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When it comes to selecting a commercial landscaping provider to care for your property, you have a lot of choices. And you have also have a lot of very important factors to consider when comparing competitive commercial landscaping service proposals side by side.
Price is the one that first comes to mind. But if you’re a property management professional, you know that price is only part of the equation. Selecting the lowest price rarely gets you the best results. And it’s hard to justify choosing the most expensive option, especially when that doesn’t guarantee success either.
Another option many buyers of large-scale commercial landscaping service contracts look at is the size of the company. Do you want a mega-huge, national corporation where you’ll be one of thousands of accounts, or a smaller, local company that has a good reputation, but may not have all the processes and resources of a bigger firm?
But the company’s size alone is no guarantee of a good (or poor) service relationship. For every loyal client of the national provider, there’s a client out there that only wants to deal with a company small enough that they can talk directly with the owner.
Finally, what about experience? Does the provider you’re considering have experience working with properties as large (or as detailed, picky, environmentally sensitive, etc.) as yours?
Experience is important for sure, but do you really want to base such an important decision on the results that a landscape company may have gotten for someone else?
So, with all of these choices in front of you, you might be wondering how to best compare them - how to weigh the pros and cons of each company you’re considering. Obviously, not all companies can be good at all things, but you might be wondering where certain commercial landscaping companies shine - and perhaps more importantly, where they tend to fall short.
That’s exactly why we’ve created this comparison chart and this accompanying guide. We want to give you a methodology to help you create an easy, at-a-glance look at how Yellowstone Landscape, or any other commercial landscaping service providers, stack up in five key categories that may not be as obvious as the ones we already mentioned above – price, size, and experience.
And before we get too far into this, we know that you’re probably a little skeptical about how impartial we’re going to be here. You might even be surprised to see us being so transparent about where we stand in relation to our competition.
However, please understand that our transparency is something that we’re really proud of. We know who our competition is and we’re not trying to hide from anything. We also know ourselves - where we excel, and where we have room for improvement. We’ve been competing in these markets long enough to have a pretty good guess about who you’re likely to be comparing us against, and how we honestly stack up against them. We’ve been through this decision-making process with thousands of clients and their properties. And frankly, we believe you deserve to know this information, too.
And while there are hundreds of commercial landscaping companies out there, all with unique stories and marquee projects that they maintain, we would prefer to help you focus on the things that will mean the most to the success of you and your property.
We feel we have a duty to help our potential clients become wise consumers, so that they can make confident decisions about whom they choose as their commercial landscaping partner. Whether that’s Yellowstone Landscape or not. In the end, everyone benefits, and it makes our entire industry better when our clients know the truth about what really matters when it comes to choosing a commercial landscaping service partner.
The chart above is an example of an easy to understand, quick-glance graphic of how each of your options might compare in each of five categories that we believe should matter most to you, the commercial landscaping client. We’ll explain in depth what each of these categories means for you below. But if you evaluate all the right things, your choice in a commercial landscaping company could be as clear as this chart.
1. How Safe is the Company?
2. Performing Services In-House
3. How Do the Staffs Measure Up?
4. Consistent and Responsive Customer Service
5. Financial Stability of the Company
One of the questions that we get asked most often is how safe is your company?
Landscaping is one of the most dangerous industries to work in, simply because of the nature of the work. It involves large machinery, sharp tools, parking and unloading vehicles near busy roadways, and many other activities that involve risk. We want you to feel confident that you’re choosing a company that is doing everything in its power to mitigate those risks.
Let’s look at how each landscaping company in our example above stacks up in this category.
This is one of the larger companies in the country with lots of resources and put significant time, energy, and money into training their employees on a regular basis. It is clear from their proposal that they really do take safety very seriously. They are able to provide their insurance industry data and safety scores and share examples of the safety training guides that they issue to their employees. They seem to be genuinely focused on safe operating procedures from the highest levels of their leadership down to the local service teams. Three Stars for them in this category.
Alex and Brian have grown their company over the past ten years from a couple of college kids out mowing neighbor’s yards to one of the larger, locally owned commercial landscaping companies around town. They do provide uniforms and require their employees to wear vests, but in their proposal, they couldn’t really provide documentation that showed a history of safety. They haven’t had any major accidents in the past 5 years, but when observing their crews in the field you often see troubling mistakes, like vehicles parked without safety cones, or crews working without safety glasses or hard-hats in a roadside area. Safety mistakes put your property and your tenants, residents, workers, and others at risk. It’s an area where there is no room for compromises, so you can’t score them very highly in this area.
At Yellowstone Landscape, we’re proud to say that safety has become a strong suit for us. While nowhere near perfect, we are incredibly committed to operating safely and have created a robust training program for our landscape professionals. Our size and scope also give us the advantage of already knowing what works, and what doesn’t. There’s no guessing. We’re using tried-and-true practices that have already been proven at other Yellowstone locations and partnering with experts at OSHA, within our industry, and local DOTs to make sure that we’re doing all we can to keep our employees and the properties that we serve as safe as possible, at all times.
