Take just a moment…right now…and write down the names of your two biggest competitors.

My guess is that if I could look at your list, I would see that you’ve listed other players in your specific industry. You have just proven that we stereotypically define our competitors — and that holds the potential of causing us great harm in the future.

As I was doing the background research for one of my earlier books, I found that what customers really wanted did not vary much from industry to industry. The reason is because customers blend ALL of their experiences — both personal and professional — as their criteria for evaluating YOUR level of performance.

This means that your competition, regarding how customers view the level of service and engagement you’ve created with them, is NOT limited to your specific industry. Your competition is the service they received the time they stayed at a Four Seasons…the shopping experience they have at Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus…the quality of the BMW they took for a test drive.

Not understanding your competition can be horrifically damaging. Folger’s thought its competition was Chase & Sanborn and missed out on what Starbucks created. Nokia thought its competition was Motorola and missed out on how Apple changed the industry.

I recently asked a group of executives this question: “If you were going to create a start-up company to compete with you…what would it look like?”

As you can imagine, there were many terrific ideas.

Then, I asked them, “So why aren’t you doing these outstanding points?”

You can guess the answers: “We’ve never done it that way before.” “Our competition isn’t doing it, so why should we?” And on and on.

The good news is…they decided to try.

And so should you.

To become more distinctive and stand out, change how you view your competition.