BUSINESS OPERATIONS The Quality Quotient

Quality transforms a good company into a great company. Accordingly, landscape contractors need to provide quality in every aspect of their businesses and to each customer to be successful. For example, landscape contractors
should only purchase the very best plant materials. Demand quality and don’t shy away from rejecting subpar plant material when it arrives on site. First impressions of a finished project often are based on how the plants look. Of course, quality planting techniques will ensure the client enjoys the natural atmosphere you’ve created for a long time.

Furthermore, replacing too many materials under warranty promotes a poor image. I recommend guaranteeing plant material for 90 days and trees for one year. Too often contractors guarantee plant material for one year. I firmly believe if a plant is going to die due to poor installation, it will expire within 90 days. Generally, when a plant dies after that, the property owner’s neglect and poor watering practices are the likely culprits. Changing this policy can save contractors a lot of summer agony.

Likewise, quality is very important in landscape maintenance. Clients lose faith in their contractors when they repeatedly see poor quality work. Most often, bad relationships stem from this ineptitude. If it gets to this point, it’s only a matter of time before the contractor loses the business.

On the other hand, maintaining a great client relationship enables you to occasionally let a couple of quality issues slide, but that’s a dangerous practice and one that should not be used as a crutch too often. Bottom line: You need both quality work and a solid relationship with your client to realize success. Remember, your competition is always knocking on your clients’ door.

So how do you make this happen for your organization? First, it must start at the top. The owner has to demand all employees produce the best product possible. Therefore, the owner needs to be in the field to observe, correct and complement employees when he sees great quality work. By being in the field and by spreading positive feedback, you will find  it doesn't take long for employees to understand what constitutes acceptable and quality work.

You can take this momentum to the next level by actually judging quality. Create a checklist that enables you to apply a quantitative number (on a scale of 1 to 5, for example) to each category judged. This enables you to issue a total quality score per project.

Create one for installation and another for maintenance and so on. Keep it as simple as possible but write many notes. This enables the exercise to become a great training tool for quality.

The main objective is to communicate  to employees the level of quality in their work and to provide feedback on the deficiencies that lowered the final score.

Be sure to judge the same number of projects per crew each month or quarter. Then post the quality scores so all can see who is producing the top quality this month. This will help establish a healthy competitive atmosphere among your workers while encouraging others to work on their quality issues.

Demand quality, give feedback, be fair and strive to become a quality, low cost producer. You can do this and still make a profit – a very good profit.