There’s no denying that as a larger company we have a greater risk, which only reinforces our commitment to training and developing best practices. This also means that we also have a higher level of insurability, because our carriers see how seriously we take our safety culture.
The amount of work that is subcontracted out to other companies is something that doesn’t come up often enough in the interview and research process when clients are selecting a landscape service partner. But we believe it is an important question that you should be asking.
Too many people just assume that all of the landscaping work a company is being hired for will be performed by the company you’re contracted with. But in reality, it’s a relatively common practice to subcontract large parts of a landscape management plan out to other companies, after a contract is signed.
Let’s look at how the companies in our example chart above handle in-house versus subcontracted work. We’ll also discuss how the subcontracting process can impact the overall quality of the work.
Again, this company is very large, so it would be natural to assume that they handle all aspects of their work in-house. But the truth is, even the largest landscaping companies on the planet don’t always use their own employees and resources to maintain every single part of your landscape agreement. For regular service agreements with HOAs and single site commercial properties, they do almost always handle regular maintenance tasks (mowing, edging, weeding) and specialty services (irrigation, spray application, tall tree trimming) in-house. However, in many locations it is more efficient and cost effective to use specialty subcontractors for tasks that are not performed regularly. So, for things like mulch or other types of ground cover installation, or annual flower rotations, you will likely see another contractor doing those tasks under the direction of the national provider. In all honesty, as long as they disclose this in their proposal and manage these specialty contractors for non-routine tasks, it shouldn’t be a concern for most clients.
Like other landscape companies, they do perform basic maintenance tasks (mowing, edging, weeding) with their own staff, but they rely on specialty subcontractors for other services that require special licensing or equipment to perform. They have a great mowing crew, but they don’t have full time irrigation specialists, certified lawn care technicians, or tree care experts on staff. But they do assure you that have good relationships and trust the other companies they subcontract those services out to.
But not self-performing these important services can cause problems for you, the client, and lead to poor results in your landscape. A well-maintained irrigation system and properly applied nutrients and pest management products are absolutely essential to the health and long term success of a landscape. Any company that outsources these essential services is taking a risk with your property’s landscape and with your professional reputation. Experienced property management professionals know that this model can work, but in general, a landscape company that isn’t capable of self-performing a large percentage of the actual work that happens at your property leaves the door open for big problems.
At Yellowstone Landscape, it is always our preference to handle the vast majority of our services in-house, with our trained Yellowstone Landscape Professionals. We believe that you lose the ability to oversee the quality and the consistency of the work when you rely too heavily on subcontractors.
Of course, we promised that we would be fully transparent, and we can’t say that we don’t sub anything out. It’s fair to say that 90 percent of the work that we are hired to do, we handle in-house.
The ten percent that we may end up subcontracting are tasks like tall tree pruning, some larger landscape enhancements, and new installation work. And, like other large landscaping companies out there, we too find it more efficient to let non-routine tasks (like mulch/ground cover installation and annual flower rotations) be performed by trusted specialty service partners. But when we do utilize subcontractors for those services, they are known and well vetted contractors that we’ve already worked with many times before. They are familiar with the Yellowstone Landscape way of doing things, and understand what’s expected of them.
At the heart of every landscaping company are the people that work for that company. The truth is, a landscaping company is really only as good as its people. While a company can make big claims about how great they are, if they don’t have the team to back up those claims, they’ll never deliver on their promises.
It’s important for you to know who the employees are within the company that you choose. Who will perform the work and how are they trained? Let’s look at how the staff members can vary from company to company.
For the most part, it seems like this company takes its hiring process seriously. They are making sure that their staff members are verified and that background checks are performed. They use the e-Verify process where applicable and require proper documentation and references from new employees. Like many landscape companies, the national company also utilizes the government’s H-2B seasonal work visa program. During your due diligence, you find that they are among the country’s largest sponsors of these guest worker visas, which does mean there’s a chance they won’t have the workers needed to complete the work. But once they hire people, they do take the training process seriously and require their teams to participate in regular learning sessions.
Unfortunately, this is an area where you find that A&B is struggling. They have a limited pool of applicants to choose from. They can’t always pay wages that are competitive with market trends. And once growing season starts, they’re doing all they can to get employees in the door. Lack of access to qualified, legal labor is the landscape industry’s single biggest problem - and it has been for years now. That’s why there is often the perception that landscaping companies will pick up anyone willing to do the work, regardless of skill or legal right to work status. While larger landscape companies can’t take the risk of hiring employees without proper documentation, the same isn’t true for smaller companies trying to meet their commitments to their customers. While these employees are hard-working, honest men and women, A&B are honest and upfront that they simply can’t implement strict background and drug testing programs for all their applicants.
At Yellowstone Landscape, we’re impacted by the labor shortage that plagues the rest of our industry, too. And we feel the crunch more and more every spring. But we remain committed to a hiring process that includes background checks and pre-employment screening and use our resources to passionately advocate for changes to seasonal work visas. We want to hire men and women who are looking to make this job into a career - not simply someone who views landscaping as a pitstop on their path to something else.
