In our previous blog post, ‘How to Become a Cannabis Sensemillier,’ we explored what a Sensemillier is and what you can do to become a professional cannabis Sensemillier.

As a reminder, a cannabis Sensemillier is a master in using their senses to evaluate every key characteristic of a cannabis plant.

However, the term Sensemillier does not necessarily only need to apply to an individual. Instead, it can also highlight a thought-leading, professional cannabis retail store that is trailblazing the industry through outstanding customer service, staff satisfaction and business organization.

In this blog post, we will explain to you what a Sensemillier store is and show you how you can transform your cannabis shop into a thought-leading Sensemillier store.

What is a Sensemillier store?

A Sensemillier store is a cannabis retailer that is operated by expert budtenders and purchasers who are highly educated about cannabis and know every single detail about the products they carry.

Their commitment to product knowledge and outstanding customer service empowers a Sensemillier store to stand out from their competitors and even charge higher prices by providing a fully transparent and well-educated shopping experience.

Sensemillier stores are known for:

• Being operated by well-educated budtenders
• Carrying a carefully selected product menu of high-quality craft producers
• Offering fair prices that reflect the quality of a product
• Evaluating each product they carry to provide accurate product information to their customers

As a result, Sensemillier stores are proud of going the extra mile to provide the most professional cannabis retail experience.

In contrast, a ‘regular’ cannabis store differs from a Sensemillier store by:

• Being operated by uneducated budtenders
• Carrying a huge product menu filled with low-quality budget brands
• Pricing that only depends on the purchase price
• Sporadic product evaluation without recording product details

As a result, ‘regular’ cannabis stores have no interest in going the extra mile as their main concern is making money by any means necessary.

The ethics and principles of a Sensemillier store can, therefore, be summarized as:

“Thriving through education, customer service and transparency.”

While the ethics and principles of a ‘regular’ store can be summarized as:

”Surviving by making money.”

However, we believe that turning your ‘regular’ store into a ‘Sensemillier’ store isn’t as complicated and tedious as many store owners expect it to be.

The most seamless way to accomplish this transition is by applying our Sensemillier Grading Platform to your business. Let’s look at how that is done.

Applying grading to your business: Organize & Incentivize

To apply relevant product grading to your business, all you have to do is follow this 3-step process:

1. Organize 📝
2. Incentivize 🤝
3. Capitalize 💰

Here’s how it’s done 👇🏻

1. Organize

The first step in organizing your business to ensure an optimal workflow for your ongoing product evaluations is by signing up for the Retail Plan of our Grading Platform and adding your most experienced product evaluators to your team space.

Once you have your grading team set up, you should nominate your most reliable Sensemillier as the Grading Supervisor.

The Grading Supervisor is in charge of making sure his team members are completing the grading and can answer any questions that the team or your customers have about the grading process.

Lastly, your grading team should have a dedicated grading area equipped with a digital desktop microscope, a branded lighter, a rolling tray, papers and a grinder. This grading area should preferably be set up behind a counter or in the back of your store so that your staff can focus on doing the grading, which shouldn’t take any longer than 15 minutes per product.

💡 Organizing notes:

• Only the bud grading should be done when your staff is working a shift, as it’s prohibited to consume while working as a budtender!
  🚭 (Bud Grading at work, Joint grading at home)
• If you're concerned about the grading taking “too long,” I recommend tracking the time your staff spends on their phone or the store computer and asking yourself if you would rather pay them to benefit your store or to read random articles and Reddit threats on the internet.
  (I’ve been a store manager before and know what the budtenders are up to 😉)
• If you’re a store that uses bud pods as product displays, we highly encourage you to add a checkbox in a column called “product graded” to your product display & destruction log. This lets you integrate the grading process as an initial step in setting up your product displays. Doing so will allow you to turn your display expenses into relevant data investments. 📝🥦

2. Incentivize

To get your staff to grade various products, you need to incentivize their efforts to do so.

