When you say “quality work and great customer service,” you’re not reassuring customers, you’re telling them you’re interchangeable.
And interchangeable companies don’t set prices. The market does.
Every HVAC company claims quality work. Every plumber promises reliability. Every electrician swears they’re the most professional. These claims have become so universal they’ve lost all meaning. They’re table stakes, not differentiators.
The result? You compete on price. And competing on price is a race where everybody loses, except the customer who gets to squeeze your margins thinner and thinner.
Here’s what I’ve learned working with home service companies for nearly two decades: Every company has something genuinely unique about how they operate. The problem isn’t that differentiation doesn’t exist. The problem is that most owners are too close to their own business to see it.
This article is for owners of established HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies who are tired of winning jobs and losing margins, and know there has to be a better way to compete than being “a little nicer” or “a little cheaper.”
Why Generic Claims Commoditize Your Business
Before we dig into finding your real differentiator, let’s make the problem crystal clear: generic marketing claims don’t just fail to help you, they actively hurt you.
When a homeowner compares three companies and all three claim “quality work, fair prices, and professional technicians,” they have no meaningful way to distinguish between options. So they default to something else:
- The cheapest quote
- The fastest callback
- A vague recommendation (“My neighbor used them once”)
- Or the company with the best availability
Your marketing has essentially told them: “We’re interchangeable, so choose based on something other than our actual capabilities.”
That’s the opposite of what marketing should accomplish. Clear differentiation doesn’t just justify higher prices, it filters out bad-fit leads before the phone ever rings.
The Differentiation Discovery Framework
This isn’t a quick branding exercise. It requires honest reflection and, ideally, input from people who know your business—employees, long-term customers, even vendors.
The goal is to uncover what’s genuinely different about your operation, not to invent something that sounds good.
How to Run This Exercise (So You Actually Get Answers)
- Block 60 minutes (no phone, no email)
- Answer each question in writing (not in your head)
- Highlight anything measurable (numbers, standards, guarantees, response times, completion rates)
- Circle anything customers mention unprompted (“You guys always…”, “Nobody else…”, “I called because…”)
If you can’t explain your differentiator in one sentence, it’s not a differentiator yet, it’s a rough idea that needs sharpening.
Question 1: What do you do that you assumed everyone does, but they don’t?
What this reveals: Hidden operational advantages you’ve stopped noticing.
This is usually where the gold is buried.
I worked with a plumbing company owner who mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that his techs always lay down drop cloths and wear booties, and they take “before and after” photos of every job site.
“Doesn’t everyone do that?” he asked.
No. Not even close. Most companies don’t have that discipline. But because he’d done it for years, he stopped seeing it as remarkable.
Think about your processes, your hiring standards, your follow-up procedures, your warranty policies. What feels “normal” to you that would surprise customers if they knew how different it was from competitors?
Ask your employees: “What do we do here that you’ve never seen at other companies?” Their answers might shock you.
Question 2: What specific problem do you solve better than anyone in your market?
What this reveals: Where you can own a niche and avoid price competition.
Notice the word specific. Not “we solve all problems well.” That’s meaningless.
Maybe you’ve become the go-to company for complex commercial retrofits because you invested in specialized training. Maybe you’ve figured out how to handle historic homes without damaging original materials. Maybe you’ve developed a system for completing whole-house rewires in half the typical time.
The key is specificity. “We’re great at electrical work” is nothing. But:
“We specialize in panel upgrades for homes built before 1970, and we’ve developed a process that minimizes drywall repair.”
That’s a real differentiator, especially if it reduces mess, disruption, and unexpected costs.
Ask yourself:
- What jobs do you take that competitors turn down?
- What problems do you see other companies repeatedly botch?
- What calls make you think, “They came to the right place”?
Question 3: What would your best customers say if asked why they keep calling you?
What this reveals: The true reason you win (which is often different than what you think).
Not what you hope they’d say. What they actually say.
This requires real conversations, not assumptions. Call five of your best repeat customers, the ones who’ve used you multiple times and referred others, and ask them directly:
“I’m trying to understand what makes us different from other companies. Why do you keep calling us instead of shopping around?”