We prefer to hire individuals who already have industry experience. And while there are certainly times when we make an exception, we find people who would make great employees because they have other skills, like a strong work ethic or they’re known to be hard-working, even if they haven’t worked in our industry before. When that’s the case, then we provide training, which is something else that we take quite seriously.
Training goes back to our commitment to safety. As a large company ourselves, we know that training is not an area where we can cut any corners.
Your experience of working with a landscaping company is more than just the results you get in how your landscape looks. You also want to choose a commercial landscape partner that you can count on to be highly responsive - an excellent communicator who provides top-notch customer service.
Of course, you may also have heard some horror stories about a landscaper that was impossible to reach when you really needed them, or who never showed up when they said they would. Even if they’re producing decent results, experiences like that can make working with the company incredibly frustrating.
Let’s look at how each of our options compared in this category.
When it comes to the client experience, with any large company it’s possible that the client experience can vary wildly from location to location. In some places, you’ll hear good reviews about how certain employees were great to work with. But in other locations, you hear just the opposite - that they were difficult to work with, and didn’t take accountability for their work. In this case, your due diligence uncovered a lot of turnover at key branch leadership positions. This is why it’s important to ask not only about the experience of the company, but the tenure and professional experience of the people at the location with whom you’ll be interacting on a regular basis. Turnover in operations or account management leads to frustration and inconsistency in the service you receive as a client.
One of the main reasons and A&B have grown to become one of the area’s favorite landscape service companies is that Alex and Brian really care about providing customers with a great looking landscape and a good customer experience. They’re the faces of the company, holding all the relationships, and are the main points of contact for all their largest accounts.
In theory, this is a great thing. But in reality, this often means that they’re stretched too thin and, as their company has grown, they’ve already started to realize that they can’t be “everything to everyone.” But for now, as long as they have a strong number 2 or 3, ready to step in to lead the team if Alex or Brian ever want to take a family vacation, your client experience is likely to be a good one.
At Yellowstone Landscape, communication and overall customer experience are something that we consistently rank highly in when we survey our clients each year. We believe that good communication and a solid partnership with your commercial landscaping company should go hand-in-hand.
Once you sign a contract with Yellowstone, you’re assigned a dedicated, professional account manager who will remain your single point of contact, at the center of all communications needed. Our account managers typically provide weekly updates to their clients and we expect that they are available to you at any time they’re needed. Of course, we understand that our account managers have lives, too. If you can’t reach your account manager for some reason, we always offer “next-in-line” contact lists that you can turn to, so that someone is always available for you.
We feel that this backup system, paired with industry-leading customer service training and technology offers our clients a consistent and reliable service experience, albeit admittedly different, than the relationship a smaller firm like A&B may be able to offer.
Finally, as you take the time to weigh your options and compare different landscape companies, financial stability (not to be confused with size) is the final category that we believe is well worth considering. For many clients, landscaping is the single largest line item in their property’s annual budget.
So, if you’re going to be investing such a large portion of your property’s budget with this company, don’t you want to know how they’re going to handle that investment?
The business side of the commercial landscaping industry has changed dramatically over the past 15-20 years. Once a fractured industry with several large, family-owned businesses, each dominant in certain regions of the country, that is no longer the case. There are now a multitude of very large companies and groups of companies, each owned by different types of investment groups all across the country. There’s even one commercial landscaping company that has grown so large that it’s a publicly traded entity.
And here’s why it’s important for you, the buyer of commercial landscaping services, to understand this change in the business of landscaping; because you have every right to ask your landscape contractor about what will be driving the decisions they make when serving your property. Will it be what’s good for their investors, or what’s best for their clients?
Even with all that change in the industry, (or perhaps even because of it), it’s still very possible for a company like A&B to thrive. The owners have all the passion in the world for landscaping and taking care of their customers, but they sometimes lack financial expertise. They’re really good at doing landscaping but they don’t necessarily have the accounting know-how to run their business in a way that sets them up for strategic growth and long-term stability.
And here’s how that might impact you as a client. Because Alex and Brian are often wearing so many hats that “doing business with them” can be a little frustrating at times. This typically manifests itself in inconsistent and incorrect invoicing, and pricing that is widely inconsistent from project to project. Access to capital and managing cash flow can be challenging in any business, but especially so in an industry that relies so heavily on expensive, specialized equipment, not to mention the stress of making your employee’s payroll every week.
When it comes to financial stability, we at Yellowstone Landscape feel very fortunate and are extremely grateful for the faith that our investors place in us. Our ownership is a private equity investor group, but they have never once interfered with how we choose to run our business.
In fact, every member of our company’s senior leadership team has been in place since 2012. That stability has given us the advantage of nearly ten years of commitment to the same goals: safety, customer service, financial responsibility, growth, and team development. Our financial strength gives us access to all the resources that we will ever need to care for our customers, but without the pressure of quarterly investor calls to defend the decisions we make about how we operate.
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