From the outside looking in, it’s clear to us that the team at Russell Landscape does two things really, really well: they operate efficiently to make scaling possible, and they maintain relationships with their team and clients.

The personal touch required to maintain relationships often puts that at a juxtaposition with scaling up and being efficient, but Russell Landscape proves that doesn’t need to be the case. As we discussed in a recent email to our Grow Group community their leader Teddy Russell believes in maintaining tension in the business and the team’s strategy for managing both efficiency and relationships is one of the ways that mentality manifests.

Operating Efficiently

Training the team well is a key part of Russell Landscape’s strategy for operating efficiently. To do it, the team uses tactics like “Equipment Rodeos” and hands-on in-the-field training to make sure their team is equipped to do the work and to do it well.

The team will cover the training they do and how it helps their team be both efficient and maintain quality of work during our tour of their facility June 6-7.

Maintaining Relationships

Russell Landscape investing in its team has paid dividends in the relationships its team, in turn, has with its clients.

Relationships have been key to the company’s growth and expansion. A tactical way Russell Landscape makes sure to manage relationships with maintenance clients is to focus on key accounts. For these accounts, the account managers must visit the customer monthly, with other leadership team members attending this meeting regularly too. A site audit created during this meeting captures any changes or issues found and it’s a great way for the team to strengthen its relationship with clients. It helps to ensure they’re staying on top of small issues before they become larger ones. It can also be an opportunity to look for enhancements.

We do similar things at Grunder Landscaping Co. and regularly train our team, too. For example, in the past month, we covered installing cobble streams and I led a soft skills workshop. Our sales and production teams are also building relationships with clients, and we’re doing site audits in Aspire to monitor quality. As we focus on growth ourselves, it’s clear to me that we’ll only be successful if we have the right systems in place to both operate efficiently and manage relationships at scale.

Many companies do these things (and do them well), but every company does this a little differently. I’m excited to see for myself how Russell Landscape does it. There will no doubt be things I learn from touring their facility that I take back to implement with my own team so we can grow and get better too. Will you be joining us there this summer?