Transitioning from the "Keep-Everything-Inhouse" mentality As the cannabis industry matures, businesses must focus on their strengths to stay competitive. Francesca Vavala the President and Co-Founder The Sales Joint realized that companies need help with many of the non-core aspects of their business. She joins Dan Humiston to explain how outsourcing certain functions like sales, marketing and operations, gives owners more time to focus on what makes them unique. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston The Sales Joint - https://www.thesalesjoint.com/ Francesca Vavala - https://podconx.com/guests/francesca-vavala Recorded on Squadcast
Transitioning from the "Keep-Everything-Inhouse" mentality
As the cannabis industry matures, businesses must focus on their strengths to stay competitive. Francesca Vavala the President and Co-Founder The Sales Joint realized that companies need help with many of the non-core aspects of their business. She joins Dan Humiston to explain how outsourcing certain functions like sales, marketing and operations, gives owners more time to focus on what makes them unique.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
The Sales Joint - https://www.thesalesjoint.com/
Francesca Vavala - https://podconx.com/guests/francesca-vavala
Dan Humiston: . [00:00:00] Today at MJ bulls, we're joined by Francesca Vavala the co-founder and president of the sales joint. Francesco. Welcome to the show.
Francesca Vavala: Thank you so much, Dan,
I'm excited to be here.
Dan Humiston: Well, I'm glad you could join us. I mean, we work together on the podcast side, but this is the first time I really had a chance to really , learn more about your business. And I gotta tell ya, I just feel like you guys are right at the forefront , of a change in our industry.
And, in the early days of cannabis, I think business owners made the mistake of thinking that cannabis was sort of defied business law. Like they could be everything, they could do everything in house and they were going to get away with it. And then I think this, this idea, finally, finally, people are starting to realize that.
It doesn't make sense to do everything. You're not going to be the best at everything. And you should really be focusing on what your strengths are and what is one of the industry's leading sales team? The sales joint [00:01:00] is helping companies through this transition. And I think maybe that's a great place for us to start is maybe set the set the stage for us Francesco what changed within our industry that finally prompted companies to rethink this.
Keep everything in house mentality.
Francesca Vavala: It's a great point. I think that, there's . Almost two, kinds of cannabis businesses operating right now in the market. One are the large businesses, usually corporately owned or thoroughly funded. They're larger they're multi-state operators. And I feel like they've tried to keep things in house because.
Had some trepidation around the actual product around cannabis. And so, for a lot of reasons, they might've been a little apprehensive about working with quote unquote cannabis people. And then the other kind of business that's in the market are the smaller growers, these legacy growers that were operating in the black market for a long time that had to transition into the legal [00:02:00] market or.
Even people that weren't in any market. And they had to kind of open up and start their own cannabis business and their issues are, they're not well-funded, they, they don't really know what they're doing. They try to do it all. And they feel like, , they want to almost protect what they have because it's so precious or fragile.
And so they don't want to reach out either and everyone thinks they can do it themselves and do it the best. And the truth is that we need to have. People working together because you need the cannabis experts and you need the business experts. And what's happened in, , the market is that we see more markets open.
. We see them well, first we see them not have enough product. Then we see them having too much product. And so with a lot of those markets fluctuating. We realized that we hit a pain point that triggers somebody to need some action and that results in a reach
out.
Dan Humiston: Well, you mentioned the cultivators and I think that's probably a great [00:03:00] place for us to just take it from there is how do you help cultivators that? I mean, clearly their strength is in growing cannabis. It's probably not in making sales and you know, their social media or their marketing may walk us through how you can help to cultivate.
Francesca Vavala: There's so much that we can do for cultivators because you're right. These are typically farmers, people who love the plant or love to be outside and grow things they don't have, or want to have the business acumen behind their cannabis business. So we are that for them. I hate to use the C word with consultants, but we do consult with them and help them understand where the gaps are between.
Where they are now and where they want their business to go. And usually there are many gaps, things, like you said, social media, how to sell, it's operations systems, processes, really understanding that you need to [00:04:00] do the same things every time, which they get on the growth side, they can get predictable, repeatable results of product, but they don't necessarily apply those same principles to the business side, which we do.
So we teach them how to get predictable, repeatable results on their sales side of things using. Whatever it is that they, lacking. We will fill in those gaps. So we'll either work with them to teach them how to do what they need to do, or we will actually become their operations side for them and do a lot of the selling, a lot of the marketing, a lot of the, operations and systems setting up for them.
