Why Dispensaries Should Invest in Their Sales Staff
Written By Ashleen Aguilar
Art Courtesy of Rebekah Jenks
My career started in marketing, and I budtended as a second job because I really wanted to be part of the cannabis industry.
I had gained a ton of knowledge on my own as a casual cannabis user and social media warrior. I followed cannabis accounts and soaked up their content. I watched videos on Youtube. I took myself to free classes and seminars to learn more. I asked questions to the growers and vendors who passed through my store. I also talked to my peers and we educated each other.
Do you know where I did not get much training?
From my dispensary.
Which wasn’t unusual, so no shade or shame to them. The store where I worked had been open less than a year, and the industry as a whole had only been operational for a few months before that. Washington was one of the first U.S. states to legalize adult-use cannabis, the first licensed dispensary doors opening in Seattle in July 2015. They were one of many stores just trying to figure it all out back then. And at the time, my crew, we were all super nerds about weed and we loved talking about it.
“I got so high off this one, my eyes felt like walnuts, and then I just fell asleep in the middle of my game."
“I just laughed my ass off for an hour.”
“This strain tastes like creamy lemons, and hit me right between the eyes, before melting down my shoulders and settling into a buzzy body high.”
So together, we cultivated a culture where we all wanted to learn more and be better budtenders, but there were so few options for educating ourselves. We had some textbooks in the break room, and would get some info from vendors. Otherwise we were looking at courses or certification programs that we would have to complete off the clock and pay for ourselves, although there wasn’t much that spoke to sales or customer service training specifically for a retail cannabis transaction. Nor was there a promise of compensation or a pay raise, no company incentive for going out and increasing our knowledge, becoming more valuable budtenders.
When we look at research on the impact of sales and product knowledge training on a population of salespeople, sales rates almost always increase when leadership prioritizes training. Corporations like Starbucks and Nordstrom have invested millions of dollars into creating internal training to ensure their frontline folks are well-informed. The sales team feels more confident and secure that they know what they’re talking about, and can effectively communicate this to customers.
This sort of budtender-focused retail training for dispensaries hasn’t existed in the cannabis space (until now).
SETTING A STANDARD
Eventually I became the marketing director at our company, and one of our goals was to have a well-educated staff. I was asked to perform knowledge assessments during the hiring process to evaluate what a potential new hire already knew about cannabis. I interviewed dozens of candidates, and it was such an interesting peek into the variety of knowledge levels out there.
So what all did these prospective budtenders need to know?
I stood in the middle of our sales floor and looked at all of the products surrounding me. In order to effectively sell the hundreds of inventory skews, we needed to know how each worked, what effect they should elicit, how to ingest it, what happens if you ingest too much or too little, how to teach someone how to dose themselves, what’s the difference between live resin and distillate and why should someone care, what are these minor cannabinoids showing up in tinctures and vapes and what do they do, how to use all of the paraphernalia, what’s the difference between cannabis-derived CBD and hemp-derived CBD…
It’s a little dizzying.
In the interviews, I saw candidates who were deeply knowledgeable, but maybe not good salespeople. I got people who were not knowledgeable, but passionate, super friendly and relational, who were asked to reapply after teaching themselves about the endocannabinoid system or terpenes or whatever the topic was. We were searching for unicorns who were both – knowledgeable with good sales instincts.
But from a business perspective, is that efficient?
Here again, training was the variable that could balance the equation. Simply adding onboarding training widens the hiring pool tremendously. We can teach cannabis knowledge and sales techniques, and seek to hire good people who best fit among the store culture.
Not only that, but standardizing the base level of cannabis knowledge among a staff raises the reputation of the store as a trusted place in the community to ask questions. It allows people to stand out as subject matter experts, if anyone is passionate about being a go-to team member on a particular topic, like concentrates or tinctures. It gives staff a reference to refresh themselves or educate a customer. And it allows the store to stand out as an excellent place to work that invests in its sales force.
ONLINE TRAINING PLATFORM BRIDGES THE GAP
And so, after recognizing this training gap in the cannabis industry, we realized we could take it upon ourselves to create a bridge.
With my team at Take Root Dispensary Training, we considered all of these questions and more, and developed an onboarding and training system that can easily integrate into a dispensary’s day-to-day. Root Knowledge: A Budtender’s Guide to Cannabis is an online training portal that trains budtenders on foundational cannabis science, product knowledge, sales, and customer service techniques. The 10-shift interactive training combines a short period of online learning with hands-on application to the products actually in the store, so any new hire can really dive feet first into the inventory. Plus, the content is applicable in all states. The virtual platform includes quizzing and manager access, so leadership can track new hires’ progress.
We hope with our platform, Root Knowledge, dispensaries feel supported with comprehensive onboarding processes and a well-informed sales force.
We hope budtenders feel empowered to lead customer transactions confidently and springboard their career in the cannabis industry with a solid foundation of knowledge.
We hope customers feel the difference between an educated dispensary and one that lacks internal training, and reward it with their loyalty.
Ashleen Aguilar is a co-founder of Take Root Dispensary Training, a company that has developed a budtender onboarding solution for dispensaries who want to bring employee training in-house. Root Knowledge is an online training platform that covers foundational cannabis science, product knowledge, sales, and customer service training, all in 10 interactive shifts. Learn more at TakeRootDispoTraining.com or reach out to hello@takerootdispotraining.com.