Article · Short read, about 5 minutes

Your Competitor Isn't Your Real Competition: Status Quo Is

Amy Morin · Forbes Free Beginner

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.

• The status quo, sticking with the current spreadsheet or manual habit, beats named rivals as the most common reason a deal dies.
• A brand customers mention because it is famous may not be a competitor at all if the real alternative is changing nothing.
• To win against the status quo you have to make the cost of inaction concrete, not just argue you are better than a rival.