Competing Against PE-Backed HVAC Companies

Private equity firms made nearly 800 acquisitions in HVAC, plumbing, and electrical since 2022. Companies like Wrench Group, Apex Service Partners, and CoolSys are rolling up regional contractors and building national platforms.

They’re not done. PE firms still have roughly $1 trillion in dry powder, and home services remains one of their favorite sectors. Fragmented market, recurring revenue potential, aging housing stock driving demand for decades.

If you’re running an independent HVAC company, you’re now competing against businesses that have centralized marketing departments, sophisticated CRMs, call centers that run 24/7, and the ability to spend $100,000 a month on advertising without checking the bank account.

You’re not going to outspend them. You need a different game.

What PE roll-ups actually do well

Underestimating the competition is how you lose. These platforms have real advantages that took years and millions of dollars to build.

Their marketing operations are centralized and professional. They’re not running Google Ads from the owner’s kitchen table at 10pm. They have agencies, media buyers, and budgets that dwarf anything you can match dollar for dollar.

Their CRMs track everything. Every call, every lead, every technician interaction feeds into systems that optimize for conversion. They know their numbers at a level most independents never achieve.

They have purchasing power. When you’re buying 50 condensers a year and they’re buying 5,000, they’re getting equipment at prices you can’t touch.

And they have management depth. When your lead tech quits, you’re scrambling. When theirs quits, there’s a system in place to backfill the role within days.

Pretending these advantages don’t exist won’t make them go away. You need to know what you’re up against.

Where PE roll-ups struggle

Every strength creates a weakness somewhere else. The same scale that gives PE platforms their advantages also creates the gaps you can exploit.

They run multiple brands that customers don’t realize are connected. A homeowner calls what they think is a local company and gets routed to a centralized call center in another state. The dispatcher knows nothing about their neighborhood or the tech who serviced their system last year.

Consistency suffers at scale. When you have 400 techs across 12 locations, quality control becomes a massive challenge. The customer who loved their last tech might get someone completely different on the next call, with different habits, different communication styles, and different skill levels.

The corporate structure creates friction. A PE-backed company can’t give a tech autonomy to discount $50 on the spot to close a deal. Everything has to go through approval chains and pricing systems that don’t flex for individual situations.

And the incentive structure pushes aggressive sales tactics. PE wants returns in 3-5 years, which means pressure to maximize ticket size on every call. Techs get trained to upsell, even when the customer doesn’t need it. That erodes trust over time.

The reviews tell the story. Plenty of PE-backed HVAC companies have solid review scores, but scroll through the 1-stars and you’ll see patterns: “didn’t feel like the same company,” “pushy technician tried to sell me a $12,000 system when I just needed a repair,” “couldn’t get the same person twice.”

The messaging trap

Walk into any independent HVAC shop and ask what makes them different. You’ll hear the same thing 9 times out of 10: “We’re family-owned and operated.”

That messaging is tired. Research shows 80-90% of independent contractors use some version of “family-owned since [year]” in their marketing. When everyone says the same thing, nobody stands out.

Homeowners don’t actually care about your family history. They care about outcomes. Will you show up when you say you will? Will the tech explain what’s happening in plain English? Will the price match the estimate?

Specific beats generic. “Same-day service” means something. “You’ll see the same technician every time” means something. “We answer the phone, always” means something.

Turn your advantages into concrete promises a homeowner can evaluate.

Speed wins

78% of customers go with the first contractor to respond. Not the cheapest, not the one with the best reviews, not the biggest reputation. The first one who picks up the phone or calls back.

The average contractor takes 47 hours to respond to a lead. PE-backed platforms often have call centers that answer within 30 seconds, 24/7.

You can’t match their call center infrastructure, but you can beat them on response time with systems that don’t require a dozen employees.

An auto-text that fires within 5 seconds of a form submission buys you time. “Thanks for reaching out. We got your message and someone will call you within 10 minutes.” That simple message keeps the homeowner from dialing the next number on their list.

Consistency as a weapon

Large organizations have inherent consistency problems. More techs means more variation. More variation means unpredictable customer experiences.

An independent shop can promise the same technician on every maintenance visit. You can build relationships where the homeowner knows Mike is going to show up every spring for their AC tune-up and every fall for their furnace check.

PE platforms can’t do that. Their tech assignments are optimized for routing efficiency, not relationship continuity. The customer is just a pin on a map to be serviced by whoever is closest.

