Every growing landscaping company eventually faces the same crossroads: a vacant position needs to be filled, and the question becomes whether to develop the talent already on the team or bring in someone new. Both paths have real merit, and neither is always the right answer. What matters is making the decision intentionally, with a clear understanding of what each option delivers for a landscaping business.
The choice between promoting from within vs. hiring landscaping employees from outside affects more than just one open position. It shapes company culture, team morale, retention rates, and long-term organizational strength. Landscaping business owners who think carefully about this choice build stronger teams and more resilient companies.
Understanding Each Option
Promoting from within is fundamentally a bet on institutional knowledge and cultural fit. Internal candidates already understand how the company operates, who does what, and why certain decisions get made the way they do. That context is hard to transfer through an onboarding process and often takes an external hire a full season or more to absorb.
External hiring is a bet on fresh perspective and new capability. When a landscaping company needs to build something it has never had before, whether that is a commercial sales division, a design-build department, or a structured HR function, the skills required may simply not exist inside the organization yet. An external candidate can bring those capabilities along with new relationships and a different way of approaching problems.
The companies that make this decision well are the ones that ask the right question first: does this role require what we already have, or does it require something we need to build?
Why Getting This Decision Wrong Is Costly
Signs That Promoting From Within Is the Right Move
Internal promotions tend to be the more cost-effective choice when the right conditions are in place. Hire internally when:
- The role requires deep familiarity with the company's clients, processes, or organizational culture
- The internal applicant has demonstrated the behaviors and judgment the new role demands, not just technical skill
- The company is ready to invest in developing the promoted employee with coaching, mentorship, and support for their new responsibilities
- Speed matters, because existing employees can step into a role far more quickly than a new hire can get up to speed, requiring less training overall
Research consistently shows that employees who are promoted stay with their companies at significantly higher rates than those who remain in the same role. 
The reason is straightforward: people who see genuine career growth opportunities at a company are less likely to go looking for one somewhere else. For landscaping companies investing in team development, this is a meaningful advantage. Promoting from within sends a clear signal that hard work creates real opportunity, which strengthens organizational culture and motivates the broader workforce.
The most important preparation a landscaping company can do is identify qualified employees before there is an open position to fill. Building internal mobility into the way the business operates, rather than treating it as a reaction to turnover, gives business owners options instead of urgency when a role opens up.
Signs That Hiring Externally Makes More Sense
Hiring externally becomes the stronger option when:
- The role requires specialized skills or experience that do not exist among current employees
- The company is entering a new market, service line, or growth phase that demands a different kind of leadership
- The organization has grown too insular and needs a fresh perspective to break through a performance plateau
- No internal candidate is ready for the role and the business cannot afford a long development timeline
The external hiring process takes longer and costs more, often six months to a year for senior roles. Business owners who plan ahead, rather than reacting to sudden vacancies, get far better results. A reactive external hire made under pressure carries more risk involved than one made through a deliberate, well-structured process.
One underappreciated benefit of external hiring is cognitive diversity. A candidate who has worked in a different region, a larger company, or a different segment of the green industry brings a genuinely fresh perspective. That outside viewpoint can challenge assumptions that have gone unexamined for years, which is sometimes exactly what a growing company needs. External hires also bring new relationships, expanding the company's network in ways that promote from within decisions simply cannot.
How to Set Either Choice Up for Success
The biggest predictor of success in either path is not which option was chosen. It is how well the new leader was supported after the decision was made.
Promoted employees need structured support to grow into their new responsibilities. The skills that made someone an excellent crew leader or salesperson are not automatically the same skills required to manage people, handle conflict, or build accountability across a team. Pairing a promoted employee with an experienced mentor, setting clear expectations, and building in checkpoints for feedback dramatically improves outcomes and helps good leaders develop faster.
External hires need more time and guidance to absorb company culture than most business owners initially plan for. A thoughtful onboarding process that goes beyond the basics, including introductions to key relationships, context on how decisions get made, and clarity on what success looks like in the first 90 days, gives new employees a real chance to perform.
The companies that see the best results from both paths treat leadership development as an ongoing commitment, not a one-time transaction. Whether growing talent in-house or integrating someone from outside, the investment continues well beyond the hire date.
Five Questions to Guide the Decision
When evaluating whether to promote internally or hire externally, landscaping business owners should work through these questions:
There is no formula that produces the right answer every time. But business owners who ask these questions consistently, and who build systems for identifying and developing high-potential employees before roles open up, find that their options improve dramatically over time. The best time to start thinking about succession is before a vacancy forces the conversation.
About The Grow Group
Led by Marty Grunder, The Grow Group is a premier coaching and education firm for landscape professionals. We provide innovative events like our annual GROW! Conference, peer groups, and real-world resources to help landscaping business owners and their teams succeed. Everything we teach is based on what we know works because we test it ourselves at our "living laboratory," Grunder Landscaping Company, the business Marty began as a teenager and still leads today.
We don't just share theories and ideas. We share tactics we used at our own landscaping company this week that we know still work. Our team brings more than 95 years of combined field experience to everything we do. Whether you're trying to grow your landscaping business or get better control over it, we can help get you where you want to go.
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