How to Compete Against Private Equity Companies Buying Up Local Markets

On September 28, a company called Service Country announced that it had added five heating, air, and plumbing companies in one day. None of them were in big cities. They were in Orange Beach, Alabama; Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia; Roanoke, Virginia; Lawton, Oklahoma; and Madison, Mississippi.^[1]

Service Country is backed by the private equity firm Grove Mountain Partners. Its announcement says each of the five companies "will continue operating under its existing brand and local leadership."

So if you run an independent shop in a town like one of those, the competitor across town may now have a private equity firm behind it. The name on their trucks is probably the same as last year, but the company now has an outside owner with money to spend on growth.

In this post, we'll look at how often these deals are happening, what changes when a competitor gets bought, and six things an independent business can do to keep winning jobs.

How often is private equity buying local service businesses?

In HVAC, a deal gets announced every few days. Capstone Partners, an investment bank that tracks the sector, counted 92 HVAC services deals in 2026 through late July. Private equity add-ons made up 41.3% of them, or 38 deals.^[2]

An add-on is when a company that a private equity firm already owns buys another business and folds it in. That's how a roll-up grows. Capstone says the industry is spread across so many small companies that buyers can "roll up small, local operators that offer well-established regional coverage."

It isn't only HVAC. Here's what the last week of September looked like:

Sources ^[3][4][5]

Dental offices are seeing the same thing. A DSO, or dental service organization, is a company that runs the business side of many dental offices. In 2024, more than 1 in 4 dentists who were up to 10 years out of dental school worked with one, according to the American Dental Association.^[6]

What changes when a competitor gets bought?

Usually, the name stays the same. What changes is the budget and the support behind the business.

Service Country says its partner companies get help "across areas including marketing, operations, training and technology." GoodVets says the hospitals joining it "will gain access to broader resources and new opportunities to grow."

Independent owners who compete with these companies see the same thing from the other side. An August 2026 story in ACHR News described three pressures:

1. Chris Parham, co-owner of a heating, plumbing, and electrical company with about 50 people, said a group that buys equipment in several states can often get it "a few percentage points cheaper."
2. Parham also said hiring costs more now: "You're having to increase your comp plans to attract the talent."
3. The story also points to "the inability to outspend larger firms on marketing."^[7]

The story doesn't say how that bigger marketing budget gets spent, so this part is our read. In your town, it usually shows up where customers look: more Google ads, a newer website, a steady stream of fresh reviews, and someone answering the phone at night. You'll feel it as fewer calls from people who've never heard of you.

What do independents have that a roll-up doesn't?

Independents have a few things that a roll-up has a hard time copying.

Private equity firms usually plan to sell a company again after a few years. Tiago Santana, who co-founded The Cooling Company in Las Vegas, told ACHR News that technician relationships, customer trust, and local reputation "are exactly the things a three-to-five-year exit window can't preserve."

Customers also care who owns the business. Type "is my dentist owned by" into Google, and one of the suggestions is "private equity." Type "private equity HVAC companies" and Google suggests adding "near me." People are looking for this information.

But since many bought companies keep their names, customers can't tell the difference unless you tell them.

6 ways to compete with a private equity-backed competitor

1. Tell customers you're locally owned

Put it where people look before they call: the top of your home page, your Google Business Profile description, your trucks, and your estimates. Use your name and how long you've been in business. "Owned by the Garcia family since 1998" tells a customer more than "family owned and operated."

What to do: write an About page with the owner's photo, a short history, and the names of the people who'll show up at the door. Link to it from your home page.

Pro tip: don't call out the other company. You may not know who owns them. Just make your own ownership easy to see.

2. Make your website do the selling

A competitor with a new owner may get a new website with a page for every service. You can match that without a marketing team. A good local site has a page for each service you actually do, a page for each town where you do real work, your reviews on the page, and a short form that asks the right questions.

Be careful with shortcuts here. Google started a spam update on September 24, and early reports say it's hitting sites with "highly templated, programmatic, (probably) AI-generated pages." A town page should describe real jobs you did in that town, not the same paragraph with a new town name.^[8]

If you run a heating and cooling company, our HVAC marketing software page lists the pages a good HVAC site should have.

3. Keep new reviews coming, and reply to every one

Reviews are a place where a bigger budget doesn't give a competitor much of an edge. What matters is that you ask every happy customer and reply to what they write.

This got more important in late September. Google Maps now asks people to sign in before they can read and sort every review on a listing. So many people will only see your first few reviews, and your newest ones carry more weight.^[9]

What to do: ask for a review the day the job is done, by text, with a direct link. Reply to each review within a few days, and mention the customer's name and the job.

4. Get back to every lead in minutes

When a customer fills out a form at 8pm, the first company to respond usually gets the first conversation. A funded competitor can afford to staff the phones at night. You need a system that does the same.

What to do: make sure every call, text, web form, and website chat gets a reply within minutes, including evenings and weekends. That can be a person, an answering service, or an AI that answers for you and sends you the details.

5. Follow up on every estimate

A bigger company may have someone whose whole job is calling back on open estimates. Most independents send the estimate and wait.

What to do: send three short texts over about ten days. Check in after two days, offer a second option around day five, and send a last check-in around day ten. Stop as soon as the customer replies.

6. Compete for people on what you control

You probably can't match a platform's benefits package. But you control the schedule, the culture, and how decisions get made.

Peter Bonfe, whose family plumbing, heating, and air company has about 275 people, told ACHR News he has had technicians leave for a private equity-backed competitor that promised they wouldn't work nights or weekends. That tells you what techs value. The same goes for practices: if you're hiring an associate dentist, a lot of the newer ones are already working with a DSO.

What to do: ask your best people what would make them stay. A predictable schedule, a clear path to lead tech or partner, and a real say in how things run are things a small company can offer quickly.

What would it cost to match a roll-up's marketing?

A few years ago, it meant hiring. The median marketing manager earned $166,790 in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median customer service rep, the person who answers phones and books jobs, earned $44,770.^[10][11]

One marketing manager and two people on the phones comes to about $256,000 a year in pay alone. That's before ads, software, or an agency. A roll-up can spread that cost across dozens of companies, but an independent has to carry it alone.

The good news is that most of that work can now be done by software, at a monthly cost instead of a salary. We built Pantora so an independent business can get that same setup without hiring a team. You get an AI local business website with pages for your services and the towns you work in, a quick follow-up on every lead, a review request after every job, and site updates each week that you approve.

What should you do this month?

If a competitor in your area was just bought, you don't need to do everything at once. Start with the two things customers see first. Make it obvious on your website and your Google Business Profile that you're locally owned, and ask your last 20 customers for a review. Then set up a way to answer every lead within minutes, day or night.

If you'd like help with any of this, that's what we do at Pantora. We make local business marketing software for independent service businesses, so your website, lead follow-up, and reviews run in one place and you stay visible on Google and in AI answers. You approve the work from one inbox in a few minutes a week.