The Hidden Danger of Benchmarking: How Copying Competitors Holds You Back.

Introduction: The Benchmarking Trap.

I see it all the time. Business owners are constantly checking what their competitors are doing, how much they charge, how their website looks, and what kind of offers they’re running. It feels sensible, even responsible. After all, if your competitors are doing well, it makes sense to learn from them, right?

The trouble is, benchmarking has become the default mindset for most small business owners. We measure ourselves against what everyone else in the industry is doing, and in the process, we stop thinking for ourselves.

I used to do it too. I’d look at my competitors’ prices, copy elements of their marketing, and even mirror their service structure because it felt “safe.” It was like keeping an eye on the pack so I didn’t fall behind. But what I didn’t realise was that I wasn’t moving forward, I was just running in circles with everyone else.

That’s the problem with benchmarking. It creates a false sense of progress. You feel busy, informed, and “in the know,” but all you’re really doing is reinforcing the same industry standards that already exist. You’re operating inside someone else’s idea of what success looks like.

And here’s the kicker: most of the businesses you’re benchmarking against don’t actually know what they’re doing. They’re benchmarking against someone else, who’s benchmarking against someone else. It’s like playing business Chinese whispers; each round gets further away from what really matters: the customer.

Benchmarking keeps you focused sideways instead of forward. You end up chasing your competitors’ tails instead of creating real value for your clients.

The irony is that every major business breakthrough, every “blue ocean” success story, came from doing the exact opposite. From companies that ignored the industry norms and started asking different questions:

• What if we designed around the customer’s ideal outcome instead of the competitor’s last move?
• What if we made the competition irrelevant rather than trying to beat them?

That’s the shift we’re going to explore in this article. Why traditional benchmarking is holding you back, and how to replace it with a smarter, more forward-thinking approach I call Desirability Benchmarking.

Because the goal isn’t to be better than others, the goal is to be different in a way that matters.

2. What Benchmarking Really Means (and Where It Went Wrong).

Benchmarking started with good intentions. The original idea was simple: learn from others who are doing something better than you, study their systems, and close the gap. It was meant to be a diagnostic tool; a way to identify weaknesses and improve efficiency.

But somewhere along the line, it turned into something else entirely. Instead of learning from, we started copying. Instead of using benchmarks as a guide, we began treating them as gospel.

Most business owners benchmark the wrong things. They compare prices, marketing messages, number of followers, and website layouts, as if that’s what really drives customer decisions. But all of that is surface-level imitation. You end up competing on the same narrow criteria everyone else is obsessed with: “Who’s cheaper?” or “Who’s got the slicker website?”

The truth is that kind of benchmarking doesn’t build better businesses; it builds bland ones. You blend in, not stand out.

Traditional benchmarking fails because it’s built on a false assumption: that your competitors know something you don’t. But in reality, most of them are just as uncertain as you are. So, what you get is an industry full of businesses benchmarking against each other’s best guesses.

The result? Everyone starts to look and sound the same.

• Builders promise “quality and reliability.”
• Accountants say, “We save you tax.”
• Consultants claim, “We help you grow.”
• And the market becomes a sea of sameness.

That’s why I believe it’s time to replace competitive benchmarking with something far more meaningful, something that measures what really drives success: desirability.

This is where the Desirability Index comes in.

The Desirability Index flips benchmarking on its head. Instead of comparing yourself to competitors, you compare yourself to your customer’s ideal. You measure how much customers want to buy from you, not how well you mimic others in your market.

It looks at three critical dimensions:

• Functional Value – How well do you solve the customer’s problem?
• Emotional Value – How do customers feel when they deal with you?
• Perceived Value – How desirable do you look compared to alternatives (even outside your industry)?

When you measure desirability, you stop thinking about “what others charge” and start thinking about “what customers crave.” You stop chasing your competitors’ tail lights and start building your own runway.

In the next section, we’ll dig deeper into the hidden dangers of traditional benchmarking and why it can quietly destroy your creativity, differentiation, and margins if you’re not careful.

