Isn't that just what Facebook did? Got one notable school to adopt it, and then used that as social proof of its value to expand?
"A peep hole is not a disruptive product."
It is if you're a door-to-door salesperson. Big difference if people feel they can quietly ignore you after peeping out the hole, versus having to make some sort of contact and then trying to turn you away.
No, it's not. You could social proof Facebook using Harvard students all you like and it still won't appeal to an old guy who lives in Australia. The key thing is that Facebook is only useful when you've got some friends using it. That's why it made sense to start with a big cluster of friends the founders were part of.
Geoff Moore's theories apply to disruptive or discontinuous products that force customers to make a significant change in behavior. A peep hole may force door-to-door salespeople to make significant changes in behavior, but the customer doesn't make a significant change in behavior. The "disruption" or "discontinuity" refers to the changes in behavior of the consumer.
* All products are first adopted by Innovators, then Early Adopters, the Early Majority, the Late Majority, and finally Laggards. You may be an Early Adopter in one market (e.g. gadgets) but a Laggard in another (e.g. fashion).
* Disruptive products may do well with Innovators and Early Adopters, but the Early Majority is not willing to deal with a product that they don't understand (because it's not like another product they know).
* Happily, the Early Majority finds out about new products from the Early Adopters. So if you're building a disruptive product, you need to first make a critical mass of Early Adopters willing to recommend you to the Early Majority.
* To do this, he suggests that you make a "whole product" that addresses 100% of the needs of a particular niche (a "bowling pin"). The users in that niche will endure the pains of early-adoption in order to have 100% of their needs met (versus a generalized product that only meets, say, 80% of your needs). You will thus get happy Early Adopters in one niche.
* Then, you add the features you need to create a whole product for the next niche. As you succeed in each niche, you are not only improving your product, but you are collecting customer references in each niche. Eventually, if you have great customer references in a lot of niches, you can "cross the chasm" faced by all disruptive products by having enough overall customer references that the Early Majority will hear about and try your product.
* So, using this approach gives you two advantages. First, you have explicitly considered a bunch of niches and added features to make your product satisfy customer needs deeply. Second, you have a critical mass of customer references to "cross the chasm" to the mass market.
Here is an illustration: http://faculty.msb.edu/homak/homahelpsite/webhelp/Crossing_t...