What is your Distinctive Competence?

During my 6+ years at Scorpion, we grew revenue from $20 to 150M, way faster than our closest competitors.

Sure, we worked extremely hard, learned a lot, and made mistakes along the way.

But we had an innate strength our competitors didn't.

→ Customer intimacy

We built real, human-to-human relationships with our clients.

We got to know about their families, celebrated their life wins, and grieved their losses.

In short, we cared.

This intimacy perfectly filled an unspoken need our SMB clients craved yet couldn't find anywhere else.

And it just wasn't something our competitors could achieve at scale.

But for us, customer intimacy was authentic and came naturally.

About a year ago, I learned this is our "Distinctive Competence."

It's your business' unique strength that separates you, even in a crowded market.

And customer intimacy is just one of five a business can have.

Here they are: 

→ Customer intimacy (Scorpion)

→ Product leadership (Google)

→ Operational excellence (FedEx)

→ Innovation (Tesla)

→ Culture (Hubspot)

Question to ponder

👉 What's your business' Distinctive Competence?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a "Distinctive Competence"?

A business's unique strength that separates it from competitors, even in a crowded market. It's not something manufactured, it's an innate advantage that shows up authentically in how the business operates.

What was Scorpion's Distinctive Competence, according to this experience?

Customer intimacy, building real, human-to-human relationships with clients, knowing their families, celebrating wins, and grieving losses alongside them, something that filled an unspoken need competitors couldn't replicate at scale.

Why couldn't competitors easily replicate Scorpion's customer intimacy?

Because it was authentic and came naturally, rather than being a tactic that could simply be copied. Genuine intimacy at scale requires a level of real care that's difficult to manufacture artificially.

What are the five types of Distinctive Competence a business can have?

Customer intimacy (Scorpion), product leadership (Google), operational excellence (FedEx), innovation (Tesla), and culture (HubSpot), each representing a different core strength that can differentiate a business.

What's the practical question worth reflecting on here?

What a business's own Distinctive Competence actually is, identifying the genuine, hard-to-replicate strength that already exists rather than trying to compete broadly across every possible dimension.