3. The Hidden Problem with Competitive Benchmarking.

The biggest problem with benchmarking is that it assumes your competitors know what they’re doing. That’s a dangerous assumption.

In reality, most small business owners are guessing; reacting to what others in their industry are doing without ever stopping to question why. You see someone advertising on Facebook, so you advertise on Facebook. You see someone cutting prices, so you cut prices. Before long, the entire market is trapped in a loop of imitation, not innovation.

It’s what I call the sideways glance syndrome; everyone’s too busy looking at each other to notice where the customer is actually going.

The first hidden danger of benchmarking is false confidence. When you see that you’re “in line” with industry averages, you feel safe. But average is rarely a good place to be. Average margins. Average growth. Average loyalty. The comfort of conformity hides the risk of irrelevance.

The second problem is that benchmarking measures the wrong things. It focuses on numbers that are easy to find rather than those that truly matter: price, turnover, headcount, and number of followers. But those metrics say nothing about customer satisfaction, referral rates, emotional connection, or perceived desirability; the real drivers of long-term success.

When you obsess over competitors’ numbers, you end up optimising for efficiency, not differentiation. You might become marginally faster, cheaper, or more polished, but never truly different. And that’s a slow death in business.

The third danger is psychological. Benchmarking creates a false sense of security; it keeps you inside the lines. Humans naturally fear standing out because standing out feels risky. So we benchmark as a way of saying, “I’m doing what everyone else is doing, so I must be right.” But business doesn’t reward safety; it rewards originality that solves real problems.

Every great business story is about someone who stopped benchmarking.

• When Dyson ignored the vacuum cleaner industry and built a bagless one.
• When Tesla stopped benchmarking against car manufacturers and started benchmarking against innovation itself.
• When Netflix stopped comparing itself to Blockbuster and started comparing itself to what people wanted: instant entertainment.

Benchmarking keeps your focus sideways, not forward. It limits imagination, kills curiosity, and locks you into a market narrative someone else wrote.

That’s why I believe benchmarking, in the traditional sense, is not just ineffective, it’s actively harmful. It prevents you from asking the bigger, bolder question:

“What do my customers truly desire and how can I deliver it in a way no one else dares to?”

That’s where the Desirability Index changes the game. It shifts the measure of success from imitation to innovation, from “how do I compare?” to “how do I stand out?”

4. The Alternative: Blue Ocean Thinking.

When you strip away all the noise, traditional benchmarking keeps you trapped in what business strategists call the “red ocean.” It’s crowded, noisy, and full of competitors fighting over the same pool of customers. In a red ocean, the only way to win is to take business from someone else, and the easiest way to do that is by cutting prices, copying ideas, or shouting louder.

But here’s the truth: nobody builds a great business in a red ocean. You survive there, you don’t thrive.

Blue Ocean Thinking is the exact opposite. It’s about creating new demand rather than fighting for existing demand. Instead of competing for a bigger slice of the same pie, you bake a completely new one.

I remember the first time I read Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The concept was simple but profound:

“Stop benchmarking competitors. Start reimagining value.”

The idea is to make competition irrelevant by redefining what customers actually want, often in ways the industry has never considered.

Think about Cirque du Soleil. They didn’t try to outdo traditional circuses by adding more animals or louder clowns. They removed the very elements that defined the industry and combined theatre, music, and storytelling instead. The result? A completely new market space, part circus, part art performance, where no one else was competing.

Or Airbnb. They didn’t benchmark against hotels. They asked a better question: “What if people could feel at home anywhere in the world?” That single shift in thinking created an entirely new industry worth billions.

The principle applies just as powerfully to small businesses. Take two accountants.
One benchmarks against other firms, matching prices, copying packages, and using the same “we save you tax” line that everyone else uses. The other benchmarks against what clients actually want: clarity, confidence, and control. So they reposition around proactive financial strategy, fixed pricing, and real-time advice. The first competes on fees; the second competes on value perception. Guess which one grows faster and more profitably.

