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As his title implies, Taranis’ Chief Commercial Officer, Mike DiPaola, is charged with keeping the wheels turning at Taranis. Communication is the grease that makes those wheels turn smoothly and DiPaola, along with other members of the leadership team, are the Zerks that convey the passion and wisdom the company continues to grow from. And at the heart of the CCO’s messaging are three seemingly simple words that DiPaola has built his own life and career on: Know, Love, Serve.
The words aren’t marketing—they are a way of life—attributes DiPaola says he looks for in the companies he works with and the employees he hires, attributes that the Taranis mission and team exemplify and execute inherently.
DiPaola says that it may sound weird or off to some to use the word “love” in a conversation with the customers Taranis serves. But to him, the conversation lays the groundwork for the relationship that Taranis strives to build with every customer they work with. The conversation is ground truth that carries beyond the field and imagery to the service and outcomes throughout the value chain both Taranis and its customer partners work within.
“I don’t read business books. There are books that have been in existence for thousands of years that talk about how people deal with one another. That’s what I read; I read books about relationships,” DiPaola says. “Our business is bringing retailers, advisors, and growers together for a better outcome. We don’t divide—we unite, and that is all built on the foundation of a good relationship. Life is built on the premise of knowing, loving, and serving…in that order. You have to know before you can love, and you have to love before you can serve. It’s fundamental.”
The know, love, serve mission Taranis fulfills extends beyond the offices and fields, beyond the retailers the company partners with and far beyond the technology the company leverages. Know, love, serve, is a mission that resonates from within the agriculture communities Taranis serves, from the little league and t-ball fields, from dinner tables, from volunteer fire squads; know, love, serve is the unspoken commitment of the rural, agricultural community.
“Business should never be about a product, it should be about value and service. And there’s no way to quantify value and service if you don’t know your customer. When a grower has the tools they need to proactively make decisions, improve yield, reduce inputs, whatever that value may look like, it’s better for everyone involved. Proximity breeds responsibility. You have to be close to care, and you have to be close to truly serve. That’s why we work so hard to be an addition, rather than a subtraction, in the value chain between the retailer and grower,” he says.
The success Taranis has seen in the growth of their areas of operation (AOOs) reflects the success of their ability to know and serve. While the growth the team is seeing does not come without hard work and boots-on-the-ground, the Taranis know, love, serve mission is reflected in the growth within the accounts and additional AOOs garnered from the “show-me” success the tool has provided retailers.
“Why not invest in a tool where you know the customer better than anyone else?” DiPaola asks. “What is more intimate than high-resolution imagery captured at scale and analyzed to enable you to have substantive conversations about monitoring a grower’s legacy and making sure that the output they have…and that you both depend on…is healthy and robust?”
In honor of National FFA Week, our team at Taranis is catching up and sitting down with employees who were former FFA members to learn more about what the organization means to them.
