Lets say you where a motivated person with experience in the software industry but wanted to create a product to sell into the restaurant industry.<p>What steps would you take to gain the knowledge and contacts required to sell into an industry that was not your domain?<p>A few things that come to mind are..
1) Read how-to and dummy books on starting a business in the new industry.
2) Subscribe to industry specific publications
3) Go to local conventions and meetups that have owners and operators from the new industry.<p>What else would you do to immerse your self into an industry for the sake of eventually selling into it?<p>I think this is a problem for a lot of entrepreneurial software developers since our work is generally focused on the implementation of technology as opposed to the creation of business process models.