When a homeowner has seen the same face in their mechanical room for three years, they’re not price shopping their next repair. They’re calling the person they trust.

Reviews that actually differentiate

Google reviews are table stakes. Every HVAC company has reviews now. Having 4.5 stars and 200 reviews doesn’t set you apart when your PE-backed competitor also has 4.5 stars and 2,000 reviews.

But the content of the reviews matters more than the score.

Encourage customers to mention specific techs by name. “Jason was great - he explained the problem without trying to upsell me” hits different than “good service, would recommend.”

When your reviews consistently mention the same names, prospective customers notice. It signals the consistency that PE platforms struggle to deliver.

Own your service area

PE platforms spread across metro areas and regions. They’re trying to serve everyone within a 50-mile radius, which means they can’t be local experts anywhere.

You can dominate a 10-mile zone. When every truck in a neighborhood has your logo, when the same tech shows up for every house on the block, when word-of-mouth actually means something because people know their neighbors, you build a moat that massive marketing budgets can’t cross.

Neighbor marketing becomes incredibly effective when you’re already doing work in an area. A postcard that says “We just finished a job on Oak Street - here’s a discount for neighbors” resonates because it’s true and verifiable.

Capture demand they’re letting leak

PE platforms drive enormous amounts of traffic to their websites. But they’re converting at the same 3-4% rate everyone else is because the fundamental website-to-lead conversion problem hasn’t been solved by throwing money at it.

96% of their visitors leave without converting, just like everyone else.

The difference is you can actually do something about it.

Visitor identification lets you see who’s on your site and what they’re looking at. When a homeowner in your service area spends 5 minutes on your AC replacement page but doesn’t call, you know about it. You can reach out with a postcard or a phone call before they move on to the next option.

PE platforms have too much volume and too much bureaucracy to execute on this kind of personalized outreach. Their systems aren’t built for individual follow-up on anonymous website visitors.

This is where being smaller becomes an advantage. You can move faster and execute more targeted campaigns than organizations optimized for scale.

Read more about capturing lost leads from your website.

Stop competing on advertising spend

The worst game you can play is trying to outbid PE on Google Ads. They have deeper pockets and they’re buying brand recognition at the market level, not just leads.

Build the channels they can’t buy.

Your Google Business Profile is yours. Reviews that mention your techs by name are yours. Relationships with past customers who remember the person who fixed their furnace are yours. Email lists of maintenance agreement customers who renew year after year are yours.

PE can acquire companies, but they can’t acquire the trust you’ve built with individual homeowners over a decade of showing up and doing good work.

Maintenance agreements create switching costs

A customer with no ongoing relationship will shop every repair. A customer on a maintenance plan thinks of you first.

Maintenance agreements create recurring revenue, predictable scheduling, and reasons to stay in touch. When that customer’s AC fails in July, they’re calling the company they already have a relationship with.

PE platforms push maintenance plans too, but their execution often falls apart. Different techs show up each time. The “priority scheduling” promise doesn’t hold up when they’re slammed. The relationship feels transactional, not personal.

You can deliver what they promise. Same tech, same time, every year. That consistency builds loyalty that survives competitors throwing money at advertising.

Hire people who left PE platforms

Some of the best techs at PE-backed companies are frustrated. The corporate bureaucracy, the sales pressure, the lack of autonomy, the rotating customers, it wears on people who got into the trade because they like solving problems.

You offer something they can’t get at a PE shop: ownership of their customer relationships, autonomy on job sites, and a work environment that doesn’t feel like a call center.

Recruiting from PE platforms also gives you intel on how they operate, what they’re charging, and where their service fails to meet customer expectations.

The long game

PE firms operate on 3-5 year timelines. They’re trying to grow fast, maximize EBITDA, and sell to the next buyer at a higher multiple.

You’re building a business for the long term. You can invest in relationships that don’t pay off for years. You can maintain pricing discipline when they’re slashing prices to grab market share. You can outlast their attention span.

Some PE acquisitions fail spectacularly. Service quality drops, reviews tank, and customers start looking for alternatives. Being the stable, reliable option when a PE-backed competitor stumbles is how independents grow market share.

You’re not going to beat them tomorrow. But you can build a business that’s still thriving when they’ve moved on to the next portfolio company.

Key Takeaways