That’s the power of Blue Ocean Thinking. It moves you away from competitive mimicry and toward creative differentiation.

But here’s where we take it one step further, something I’ve built into my own framework, The Desirability Index. Blue Ocean Thinking helps you redefine what you offer. The Desirability Index helps you measure how much customers want it.

It’s one thing to create a new space; it’s another to ensure it’s one that customers are eager to step into. By focusing on functional, emotional, and perceived value, you can create offerings so desirable that price becomes secondary, and competitors can’t touch you.

In a world obsessed with benchmarking, Blue Ocean Thinking reminds you that the best strategy isn’t to be better than others, it’s to be different in a way that matters.

5. A New Way to Benchmark: Desirability Benchmarking.

If traditional benchmarking is about comparing yourself to competitors, Desirability Benchmarking is about comparing yourself to your customer’s ideal experience.

This shift might sound subtle, but it’s transformative. Because instead of asking, “How do I measure up to others in my industry?”, you start asking, “How much do customers actually want what I offer?”

That’s where The Desirability Index comes in. It’s a framework I developed to help businesses stop chasing competitors and start building magnetic appeal, the kind that attracts customers naturally, strengthens loyalty, and improves cash flow.

Why Desirability Matters More Than Performance.

Performance benchmarking tells you how efficient you are compared to others. Desirability benchmarking tells you how compelling you are compared to what customers truly want. You can have the best systems, the best pricing, the best marketing funnels, and still lose, simply because your offer doesn’t feel desirable.

Customers don’t always buy the “best” solution; they buy the one that feels right.

When you measure desirability, you’re not just tracking sales; you’re measuring emotional connection, trust, and perceived value. And these are the levers that move markets.

The Three Pillars of Desirability Benchmarking.

At the heart of this new approach are three powerful dimensions.

One. Functional Value – “Does it do what I need it to do?”

This is the rational layer, the job to be done. It’s where most businesses focus: features, performance, price, speed, reliability. But here’s the mistake: functional value alone rarely wins. It’s just the ticket to entry. You can’t build loyalty on functionality alone.

Two. Emotional Value – “How does it make me feel?”

This is where the real differentiation happens. People buy emotionally, then justify rationally. If you can make customers feel confident, understood, supported, or proud of their decision, you create emotional stickiness that competitors can’t copy. An accountant who makes clients feel in control of their business is far more valuable than one who simply delivers reports.

Three. Perceived Value – “How desirable does it look and feel?”

This is all about presentation, positioning, and storytelling. Two identical offers can be perceived completely differently based on how they’re framed. Think of it as the “halo effect”, branding, clarity, and tone all shape the way customers perceive worth. If your business looks, sounds, and feels premium, it becomes premium in the customer’s mind.

Turning the Lens: Benchmarking Against Desire.

So instead of benchmarking your price against competitors, benchmark your functional value against customer expectations. Instead of benchmarking your brand design, benchmark your emotional value, how customers feel when they interact with you. And instead of benchmarking your marketing reach, benchmark your perceived value, how compelling your offer looks compared to what they desire most.

This is what I call Desirability Benchmarking: a customer-centred scorecard that helps you see your business the way the market actually experiences it.

Imagine sitting down and rating your business (or getting customers to rate it) across these three pillars on a scale of 1–10. You’d instantly see where you overperform, where you blend in, and where you’re invisible. Those low scores? They’re not weaknesses, they’re opportunities. They show you exactly where to innovate, improve, and differentiate.

From Industry Standards to Customer Standards

Traditional benchmarking keeps you aligned with industry norms. Desirability Benchmarking keeps you aligned with customer truths.  It encourages you to build from the outside in, starting with how customers want to feel, what they expect functionally, and how they interpret value, rather than from the inside out by copying your competitors.

And that’s the real competitive advantage: when your business feels more desirable than any alternative, customers stop comparing. They stop asking, “How much?” and start saying, “How soon can I work with you?”

6. How to Apply Desirability Benchmarking in Your Business.

Understanding the concept is one thing; applying it is where the transformation happens. Desirability Benchmarking isn’t theory; it’s a practical decision-making framework that lets you measure your business through the eyes of your customers and make smarter, more profitable choices.

