There's no better time to invest in budtender training — from more product knowledge and higher profits to less misinformation and confusion, budtenders have a significant impact on your overall sales success.
When budtenders are better trained on your brand and offers, your product is in a better position to sell. What’s more, moving your training online adds even more benefits, increasing accessibility and eliminating inefficiencies on your path to profits.
In fact, Shiftelearning reports that properly training employees/partners will increase their productivity by 200%, leading to a 218% higher income-per-employee and 24% higher profit margin. Lorman adds that 90% of people agree it's beneficial to switch to mobile-based online training and 89% want training available anywhere and anytime they need to do their job.
Studies are showing the importance of online training in all industries, but there's no denying the advantage for budtender training, in particular. Here are the top five reasons you should move your budtender training online.
Remote Learning
The pandemic still makes remote learning a necessity for many dispensaries, especially for those who prefer to educate themselves on your cannabis products in a remote environment. Rather than in-person training, online/mobile budtender training makes it easy for them to safely learn about you and your products.
This, in turn, ensures that they are better able to answer questions when customers roll in wanting more information about your product before making a purchase. It will also equip them with regular access to the information they need to make recommendations specific to customers and their needs.
According to TalentLMS, 82% of respondents in their study completed training outside of work hours, making mobile access crucial. What's more, the report found that nearly half (42%) continued training after hours because they actually enjoyed doing it, and 32% did so because their workdays were busy.
Access to Information
Think about all the times someone uses their phone throughout the day. From breaks to boredom, it's common for workers to engage on their mobile phones when they're not otherwise engaged with work and customers. Having online, mobile access to information will allow them to remain productive in the workplace during these periods.
Statista studies have even shown that as of February 2021, nearly half of all respondents surveyed spent at least 5-6 hours on their phone on a daily basis (not including work-related smartphone use).
What if budtenders had easy-to-access and scrollable training pieces about your product? They would be more likely to use this time to complete product training when you make the information easy for them to access. This also means that when dispensaries give their budtenders access to your product information and training, they will be better able to retain and refresh their knowledge on your offers to accommodate consumer needs.
Dissemination of Information
Budtenders aren't the only ones benefiting from instant access to information — your brand is also directly benefiting as you are able to standardize the training process and disseminate the information countless times rather than having to individually conduct training with multiple partners.
The result? Less effort on your part and more consistent information being delivered to brand ambassadors and partners. By removing inefficiencies in the product training stage, you are able to have a clearer path directly to revenue.
This is because you can ensure all budtenders get the same, consistent product information about your brand to inform customers. Since 69% of U.S. consumers shop more with brands that offer consistent in-store and online experiences, it's important to ensure that the people selling your product provide the same information and experience.
After all, the minute they start selling your product in their dispensaries, they become a significant touchpoint between your brand and your audience.
Engagement of Opportunities
When it comes down to it, budtenders are more likely to be engaged with an online and/or mobile training course than their more formal counterpart. They're also more inclined to spend their off-time at work keeping up-to-date. Staff interest aside, the industry is moving towards more engaging and effective innovations for online training.
For instance, ZolTrain is implementing gamification-type settings in its budtender training (offering budtenders progress tracking and various rewards for hitting goals). Although this advancement is still in the works, it does indicate the serious potential of online budtender training.
Not only do budtenders benefit from regular access to information, but they'll also enjoy participating in the training. In fact, KQED reports that "when we're interested in what we're learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features."
Budtender Feedback
Receiving budtender feedback is crucial to your brand and product's success in the industry. This is because they know firsthand what information and training your courses may be lacking that they need to do their jobs.
They may even have more feedback on ways you can enhance their experience with your training and make it more memorable for them.
Ultimately, you want to continuously improve your product offering. Since budtenders will be the ones selling your product in dispensaries and working closely with your target audience, it makes the most sense for you to not only hear their feedback but implement it when possible.
The marijuana industry is fairly new yet already saturated with competition, so there's nothing more important than steadily improving your products and training to get ahead of the curve.
Partner with ZolTrain to Level Up Your Training
Since the pandemic, one of the biggest challenges in the cannabis industry has been to deliver exceptional product training while adhering to the new safety and health measures set in place. Budtenders want to know your brand and product to ensure their customers are getting the most out of their experience.
ZolTrain will work closely with your team to help build product education courses and assist in the creation of unique cell phone-formatted content that highlights product differentiators and speaks to ideal customer profiles.
Ready to set up your brand and the budtender for success? Get started with a demo today.