When a company’s commercial performance begins to struggle, the knee-jerk reaction for leaders is often to look outward toward the competition. They begin to analyze competitors, benchmark what they can, reexamine pricing, and generally ask anyone who will listen, “What are they doing that we're not?”

And while some of that work can be helpful, the root cause of a company’s performance problem is rarely a competitor’s move. More often than not, it’s a shift in customer value that the company hasn’t yet recognized—or hasn’t wanted to acknowledge. Looking outward becomes a convenient distraction from the harder work of looking inward at relevance.

Over time, every business’s commercial model will drift out of alignment with the market. Positioning, messaging, pricing, product prioritization, service design—all of it evolves. And at some point, it becomes incongruent with what customers now prioritize. The buyer pool changes, too; what mattered yesterday may no longer matter today.

When that happens, the right move is not to look outward toward competitors but to focus relentlessly on understanding how your customers have changed. And that requires asking the hard questions you’ve likely been avoiding. You should always know, as intimately as possible, what your customers value so you can align your commercial model accordingly.

Competitors Explain “How.” Customers Explain “Why.”

Competitive awareness is necessary because it establishes context. But when material shifts are underway—declining win rates, pricing pressure, lost share—competitors are the wrong diagnostic tool. They can illustrate what’s happening in the market, but only customers can tell you why. Only your customers can help you improve your customer experience (CX), and the companies that do that are the ones that reestablish commercial alignment.

McKinsey calls this strategy “experience-led growth.”

“To succeed with it,” they write, “companies start by defining their desired financial outcome and then prioritize the CX improvements that will deliver that outcome. They have the boldness to rethink their corporate culture and operating models, to ramp up innovation and technology adoption, and to build new CX measurement and analytics capabilities. Sometimes they must reexamine and redefine their very reason for being.”

Of course, this is easier said than done. But aligning value for both the organization and its customer base is arguably the most important task an organization can take on.

Strategic commercial realignment requires a disciplined return to the customer—a return that allows you to ask the questions you no longer know the answers to. What do customers actually value? Who is the real buyer today? How has the buyer pool evolved? How does your offering create advantage under today’s logic? How is price now interpreted? What are the key drivers of preference? What needs to evolve—and what no longer matters?

These are difficult questions, and the answers may be uncomfortable, but they’re essential for restoring alignment.

A Pathway to Breakthrough Growth

In the end, competitive awareness can help you understand the landscape, but only customer insight can help you change your trajectory. Companies that reverse decline don’t do it by benchmarking their rivals—they do it by rebuilding a business that reflects what customers value now, not what they valued in the past.

The organizations that win the next chapter are the ones willing to confront that reality early, listen deeply, and realign their commercial model with precision and discipline.

Relevance is a choice. And the moment you choose to return to the customer, you’ve already begun to regain it.