Here’s how to put it into action step by step.

Step 1: Identify Your Customer’s Ideal Outcome.

Start by asking:

“What does success look like for my customer?”

Not just what they buy, but why they buy.

• What are they really trying to achieve?
• How do they want to feel after buying from you?
• What frustrations do they want to avoid?

For example, customers don’t buy a modular building because they love steel and cladding; they buy it because they want more space, less stress, and a fast, reliable solution that lets their business operate better. 

When you define that ideal outcome clearly, you have a north star to measure against.

Step 2: Audit Your Business Across the Three Pillars of Desirability.

Using the Desirability Index, rate yourself across the three value dimensions:- Functional, Emotional, and Perceived.

Ask tough questions:

• Functional: Do we deliver consistently, or do we create friction through process delays, poor communication, or unclear outcomes?
• Emotional: Do customers feel understood, valued, and supported, or do they feel like another transaction?
• Perceived: Does our brand, pricing, and presentation make us look like the expert choice, or just another option in the crowd?

If you’re honest, you’ll find gaps. And those gaps are gold, because they reveal exactly where your next breakthrough lies.

Step 3: Gather Real Feedback.

Desirability isn’t something you guess at; it’s something you measure. Talk to your customers. Run a short survey. Ask open-ended questions like:

• “Why did you choose us?”
• “What nearly stopped you?”
• “What would make us irresistible?”

Patterns will emerge. You’ll start seeing what customers truly value and where your offer falls short.

Don’t just look for praise, look for the friction points. That’s where desirability is lost, and where the next version of your business can rise.

Step 4: Look Outside Your Industry for Inspiration.

Traditional benchmarking keeps you locked into your own sector’s thinking. Desirability Benchmarking invites you to explore adjacent excellence.

Ask yourself:

• How does Apple make its customers feel confident and loyal?
• How does a five-star hotel handle communication and service design?
• How does a premium brand justify a higher price through presentation and experience?

You can borrow cues from anywhere (hospitality, retail, tech) and adapt them to your business. The goal isn’t to copy; it’s to learn how others create desire and bring that emotional logic into your world.

Step 5: Redefine Your Offer Around What Increases Desirability.

Once you’ve identified what your customers want most, and where your business underdelivers, you can redesign your offer, experience, and communication to close the gap.

That might mean:

• Simplifying your onboarding process to create confidence.
• Improving after-sales support to build loyalty.
• Reframing your marketing around outcomes and emotions, not features.
• Enhancing your visual identity or pricing presentation to elevate perceived value.

Each improvement compounds. You don’t need to rebuild your business overnight; small shifts in desirability often deliver massive results.

Step 6: Measure Progress with a Desirability Scorecard.

Every quarter, revisit your Desirability Index. Score yourself again across the three pillars. Track the changes. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress. You’re not benchmarking against competitors; you’re benchmarking against your previous self.

That’s the power of Desirability Benchmarking: it builds momentum. Each small improvement moves you closer to the business your customers truly want to buy from.

Step 7: Use the Insights in Strategic Planning.

Integrate your Desirability Index into your 365/90 planning process. When you set quarterly GAME Plans (Goals, Actions, Metrics, Evaluation), include desirability targets.

For example:

• Increase the Emotional Value score from 6 to 8 by redesigning onboarding and feedback systems.
• Improve the Perceived Value score by updating your brand visuals and client proposals.
• Raise Functional Value by automating communication touchpoints or improving reliability metrics.

When desirability becomes a measurable KPI, strategy becomes sharper, and growth becomes sustainable.

Desirability Benchmarking isn’t about competing harder; it’s about competing smarter. When you focus on how much your customers want you, not how much you look like everyone else, your marketing becomes easier, your margins stronger, and your confidence higher.

7. Example: Breaking the Benchmark in Practice.

Let’s make this real.