Listen carefully. They’ll tell you things you’ve never considered. And because they’ve likely used competitors, they can articulate differences you can’t see from the inside.
One owner I worked with was convinced his differentiator was technical expertise. But when he called customers, they kept mentioning something else entirely:
“Your office staff actually calls back when they say they will.”
That became a central piece of positioning: same-day callbacks, guaranteed. It didn’t just sound good, it eliminated a real frustration customers were used to tolerating.
Question 4: What have you invested in that competitors haven’t?
What this reveals: Advantages you can prove, if you translate them into customer outcomes.
Investment creates differentiation. But only if you translate that investment into customer benefit.
Did you spend money on advanced diagnostic equipment? That’s not the differentiator. The ability to pinpoint problems faster, with less guesswork and fewer return visits, that’s what customers care about.
Did you invest in ongoing training? Nobody cares about your training budget. But they do care that your techs are certified to work on the specific brand of equipment in their home, reducing the risk of warranty-voiding mistakes.
Did you invest in better trucks and inventory management? “Nice trucks” means nothing. But:
“We stock 300 common parts on every truck, so 90% of repairs are completed on the first visit.”
That solves a real customer frustration and shortens the sales cycle because it’s easy to understand.
Action: List your top 5 investments from the last 3 years. For each one, write the customer outcome in plain language: faster, cleaner, fewer trips, less risk, better options, more certainty.
Question 5: What do you refuse to do that competitors commonly do?
What this reveals: Values and standards the right customers will pay more for.
Sometimes what you won’t do is as powerful as what you will do.
Do you refuse to hire techs who haven’t passed a thorough background check, even though it makes hiring slower? Do you refuse to quote repairs without a full system inspection, even though it means some customers go elsewhere? Do you refuse to take on certain types of work because you’ve seen it done poorly too many times?
These “refusals” often represent genuine values that the right customers will pay more for. The customer who values a thorough background check will pay a premium for the peace of mind. The customer who’s been burned by a quick-fix that failed will appreciate a company that insists on doing it right.
Your constraints and standards are differentiators, if you communicate them as customer benefits rather than operational details.
Testing Your Differentiator (Before You Build Marketing Around It)
Once you’ve worked through these questions, you should have a few candidates for genuine differentiation. Before you plaster them across your website, apply these three tests:
The “Only We” Test: Can you honestly say “We’re the only company in this market that _______”? If three competitors could make the same claim, it’s not a differentiator.
The “So What” Test: Does it matter to customers? Being the only company with purple trucks is unique but irrelevant. Being the only company that offers Saturday service with no premium pricing might matter enormously to dual-income families.
The “Prove It” Test: Can you demonstrate the difference with evidence: testimonials, data, guarantees, visible processes, photos, a checklist, a documented standard? A differentiator you can’t prove is just another empty claim.
From Discovery to Positioning
Finding your differentiator is only the first step. The harder work is weaving it into everything: your website, truck wraps, phone scripts, follow-up emails, proposal templates, and how your team talks about what you do.
But that work becomes dramatically easier once you know what makes you genuinely different. You’re no longer grasping for marketing language. You’re simply telling the truth about your business in a way that attracts customers who value what you offer.
And those customers don’t shop on price. They’re looking for a company that reduces risk, solves a specific problem, communicates clearly, and delivers a predictable outcome.
That’s how you command premium pricing: not by claiming you’re better, but by proving you operate differently in ways customers actually care about.
Optional Next Step (If You Want a Second Set of Eyes)
If you run this framework and end up with a handful of “maybe” differentiators, here’s a simple way to pressure-test them:
- Write each differentiator as a one-sentence claim.
- Write the customer benefit in one sentence.
- List how you can prove it (data, guarantee, photos, process, testimonials).
If you want help tightening that into a clear positioning statement (the kind that attracts premium customers and filters out price shoppers), I’m happy to take a look and tell you what’s strongest, what’s weak, and what’s hard to defend.
