Overall Goal: Find a new customer type for each new product every two years, thereby increasing sales by product by another 10%-20% every two years.

By now, it may be apparent that the first three quadrants are very similar to each other. Quadrants 2 and 3 are closely related  since they consist of your existing customers, and Quadrant 1 addresses the same industry as your existing customers.

Quadrant 4, however, is different. It consists of non-customers from different industry sectors than those you normally market to. It is actually an exercise in new business development.

The right approach to developing Quadrant 4 is to follow Geoffrey Moore’s advice in Crossing the Chasm and first establish a beachhead.  Assemble a team of your best people to target a few selected accounts that will generate key wins for you within the new industry, allowing you to establish credibility early on. Your team members should be highly entrepreneurial and have a very strong “whatever it takes’’ attitude to winning these new customer types in an industry that no one in your company is familiar with.

In Quadrant 4, your objective to sell a product you first developed for a different market segment, with some modification and customization. You have some idea of what that customization might look like, but in truth you won’t really know until you are trying to make your first sale in that segment. This is more like a custom project, which is why you need a team that is highly entrepreneurial— capable of building something from the ground up and finding  solutions for problems that you have never really addressed before.

Below you will find a Best Practices checklist for optimizing high growth within Quadrant 4 for Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Innovation.

Marketing Checklist

GOAL

Identify other market segments similar enough to your current market segment so you will be able to leverage many of the capabilities you already have.

KEY OPTIMIZATION ACTION ITEMS

• Set up a Market Strategy team that explores applications of your current products in solving problems outside your current market.
• Build a disciplined market segment analysis approach to identify the best opportunities.

Sales Checklist

GOAL

Find the early adopters and key accounts in the new market segment

KEY OPTIMIZATION ACTION ITEMS

• Set up a New Business Development unit charged with finding the right entry points within the selected potential growth area.
• Define the compensation plan for rewarding success.

Customer Support Checklist

GOAL

Do everything necessary to create highly satisfied and referenceable customers.

KEY OPTIMIZATION ACTION ITEMS

Set up a “Special Accounts” team whose priority is to do whatever it takes to make these early adopters highly successful with your products.

Innovation Checklist

GOAL

Make it easy to custom fit your products to new market needs within 90 days.

KEY OPTIMIZATION ACTION ITEMS

• Create a platform for your products that enables you to customize and support various versions of your products.
• Rapidly complete Proof of Concept (POC) projects.
• Rapidly convert approved POC into stable products.