A few years ago, I worked with a modular building company that was stuck in a familiar trap. They were constantly benchmarking against competitors. Price per square metre, project turnaround times, material specs, and even brochure layouts.

Every tender they submitted looked almost identical to everyone else’s. Their quotes were professional but predictable. Their website read like a dozen others in the industry. And despite working harder than ever, their margins were shrinking.

When I asked the owner how he set his prices, he said, “We check what the others are charging and try to come in slightly under.”  It was the perfect example of what benchmarking does: it narrows your thinking until you’re competing purely on cost, not on value.

Shifting the Focus: From Benchmarking to Desirability.

We scrapped competitor benchmarking altogether and replaced it with a Desirability Audit.

Instead of asking, “What are others charging?”, we asked:

“What do customers truly want, and what do they hate about dealing with this industry?”

The answers were revealing.

Clients weren’t looking for the cheapest modular buildings. They were desperate for certainty. They wanted reliability, speed, and a sense that once they placed an order, everything would happen exactly as promised.

So, we restructured their entire offer around desirability, not comparison.

Functional Value:

We streamlined the order-to-installation process. Clear milestones, transparent project updates, and one named point of contact. Result: Clients felt in control and informed, removing the biggest source of friction in the buying process.

Emotional Value:

We reframed the messaging. Instead of talking about “units” and “costs per metre,” we focused on the experience, fast, stress-free, professional service that helped clients get operational sooner. Result: Clients felt calmer, more confident, and more trusting.

Perceived Value:

We redesigned the proposals, website, and presentation materials to look and feel premium — visual clarity, professional imagery, and simple design. Result: The company looked more established, more credible, and, crucially, more desirable than its competitors.

The Outcome.

In less than six months, their sales process transformed. They raised prices by 15% without losing business. They cut time spent on tenders because they were now attracting clients who valued quality and certainty over saving a few pounds. Their close rate improved, and profit margins followed.

But here’s the real win: they stopped caring what competitors were doing. They created their own benchmark, one built on customer satisfaction, not industry conformity.

A Second Example: Professional Services

The same principle worked for a client in the accounting industry. They used to benchmark on pricing models, trying to stay “competitive” by matching local firms’ hourly rates.

We applied the Desirability Index instead. Their clients told us they didn’t care about hourly rates; they wanted predictability, advice, and faster answers. So, the firm switched to fixed monthly fees with unlimited access to advice, plus proactive management reports every quarter.

They stopped being “another accountant” and became a strategic partner. Their perceived value skyrocketed, and within a year, they had doubled client retention and were turning away low-value work.

The Lesson.

When you stop benchmarking against competitors and start benchmarking against customer desire, your whole business recalibrates. You stop asking, “How do we keep up?” and start asking, “How do we lead?” You stop chasing customers, and they start chasing you.

That’s the power of Desirability Benchmarking; it’s not about outperforming others; it’s about becoming the business your market naturally gravitates towards.

8. The Ultimate Lesson: Benchmark Forward, Not Sideways.

If there’s one lesson to take from all this, it’s simple: benchmark forward, not sideways.

Benchmarking sideways, against your competitors, keeps you trapped in the past. You’re measuring yourself against businesses built on yesterday’s thinking, yesterday’s systems, and yesterday’s market assumptions. You’re trying to “keep up” in a race that no longer matters.

Benchmarking forward, on the other hand, means setting your sights on where your customers are going, not where your competitors are. It’s about aligning your strategy with future expectations, emerging desires, and the direction of value, not the noise of the marketplace.

The Problem with Sideways Benchmarking.

Sideways benchmarking is reactive by nature.

• Your competitors cut prices, so you cut prices.
• They add a new feature, so you scramble to match it.
• They post on social media, so you post too, even if you’re not sure why.

It’s a hamster wheel. You’re busy, but you’re not moving forward. And worse, you start to measure success through the wrong lens:

• “We’re slightly cheaper than them.”
• “Our website looks just as good.”
• “We’re posting more frequently.”

