Goodbye customer! It’s nothing personal (at least not usually). Sometimes customers’ expectations can’t be met, other times customers require an inordinate amount of your time. On rare occasions, a customer’s behavior may expose an organization to undue peril. When any of those situations occur, it’s best to say “goodbye” and to do so quickly in a way that creates the least resentment on both sides. Know the signs when it’s time to part company.

1) They cause 80% of your problems and don’t contribute even close to 80% of your revenue.

From time to time, any customer could require more energy than others. Those high-demand situations are normal. What isn’t normal, however, is the perpetual squeaky wheel that routinely disrupts normal business operations.

Customers who buy very little and cost a lot of time, personnel, or mental energy to service may not be the customers you want to keep—especially if serving them prevents you from taking care of customers or clients who are more profitable and easier to help.

Goodbye Move: When a customer is more work than it’s worth to you, the easiest way to say goodbye is to rely on the classic “It’s not you, it’s me” approach.

If after that they insist on staying anyway, consider raising your rates accordingly.

2) They are abusive to your employees. When management allows customers to abuse employees, it’s the same as perpetrating the abuse directly. Do customers swear, yell, demean or harass your employees? If so, it’s time to draw a line in the sand and let them know what behavior is and isn’t acceptable.

If the bad behavior continues, the relationship should stop. “But she’s our best customer. She has a lot of sway.” Maybe so. She’s also the poison that potentially exposes the organization to a lawsuit, erodes morale and negatively affects the culture.

Goodbye Move: When someone is abusive, again, it’s best to say goodbye and to do so in a calm and professional manner.

“Julie, you’re obviously unhappy, and my employees are too. For the benefit of everyone, at this point I think it’s best that we part company. We both deserve better.”

3) Their behavior is out of touch with your ethics policies and practices. You are the company you keep. If you are enabling your customers to act in a way that disagrees with your organization’s values or the law, it’s time to say goodbye. Do you really want to associate yourself and your organization with those whose business practices are illegal, immoral or routinely questionable?

Goodbye Move: When someone or an organization exposes you to unneeded risk, it’s prudent to disassociate yourself and your organization from them pronto.

“We’re a very conservative organization. While we understand others have a more robust appetite for risk, it’s typically something we avoid. For that reason, another vendor is probably going to better meet your needs. At this point, we’re really just not a good fit.”

4) They expose you to unneeded financial risk. If you spend more time chasing payments than performing work, it’s time to consider a new payment plan at a minimum or a permanent breakup if that step doesn’t solve the problem.

Goodbye Move: An organization that puts your pocketbook on the line is best avoided.

5) You’re no longer a good fit. Sometimes people and organizations grow apart. Nobody has done anything wrong; the two parties are just in different places and it’s time to say goodbye.

Goodbye Move: This last goodbye is the hardest. When you find you and your customer are no longer compatible, it’s a good idea to start the conversation with something open-ended.

Assuming Bill isn’t planning for growth, you might continue with:

No matter the reason, prolonging a relationship that isn’t working does no one any favors. It’s usually not fun to say “goodbye,” but once you do, you’ll have more time to say “hello” to customers who should conduct business with you.

Nematodes are very tiny, microscopic worms that mostly live in soils, although foliar nematodes live in leaves. While some species harm plant roots, others are beneficial by attacking and killing pests.

Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are tiny creatures that feed on the roots of plants and can cause various types of damage. These microscopic worms cause gall growth or swelling to occur. Once plant roots are affected by nematodes, they become weak and fungi and bacteria cause even further damage.

When I joined an underground utilities company as the HR manager, I knew nothing of the business. If I was going to add value to the organization, then I had to understand the business —what they did, how they did it, their competition and how the company could compete. Only then could I comment on staff planning, project pipelines and employee retention.

In small- to medium-sized businesses, many leaders struggle with understanding the strategic partnership that HR can have because HR does not properly understand the business. In addition, many business leaders only understand the transactional support HR provides. Many business leaders determine there is a need for dedicated HR personnel only when the transactions become more burdensome than they are willing or able to handle. For HR to demonstrate the strength of the strategic partnership, it is critical that they be intimately familiar with all aspects of your business, that there is an understanding of when to outsource transactional tasks and when to bring those back in-house.

To get the most out of your HR department or function, business leaders should differentiate the transactional tasks of HR from their strategic partnership with the business. Transactions can be outsourced and automated. There are many solutions, some of which were shared in a previous article, "Resistance is Futile," that addresses many affordable HR compliance solutions (the primary transactional tasks of HR) for small- to medium-sized businesses. The low- to no-cost solutions available are numerous and when employed, these services free up the HR team member(s) to become true strategic partners.

There is a time in the business life cycle where outsourcing transactional tasks is the right strategic move, but also a time when bringing such tasks in-house is best. According to the annual Gartner 2019 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, "a growing number of CEOs… deem financial priorities important, especially profitability improvement." The survey also states, "at the same time, mentions of financial priorities, cost, and risk management also increased." The appropriate treatment of transactional HR tasks can be a huge help when addressing such concerns in your organization.