Here are some different ways to incentivize the grading to ensure that your testers are engaged in their work as a cannabis Sensemillier:

1. Allocate a sampling budget.
   Prepare a budget for your product sampling that allows you to expense a certain number of products each week or month that you can hand out to your testers so they can grade them through the Sensemillier Grading Platform
2. LP Samples only for dedicated Graders.
   Make it a requirement for your team to evaluate every third-party sample the LPs give you through the Grading Platform. It’s a simple rule that says, “No grading, no samples.”
3. Grading bonus.
   Offer a small cash bonus or free product to your employees for evaluating their own purchases. For example, give $50 or a free eighth of choice to every employee who grades at least 10 products a month through your team account on the Sensemillier Grading Platform.

Incentivizing the grading process will not only guarantee you more dedicated product evaluations, but it will also be a great asset to establish your company culture and make your employees feel like you care about their efforts and like to treat them well.

💡 Incentivizing notes:

• The more products your employees evaluate, the more educated they get and the more product information you will gather - it’s a win-win.
• Providing proper feedback to the LPs through the dedicated grading will help you foster great relationships with your suppliers.
• As your employees become more educated and thankful for your support in their product testing and professional progress, your company culture will start to blossom, leading to decreased turnover rates and a greater business reputation.

Making the most out of it: Capitalize

Once you have organized and incentivized, you’ll be set up to receive regular product evaluations from your staff that can now be capitalized in a variety of ways:

1. Grading products for LPs.
   LPs are lacking in adequate product feedback from industry professionals. By developing your grading program, you’ll be able to give them the relevant feedback they need to improve their products and charge them to do this service for them.
2. Run in-store grading pop-ups.
   Thought-leading cannabis stores like Pop’s Cannabis have already discovered this for themselves, and now it’s time that you try this out, too. Make your own in-store pop-up by grading and featuring a specific product under your microscope. Doing so will allow you to charge the LPs for doing promotional work for them and increase the sales of the respective products in your store.
3. Raise your prices for providing the most in-depth customer service.
   You’re going the extra mile. You know the exact quality of each product you carry. Your employees are experienced Sensemilliers. You are not a ‘regular’ cannabis store. You are a Sensemillier store! As a Sensemillier store, you will have all the leverage to increase your prices to reflect the efforts and expertise your business provides for its customers. Everyone can carry the same products, but no one can provide as much in-depth information as you do, and your customers will know to recognize and validate that by spending a couple more bucks in your store instead of going to a ‘regular’ store.
4. Mould makes you money.
   Say what?! Yes, you read that correctly. Finding undesirables like mould in your cannabis will make you money because you can recall these products, which in turn will get the LPs to buy the products back from you, while you can even leave a bit of a margin on it. As a result, you will make money by selling the entire case back, freeing up your inventory from faulty products, and ensuring the reputation of your store and the LP isn’t harmed.
5. Run your own Grading Events and Workshops.
   Your Sensemillier store is a thought-leading organization for cannabis education and product evaluation. Passionate cannabis consumers are eager to learn more about cannabis, which allows you to monetize your vast cannabis expertise by either hosting paid cannabis workshops or organizing free educational events to promote your business and certain products.

If you're eager to start organizing, incentivizing and capitalizing right away, then you can download our Sensemillier Implementation Checklist right here.

As you can see, there are many ways to monetize your cannabis grading services and expertise. Doing so can help you make the additional revenue and gain the necessary exposure to transform your cannabis store from a surviving ‘regular’ shop to a thriving Sensemillier store.

The last question that remains is whether you’re ready for this transformation and if you trust us to guide you on this pioneering path of revolutionizing cannabis retail?

If your answer is yes, then go sign up for the Retail Plan on the Sensemillier Grading Platform now and email us at info@sensemillier.com to kickstart your transformation!

If your answer is no, then good luck. You’ll need it.