Cannabis dispensaries need to be profitable in order to stay in business, which means your budtenders have to be great salespeople. Some people are naturally gifted at closing sales, but the majority of your dispensary budtenders will need some training to become amazing salespeople.
Of course, you can try to hire budtenders who are natural salespeople, but the reality is these employees are hard to find. A better option to keep your cannabis dispensary well-staffed is to hire personable budtenders with the right knowledge to help patients, and then train them to become great at sales.
Following are essential tips to train your budtenders to be amazing salespeople, so you can feel confident that patients will get the help they need while your dispensary gets the sales it needs to keep the doors open.
Identify Areas of Weakness
Where do your budtenders excel? What knowledge and skills do they already have?
Chances are your budtenders will have a variety of knowledge, skills, and experience. Budtender training is not a one-size-fits-all thing. If you don’t have a formal training process in place that all of your budtenders need to go through, then different people will have different strengths and weaknesses that you’ll need to consider.
For example, some of your budtenders might have a deep knowledge of cannabis strains and genetics while another has a knack for asking patients questions to determine which products will benefit them the most. But do either of these budtenders know how to close a sale and successfully suggest additional items that patients can add to those sales? If not, your dispensary could be losing money.
Based on this example, you have two budtenders who need sales training, one budtender who needs help with people skills, and another who needs more basic cannabis training.
Your job is two-fold when it comes to budtender training:
- Identify current budtender weaknesses that could be improved upon to boost sales.
- Identify all of the skills and knowledge new budtenders that work for your dispensary in the future will need to successfully delight patients and close sales.
Once you gather all of the information related to skills and knowledge your budtenders need, you can develop training programs to address immediate needs and to become part of your employee onboarding process in the future.
Establish a Training Budget
For training to be effective, the trainer needs to be good at his or her job. Both the instructor and the curriculum have a significant effect on the training results, and you want to make sure you get a positive return on your training investments.
With that said, don’t try to cut corners on your budtender training budget. After all, if your budtenders aren’t great at their jobs and can’t close sales while making patients happy, you’ll lose repeat business and get fewer new customers.
It’s also important to continually train your staff. Don’t think of training as a once-and-done investment. You should offer training to refresh skills and knowledge and show your budtenders that you’re investing in their success.
Some training experts recommend setting a training budget equal to half of your marketing budget. This makes sense when you consider your marketing could drive a lot of people to your dispensary, but if your budtenders can’t close sales and upsell additional items, your marketing investments are worthless.
Another option is to determine how many hours of training each budtender should have each month, multiply that time by their regular hourly salary, and establish your training budget with the resulting number.
For budtenders, whose salaries are often low, this method may not give cannabis dispensaries enough money to work with. Do the math and determine if you’ll have enough money in your training budget to move the needle in terms of improving budtenders’ sales results.
Choose Your Training Resources
Once you’ve established your budtenders’ training needs and a budget, you need to determine how you’ll provide training. Will you hire a training person to train your budtenders? Will that person be an employee? Or will you send your budtenders to an established cannabis training provider (or have the provider come to your dispensary to deliver training)?
It’s critical that your budtenders are trained by people with the right expertise – both in the cannabis industry and in sales, marketing, operations, and so on. Working with a third party training provider is a great option because you can feel confident that your budtenders are getting the best (and most current) training possible.
For example, Leafy Green Agency offers a variety of affordable certification training courses that can benefit budtenders and dispensaries, such as:
- Medical Cannabis Dispensary and Medical Cannabis Delivery Service Training
- Medical Cannabis Budtender and Brand Ambassador Sales Training
Each training seminar is led by a topic expert and includes comprehensive materials to set budtenders up for success. It’s the safest way to ensure your training dollars are well spent.
Your Next Step to Train Your Budtenders to be Amazing Salespeople
Budtender training is a fundamental cost of doing business for cannabis dispensaries because budtenders have a direct impact on your bottom-line. Training can also motivate your employees and make them feel more invested in their jobs and the success of your dispensary.
That means budtender training results in lower turnover and absenteeism as well as increased efficiency, productivity, and sales. Overall, great budtender training pays for itself.
Need help training your budtenders? Contact Leafy Green Agency to learn more about training seminars developed specifically for cannabis dispensary budtenders.