Conventional companies typically try and leverage a single competitive advantage to stand out from their competitors. That used to work. . . but in today’s hyper-competitive and technology-driven world, a single competitive advantage can be overcome quickly. Dominant companies have advantages across multiple fronts and constantly tweak and improve upon those advantages, so they are less likely to be “disrupted.” For sports enthusiasts, it’s the equivalent of a football team having a great defense but average offense and special teams. You’ll win games with a great defense or great offense, but balanced teams or those great on both sides of the ball have much higher chances of winning championships.

Many companies talk about placing the customer first or being customer-centric, but typically these words are hollow as their culture and business practices are inwardly driven to reduce costs, increase sales, become more efficient and constantly improve the bottom line. Dominant companies are obsessive about customers and place the customer at the center of everything. They then engineer backward to save customers time, effort, and money, while still providing the very best user experience. Dominant companies do not trade-off one feature for another. Yes, it’s a hard change to implement. For example, dominant companies don’t provide an exceptional user experience and then say the customer is going to have to pay a premium for that exceptional service.

Finally, you’ll receive a real, mathematical formula to establish a manageable and measurable KPI. While conventional companies focus on their profit and loss statements, dominant companies add measurable indicators on customer sentiment and behavior. They track those and make them one of the most important discussion points in meetings. They don’t ignore their profit and loss statements, but understand the very source for profit and loss is tied to the actions of their customers.

Dominant companies continuously invest in their efforts to improve the customer experience, reduce amount of time it takes a customer to engage them, make it easier (and with less effort) to do business with them, and use technology to become more efficient to pass along lower costs. They know that without a constant focus on improving customer interactions, they risk their dominant position.