Outsourcing can stabilize cash flow especially in a seasonal business, make it more predictable and easier on the budget. It can introduce automation such as self-service portals, reporting and file maintenance. Outsourcing transactional HR tasks can even shift the risks of non-compliance to a vendor, potentially saving your business hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, fees and government-imposed remedies.

Typically, much later in the business life cycle, insourcing these transactional tasks is the right strategic move. It will provide more control of data, improve the quality of service transactions, allow for development of deeper metrics and tracking, and improve innovation and creativity around HR initiatives. Due to economies of scale, it may even be more cost effective to insource than outsource.

Knowing the right time to do each is somewhat challenging, but when done right, HR becomes a more strategic partner to your business.

Now that the transactional tasks have been appropriately addressed, we need to fully immerse HR in the business. Teach them the business from the ground up. Your HR function needs to understand not just what growers do, but what they are challenged by with various crops and systems. They need to know the role and responsibility of those leading operations, whether they are working with plants in a field or in a greenhouse, and the relationship between customer service, sales, product development, marketing and operations.

HR should shadow every department or function within your business, meet the key leaders and talk with entry-level employees. Invite HR to meet with key customers to understand this relationship and the customers’ challenges your company is trying to help them solve. Expose them to the entire industry through various trade shows and conferences so they can learn about all the companies that make up the industry as well as interact with other HR leaders to share best practices.

Strategic elements that HR brings include assisting with the development of the organization's strategic and tactical plan, organizational development and design, strategic workforce planning, succession planning, and learning and development. Even the development of compensation and benefits programs, collectively the total rewards program, is strategic. In a March 14, 2019 article by The Predictive Index, the top two CEO concerns are business strategy and talent strategy, two core areas addressed with an HR function that performs a strategic role. A Jan. 17, 2019 article by the Conference Board reports that talent and leader development are top internal concerns. These are not transactional issues. The strategic elements HR brings directly impact the ability to attract and retain top talent regardless of industry, drive organizational strategy and align development with the strategic plan.

With the appropriate treatment of transactional HR tasks, imagine the difference this makes when you ask your HR function to recruit, build a strategic staffing plan or identify and prepare succession plans. Having immersed them in all aspects of the business, when it comes to organizational design, learning and development, and performance management, HR will have the strategic understanding and capability to best advise leadership to make the correct business decisions. Reports and metrics that are meaningful can be developed to improve efficiency and effectiveness, enhance innovation and drive the competitive advantages of your business in the industry. This is HR's true value.

When Rancho Tissue Technologies founder Heather May recognized the value hemp could provide the green industry, she began the meticulous process of trialing the crop. Heather and her staff learned the best methods of propagating hemp and trialed it in the tissue culture lab and in the greenhouse.

“We quickly recognized how well hemp fit into our existing production models,” Heather says. “It fit into the protocols we already had set up for tropicals and succulents, so it wasn’t a tough learning curve for us.”

In the greenhouse, this crop grows really quickly, “which growers will be happy to learn,” she adds. “We learned in the greenhouse that hemp requires humidity at the beginning of production and then it’s a heavy feeder. There are slightly different lighting requirements for this crop, as well.”

Rancho Tissue’s greenhouses were already equipped with a micromist system and BioTherm tubing to heat the benches. The company is installing new supplemental lighting for the hemp crop, she explains.

“Like any crop, growers need to have a good production plan in place, and it’s important to conduct trials,” she adds.

As a registered hemp cultivator with California’s San Diego County, Rancho Tissue Technologies produces tissue culture hemp at the lab in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. The lab provides custom contract growing for growers’ own selections, as well as tissue culture of the most in-demand hemp selections. Rancho Tissue will accept orders from registered hemp growers located in any U.S. state, and will also hold genetics for other hemp growers. The company can ship to any U.S. state once that state’s hemp regulations are in place.

Rancho Tissue’s microcuttings and liners are grown for the fiber and CBD oil markets. The hemp-derived CBD market is expected to grow to $22 billion by 2022, according to a Brightfield Group report released last fall.

Nursery and greenhouse growers interested in adding hemp and hemp/CBD would benefit from tissue culture plants because they’re clean and true to type, Heather says.

“They don’t have to carry big amounts of mother stock from season to season and, depending on where they’re located, they can order any time of the year,” she adds.

There’s already been a “huge demand” for hemp tissue culture this year, she says.

Intellectual property will be a critical issue with hemp and hemp-derived CBD crops. Currently there are open market varieties being grown and sold, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office clarified in May of this year that hemp businesses can apply for trademark registration, as long as their operations comply with the FDA’s regulations that hemp-derived CBD cannot be used as a food or beverage ingredient. Breeders have approached Rancho Tissue about growing their own genetics from tissue culture.

“In addition to my own experience in hemp tissue culture, our international team of researchers has worked with genetics from the horticulture industry’s leading companies for more than three decades, positioning us well to successfully produce quality, consistent tissue culture from any crop or category while providing the utmost protection for intellectual property,” Heather says.

For more: www.ranchotissue.com