So that's the biggest thing for cultivators is almost putting the business behind their cannabis business. And a lot of them that are coming in. Pieces of it, but the putting it all together, doesn't naturally come to them. Oh. And then consistency and follow through. They're too busy for it. Or they don't have interest in it so we can fill
in all of those gaps. [00:05:00]
Dan Humiston: And yet you make a great point about they're too busy, but if they're spending a bunch of time doing this stuff that they don't even really like to do , they want to be out in the farm. And if they're
having to spend time doing these things. They're not spending time where they need to be. now let's just fast forward and talk about dispensary's because dispensary's similar situation. they're not going to be a Jack of all trades. They're going to be really good at one thing.
So how do we help them?
Francesca Vavala: Yes. A lot of times dispensary's are a little harder to help because they tend to be where, a lot of the money flows in the easiest. So dispensary's can very easily. I believe their own hype, for lack of a better way of putting it. , they see that they are making money and it's going well. And then they just want to cruise.
What they're not looking at is the market changes that are coming ahead and how they are set up to survive them. So whether [00:06:00] that is competition moving in or product restrictions or regulation changes, there are things that they're not doing well. They love the branding side of things. Cause who doesn't, that's the fun stuff they want to put on the events and do all the sexy stuff.
They don't necessarily have a , customer retention and reactivation plan. They don't know how to manage their product inventory in a way that allows for repeat customers, because they're always trying to get the new ones in. They've lost track of their existing customers and everyone in sales knows that keeping an existing customers always cheaper than onboarding a new one.
So we tried to almost go in with some basic sales principles and then, work with them to see again, where are they now? Where do they need to be? And what are those roadblocks that we know are coming or that we can at least position them to, to do well through, in the, in their toughest parts. I want to say our best dispensary clients are people who are just [00:07:00] starting their dispensary, because you're not going in and trying to unlearn or, or reteach you're going in fresh.
And being able to say, this is how we do it. , and then people that have had dispensary's that have hit this kind of low point or a, I wouldn't say like a plateau. They felt the pain of not growing because if you're not growing you're shrinking. So those are the two best when they've had those pain points.
Dan Humiston: it makes sense. It makes sense. And, another aspect that you probably bring is that having a vantage point can probably see some opportunities that are happening in other parts of the country , or even in other regions that you can share with these dispensary owners that they may not see
Francesca Vavala: Yes, absolutely. We were just talking to some people in New Mexico and everything we've learned in Oklahoma. , we have, the cultivators is so excited because there's no product on the market. Everybody's buying everything. I was like, Grow your exotics, because guess what soon everybody's growing right now and is going to flood the market.
You need the thing [00:08:00] that other people aren't growing. You don't need the blue dream that everybody is growing. So there are these lessons that we can take, , and apply across markets.
Dan Humiston: Yeah. Well, I know you're not raising capital, , but I know that you work with investors and accountants and attorneys, maybe give us some ideas of some of the ways that you're able to help those different professions navigate their way through this.
Francesca Vavala: Our clients are usually working to raise capital or are using capital that they've raised. We will work with investors that, are going to invest in cannabis businesses and the way we help people with that. So we let them know that. We've worked with successful businesses in cannabis, and we've seen ones that don't succeed.
We know what the differences are between them. And so as an investor, if you want to recoup your investment faster, the best way to do that is to make sure the company that you're investing in and has a strong professional [00:09:00] sales set up. And, you know, in that cultivation phase, that's really hard because they're pretty resistant to it, but they understand once they grow.
They're going to have to sell a lot and that's an important piece of it. So we work with investors to help them recoup their money faster. We work with our clients to help them get the money from investors by showing that they can have, , as solid a plan as possible to go to market and make up an
investment.
Dan Humiston: , I tell you what it saves a lot of people a lot of time, because if you don't have to learn some of this stuff, it's, it's got to make a huge, yeah, it's got to make a
Francesca Vavala: Yeah, I don't know phenotypes, but I know CRMs, you know, I go mediums, but I definitely know how to manage a customer pyramid so we can all play to our.
Dan Humiston: That's great. that's that's a great advice. Well, we're going to have all this sales joints information in the show notes. So just click the link. If you want to , learn more, speak to somebody from Francesca's team. I'm sure there'll be happy to help and [00:10:00] also check out their podcast. Infuse cannabis talk show.
It's a great podcast. I have to say I'd love there. Pod connects networks, so we love them, but even if they weren't, it's a great podcast and really check it out. And, , Francesca, this has been fun. I know we're going to do more of this in the future, so thanks for kicking off your first time on the MJ bulls Cod cast.
Thank you.
Francesca Vavala: No, it's an honor. Thank you so much, Dan. It was a great time.