Tell me if this pitch sounds familiar:

“If we could capture just 1% of the market for this product, we could do over $500 million in sales! And that’s with just 1% of it!”

It’s the basis for the all-too-popular and far-too-lame “1% of the market” approach. The suggestion, used by overzealous (and inexperienced) entrepreneurs is that 1% of a market is so little, that it couldn’t possibly be hard to capture.

And let’s face it, 1% is awfully small!

1% of a pizza is about two bites. 1% of your mortgage payment probably means you can pay it with the cash in your wallet. 1% of a typical business book is only two pages. Boy, that sounds ridiculously easy.

Yet 1% of the market for a particular product ain’t a slice of pizza or few pages of a book. ...