How do I tell the difference between a real competitor and a company customers only mention because it's famous?
The short answer
The competitor that matters is the one prospects actually consider and put budget against, not the household name they cite out of habit. Ask in every sales call: what were you using before, and what else did you evaluate. Often the true alternative is a spreadsheet, a manual process, or a scrappy local tool, and the famous brand people name-drop was never a real option for them.
Go deeper, your way
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Why we picked it
When you feel that something is broken but cannot name it, Christensen's Jobs-to-be-Done lens gives you a way to describe the actual progress a person is trying to make in a specific situation. That reframing turns a fuzzy hunch into a concrete job you can go test with real people, which is exactly the move from vague to sharp. It is the canonical text on the idea, and it is a starting point for thinking in jobs, not a formula to follow blindly.
Why we picked it
A short, concrete piece that names the competitor founders most often miss: the customer simply doing nothing. Morin cites research that roughly 60 percent of qualified deals are lost not to a named rival but to the do-nothing option, which is a useful corrective when you are worried about a famous brand that customers mention. Treat it as a starting point for asking whether your toughest competitor is a company at all, or just inertia.
