This information came from a session during the 2025 ELEVATE conference and expo. Don’t miss ELEVATE in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 8-11, 2026.
The quality of your work is one of your best forms of advertising, but it is also the first thing that starts slipping as you grow.
This is why developing a training program that teaches your team members your quality standards is critical. Marty Grunder, founder and CEO of Grunder Landscaping Co., based in Miamisburg, Ohio, shares how you can develop quality standards and hold your team accountable.
Defining Quality Standards for Your Company
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, so you have to determine what your clients’ expectations are as well as what matters to your company. In some cases, you can overdo it on quality if your team spends a lot of time on tasks that don’t add value for your clients.
You can determine your standards by asking questions like:
- What activities are horticulturally necessary?
- What are your clients’ expectations about how their property will look?
- What activities add value in your clients’ eyes, and which ones don’t?
- Is our pricing aligned with the cost to perform at this level of quality?
Once you have determined your company’s standards and aligned them with your clients’ expectations, then you need to identify who on the team is responsible for ensuring the work is consistently executed at this level.
For instance, you could have a full-time trainer who conducts technical trainings with your team. Your production managers and crew leaders should also make sure their teams and performing the worker properly. Conduct site audits regularly instead of assuming an employee trained once will follow your quality standards.
“Your external quality and customer service will never exceed your internal quality and customer service,” Grunder says. “There are many silent teachers: make sure they’re teaching what you want them to.”
Developing Topics for Quality Standards Training
As for what you should cover in your quality standards training, prioritize the most impactful and important topics such as horticulture, safety and equipment operation.
For horticulture topics, focus on the tasks crews will spend 80% of their time doing.
“We want to get them to 80% competency with 20% effort – meaning, get really good at the basics,” Grunder says.
Select safety topics that cover the basics and address some of the areas that result in frequent workers’ comp claims at your company.
Equipment training should concentrate on the machines team members operate daily and new hires will need to know how to run from day one.
Some topics to consider covering on your quality standards are:
- Watering plants
- Tree and shrub installation
- Pruning
- Trailer loading and tie downs
- Trenching
Grunder says another area to consider covering is how to be a better professional and provide a better experience for existing clients. Some of their professional training related topics include:
- Mitigating objections
- Training the trainer
- Conflict resolution among team members
- Sales techniques
- How to use Aspire
Training for Quality Standards
Grunder says the most effective method they’ve found is to structure their training by telling, showing, doing and teaching.
The first step of telling is simply informing the group what they’re about to learn and how it will benefit the team. Don’t assume the team understands why they’re doing something a certain way or why the company is training them.
The second step of showing is where you demonstrate what you just told them. Make sure that everyone can see the demonstration. This step is also helpful for overcoming language barriers.
Step three of doing is where the employees now have the opportunity to do what you just demonstrated themselves. This is where you can step in and coach if you see a team member struggling or conducting the task in an unsafe or incorrect manner.
You can ask for volunteers to show how to do the task the right way and encourage questions to foster more participation. Praise employees when they complete the task to the company’s quality standards.
The final step of teaching is where employees are expected to share their knowledge, as the best way to truly master a skill is to have to teach another. This forces the team member to understand the skill and be able to answer questions.
Grunder recommends having weekly training sessions and following an agenda where you go through your core values, discuss any unsafe practices from the previous week and then recap the three takeaways from last week’s training. Then you can introduce the week’s topic, where employees can see, do and teach it. Afterwards, recap with three main takeaways and tease next week’s topic.
To improve engagement, make these sessions fun by incorporating humor, prizes or games.
For more content like this, be sure to register for next year’s ELEVATE in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 8-11.
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