Your strongest competition these days might be the economy. My guess is that it's not treating you fairly. In my opinion the bailout of GM and Chrysler and the executive payouts are not fair. Don't believe that you need to play fair with your competition.

How can you be more unfair to your competition?

Offer more value than your competition. Add some extra piece of value that costs you little but might be perceived as offering incredible value to your clients. That might be including service that everyone else charges for. It might mean offering an unheardof guarantee.

Break some "unwritten" industry rule. Every industry has unwritten rules that have evolved over time that annoy clients. That might mean online ordering, around the clock access or a simplified process. Look to technology to help you with these enhancements.

Educate the clients about the industry. This could be a variation of the previous point. By educating clients about the industry secrets you help to develop a better educated and thus more discerning buyer. You could make a list of tough questions for buyers to ask when they shop around. Those questions might catch your competition off-balance. Naturally you and your team are well prepared to handle those questions.

Form alliances with sellers of related services. Partner with other suppliers to your clients. Together you can offer a more comprehensive service and get your foot in the door with your clients ahead of your competition.

You might even criticize your competition. Pepsi did this with their blind taste tests against Coke. That campaign was so successful that it firmly established Pepsi as the taste leader. The program even unnerved Coke to blunder into the mistake of launching New Coke.