But these are vanity comparisons; they make you feel competitive, not become competitive. Benchmarking forward breaks that pattern. It asks a more strategic question:

“What will matter most to our customers in 12 months, and how can we lead them there?”

The Power of Forward Benchmarking.

Forward benchmarking forces you to think like a market leader, not a follower. It focuses your energy on innovation, experience, and desirability, the factors that make customers choose you regardless of price.

Here’s how the mindset changes:

Old Thinking (Sideways)	New Thinking (Forward)
“What are competitors charging?”	“What price reflects the value our customers truly experience?”
“What marketing channels are others using?”	“Where do our customers want to engage with us?”
“What features are missing?”	“What frustrations can we remove entirely?”
“How can we match them?”	“How can we make them irrelevant?”

This shift sounds small, but it changes everything. Because when you benchmark forward, your strategy stops being reactive and becomes creative.

Desirability as the True Benchmark of Progress.

In a forward-thinking business, the only benchmark that really matters is desirability.

• Are you becoming more desirable to your ideal clients each quarter?
• Are you improving the emotional experience of buying from you?
• Are you increasing your perceived value so customers see you as the obvious choice?

Those are the benchmarks that drive long-term success. When you improve desirability, you don’t have to shout louder, discount harder, or chase leads more aggressively. Customers come to you because they want to, not because they’re convinced to.

That’s the ultimate test of progress: when your market starts to pull you forward instead of you constantly pushing to keep up.

The Forward Benchmark Mindset.

Forward benchmarking isn’t just a strategy, it’s a mindset. It requires courage to stop looking sideways for reassurance and start trusting your own vision.

It means saying:

• “We don’t follow industry norms: we set new standards.”
• “We’re not comparing ourselves to the competition: we’re comparing ourselves to the business we’re becoming.”
• “Our only goal is to make our customers’ experience more desirable tomorrow than it was today.”

That’s how leaders think. That’s how markets are reshaped. And that’s how small businesses become uncopyable.

Final Word: Building Confidence in Benchmarking Forward

Most business owners benchmark because it feels safe. It gives you something tangible to compare against, a reference point, a sense of belonging, a comfort zone. But comfort zones are dangerous places for entrepreneurs. They disguise stagnation as stability.

The truth is, benchmarking should never be about fitting in; it should be about standing out.

That’s the shift we’ve explored throughout this piece: from competitive benchmarking to desirability benchmarking; from copying others to creating your own standards; from reacting to the market to leading it.

When you stop measuring yourself by what others are doing and start measuring yourself by how much your customers want what you do, you move from survival to significance.

Confidence Comes from Clarity.

You don’t build confidence by comparing your business to others; you build it by understanding your own value and vision. That’s what Desirability Benchmarking gives you: clarity.

• Clarity about where you truly stand in the eyes of your customers.
• Clarity about which aspects of your business create loyalty and which cause friction.
• Clarity about how to make your offer irresistible without lowering your price or diluting your purpose.

It’s a shift from asking, “How do I perform?” to asking, “How do I connect?”

When you see your business through that lens, decision-making becomes easier. Pricing becomes more confident. Marketing becomes more authentic. Growth becomes more predictable.

A Continuous Journey, Not a One-Off Exercise.

Desirability Benchmarking isn’t something you do once; it’s something you build into the rhythm of your business. It should sit alongside your financials, your marketing reports, and your 365/90 planning process as a key performance indicator.

Every 90 days, ask yourself:

• Are we becoming more desirable to our ideal clients?
• Are we improving the customer experience at every stage?
• Are we still leading, or have we slipped back into following?

When you make desirability a discipline, innovation becomes natural. You’ll start spotting opportunities your competitors miss, because you’re watching customers, not rivals.

Embrace the Forward Benchmark.

The real goal isn’t to be better than others, it’s to be better than you were last quarter.
That’s what benchmarking forward is all about.

• Benchmark against your customers’ ideal outcomes, not industry averages.
• Benchmark against your own potential, not your competitors’ performance.
• Benchmark against the future, not the past.

When you do that, you stop worrying about competition altogether, because you’ve moved beyond comparison.