Call five competitors as a customer and take notes. Most owners discover their whole category sounds identical, which is the opening.

Last month I called five competitors of a client and pretended to be a customer.

I want to be honest about my expectations going in. I thought I would find one or two standouts, a couple of average operations, and maybe one disaster I could use as a cautionary tale in a meeting.

Here is what actually happened.

Two of the five never answered the phone and never called back. One answered, took my name and number, and told me someone would follow up. Nobody did. The fourth answered and immediately quoted me a price for a service I had not described yet, which is a bold strategy. The fifth gave me a good, careful conversation, then never followed up either.

When I asked each of them why I should choose them, four out of five gave me a version of the same sentence. Experienced team. Great reviews. We really care about our customers.

The best part came at the end. I read the notes back to my client, and he said, "that last one sounds like us." It was not one of them. It was the transcript of his own front desk, which I had also called. Surprise.

That is the moment worth paying for. Not the competitive intelligence. The recognition.

Sameness Is Not Your Competitors' Fault

Business owners talk about competition like it is weather. Too many players in the market, everybody undercutting, buyers who only care about price.

Then you make five phone calls and find out the market is not crowded with strong competitors. It is crowded with nearly identical ones, most of whom are not even picking up the phone.

Sameness is what creates the price pressure people complain about. When every option a buyer encounters says the same things, in the same order, with the same reassuring adjectives, the buyer has no basis for judgment except cost and proximity. So they use cost and proximity, and then everyone in the category concludes that customers only care about price.

Customers do not only care about price. They care about price when you have given them nothing else to weigh.

The good news, and it is genuinely good news, is that this is the easiest problem in marketing to exploit. You do not need to be better than everyone. You need to be different in a way somebody can notice inside of one phone call.

The Assignment: Call Five Competitors This Week

Block ninety minutes. Use your cell phone, not the office line. Be a real prospective customer with a real, ordinary need, and be polite, because these are your neighbors and you may end up referring work to each other someday.

Then take notes on six things.

1. How long it took to reach a human. Count the rings. Note whether you got voicemail, a call service, or a person, and how they sounded about it.

2. What they led with. The first thirty seconds tell you what the business thinks matters. Some lead with availability. Some lead with price. Most lead with nothing at all and wait for you to drive the conversation.

3. What they said when you asked "why should I choose you." Write it down word for word. This is the single most valuable line you will collect. You will notice that almost nobody has a real answer prepared for the most predictable question in business.

4. What they did with price. Did they quote before understanding? Did they dodge? Did they explain what drives the number?

5. What happened next. Did anyone send anything? Did anyone follow up? Note the timing and the content.

6. How you felt hanging up. Not the analysis. The feeling. Reassured, rushed, confused, ignored. That feeling is what your buyers carry into the decision, and it is the part nobody measures.

Do all five in one sitting if you can. The pattern only jumps out when the calls are stacked back to back.

What You Are Going to Find

I have run this exercise with businesses in aesthetics, dermatology, home services, and professional services, and the results are almost boringly consistent.

Roughly half will not answer or will not call back. This is not a slow week. This is the standing condition of most local markets, and it means responsiveness alone puts you in the top half.

Nearly everyone will use the same three adjectives. Experienced, quality, caring. Word for word, across businesses that have never spoken to each other.

Almost nobody will ask you a good question. They will answer yours and let you hang up. The one who asks what you are actually trying to solve will feel completely different from the other four, and it costs nothing.

And practically nobody will follow up. Not a text, not an email, not a "just checking in a couple days later." This is the widest open door in local business and it has been open for years.

The uncomfortable part is the last call, when you listen to your own team with the same ears. Every owner I have done this with has found at least one thing on their own recording that made them wince. That wince is the most useful thing you will get out of the week.

Where to Plant Your Flag

Now you have a page of notes and a category that sounds like one company. Look for the three gaps.

The gap everyone avoids. Somewhere in your industry is the question nobody answers honestly, usually because the honest answer is not flattering. Whoever answers it first owns it, and gets described by customers as "the only one who was straight with me."

The gap everyone executes badly. Usually follow up, communication, and telling people what happens next. This requires no positioning genius at all. It requires a calendar reminder and someone assigned to it.

The buyer nobody speaks to directly. Everyone in your category is writing to a generic customer. Pick one specific person, name them, speak to them, and watch how much more clearly you sound.

Pick one gap. Make it a specific, checkable promise, and then put it everywhere a buyer touches your business: the phone script, the homepage, the estimate, the email, the review request.

Then Make Somebody Else Say It

Here is where this stops being an internal exercise.

Once you have found the thing your entire category avoids or executes badly, you are holding something a reporter can actually use. "We are a family owned company" is not a story. "Half the businesses in this category do not return calls, and here is what customers should ask before hiring one" is a story, and you are the credible local source for it.

That is the difference between claiming you are different and having a third party demonstrate it. Jennifer's nearly thirty years of media relationships exist to turn exactly this kind of substance into coverage, and the substance has to come first. Nobody covers an adjective.

Do This Before Friday

Five calls. Ninety minutes. Six notes each.

Then call your own business last, as a stranger, and listen to what your market hears when they reach you.

Most owners come out of that hour convinced they need to work on their marketing. What they actually discover is that they have been competing with four companies who sound exactly like them, and that the first one to sound like anybody in particular is going to win the next five years in that market.

It might as well be you. The bar, as you are about to hear for yourself, is on the floor.

Your network determines your results in PR. JNR Communications brings deep media relationships and strategic networking expertise to help specialized businesses achieve the visibility they deserve. Let's build your relationship infrastructure together.

📞 (818)357-7286 | ✉️ Greg@JNRcommunications.com