E 65 | What's Working in Recruiting Today | PART 2

[00:00:00] Dan: I didn't say it was like your split personality. You were talking to her.

[00:02:20] Dan: Ryan. Thanks for having me. Long time listener. First time caller.

[00:02:36] Dan: Yeah, I'd be happy to. Yeah. So my name is Dan Londello. I am the CEO and co founder of Rankerly High. We are an e commerce first web developer servicing cannabis dispensaries and pretty soon brands as well. Um, I started my career in the automotive industry. I built a company called Dealer Teamwork which grew from, which I helped to grow from fruition to OEM relationships with BMW, Kia, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:03:05] Dan: We, I believe we have somewhere in the vicinity of 2, 000 or more customers today, no longer operationally involved with the business, but I know it's still doing very well, uh, from there. I left to go start another business in a completely unrelated field, uh, in the home services field, saw a huge opportunity there to help electrical companies, plumbing, heating HVAC companies really succeed.

[00:03:26] Dan: I. Built a company called home and local services, which again, from fruition to a 150 or so customers before, you know, my world ended, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I had been living out in Minneapolis at the time when something like that happens, you drop everything, you go to be with your mom.

[00:03:44] Dan: And that's what I did. And, um, you know, through a series of events, I ended up leaving home and local services and. You know, back in 2018, I had been eyeballing, uh, the cannabis industry. I remember this very vividly. I tell the story often. I'll tell it again here. Um, I was in a meeting at dealer team or talking about, uh, Facebook marketing.

[00:04:05] Dan: And I was just on Facebook watching all of my friends winding up around dispensaries here in Massachusetts, where I was born and raised and now reside again, uh, by wind up to buy legal cannabis from the dispensaries that just opened and I was like, this is so cool. I can't wait to go back home for Christmas break and buy some legal weed.

[00:04:25] Dan: And then I did a little bit more exploration. I went on some of these websites for some of these businesses and I was like, Oh, that's dinks. We're using high frames. The websites made no sense aesthetically. And I, I remember the day exactly. It was November 20th, 2018. That was the day that Rex sales went online with a Massachusetts.

[00:04:46] Dan: That was also the day that I registered the domain rankerlyhigh. com. Had no idea what I would do with it, but I knew I would do something with it at some point and uh, You know april of 2021. We registered myself my co founders We registered that business for vanilla lc and went off to the races Um, but a little bit more about me.

[00:05:05] Dan: I'm a three time google premier partner three time microsoft accredited partner. Um, basically Uh accredited or certified in almost every single digital platform out there that makes sense for advertising For rank really high outside of websites, which is what we're really well known for. We do a lot of other really cool shit as well.

[00:05:23] Dan: We do digital advertising on and off of the website. We collaborate with brands. We do co op, we do co marketing. I mean, we're trying to emulate the aesthetic that you would see from a big box retailer and bring that knowledge and know how to cannabis operators who. By and large, usually do not have that expertise, do not have that retail background.

[00:05:42] Dan: I want to, and that's really what I think we're here to discuss.

[00:07:05] Dan: Yeah. Let's talk about.

[00:07:10] Dan: That should be the number one on every dispensary owners list is how to figure out who my customer is and cater an aesthetic around that. You know, I'm going to say some things that are going to be a little bit controversial today, but know that they come from the heart and from a general sense of wanting our dispensary partners and also people who are just competing in cannabis to do better.

[00:07:31] Dan: Cannabis is a very odd bird. I'm going to just put that out there right away. You know, I'm not sure where this trend came from, but it probably needs to be reexamined. Um, many dispensary operators that I've seen that don't work with us, don't work with you guys generally, are focusing a lot of their website story and aesthetics around themselves.

[00:07:54] Dan: We're locally owned and operated, craft only products. We have this background, that background. They love to tell the entrepreneurial plight of their founders and how they got there, I'd hate to say it like this, but it is the absolute truth. Those are not great buying signals for your customer. Honestly, you want to try to cater to the lowest common denominator of shoppers.

[00:08:17] Dan: And you know, I look at demographic data. I look at pricing data and that's kind of where we start our story. Focus less on the journey of your entrepreneurs and founders and more on how to make a more convenient shopping experience for your customers. Um, and cannabis has its work cut out for in this regard.

[00:08:33] Dan: I mean, This is the only retail industry that I'm aware of that thinks it's completely appropriate to use, uh, iframes and subdomains and reverse proxies to market products online. If these were great solutions, or even good ones, why do other industries not use them by and large? They use things like WooCommerce.

[00:08:55] Dan: They use things like Shopify and they build more bespoke solutions around that. Why is cannabis using technology that limits their ability to grow? That was the first thing that we saw when we first started entering this is that some of the technology that support the online buying aspects is a little dated.

[00:09:13] Dan: Back to the, uh, owners and the founders. No one has ever gone to walmart. com to learn about the founder of Walmart. That's just not, that's not where you go. That's not where Sam Walton information is maintained. And that shouldn't be on your website's homepage either. From what we see, Brian, about 40 percent of customers, first interaction with the business is through their homepage.

[00:09:35] Dan: This is your opportunity to make a great first impression. This is your opportunity to make impact. The convenience of shopping with your Dispo obvious. So knowing that most customers place orders between 25 and 50 and putting that front and center, that makes a lot of sense. Making the, go ahead.

[00:10:26] Dan: That is a really amazing question. You know, how did Apple do it? How did Starbucks do it? How do Walgreens and CVS, two companies with identical business models, identical kind of store aesthetics do it? It's by creating a brand outside of just what colors you use, what your, what your uniform consists of.

[00:10:49] Dan: Remember what your website does. It's an experience you're trying to deliver on. But you know, it's a really hard question for me to answer because you know, well, on the one hand I'm saying to entrepreneurs out there in cannabis, don't focus on yourself. You kind of have to find a way to focus on yourself through osmosis, through doing a lot of things right.

[00:11:08] Dan: So Brian, that's a hard question for me to answer, to be honest with you.

[00:11:51] Dan: Let me answer your question the best I can though, you know, we do it through good product selection. Let me go back to my Walgreens and CVS example, if that's okay, Brian. Everyone I've, in the early days, frankly, how that I spoke to wanted to be the Apple store of cannabis, be the, um, That's Starbucks of cannabis, and in reality, it's very hard to do either of those things.

[00:12:12] Dan: There are a few that can, they are called vertically integrated operators, where they grow their own product, they manufacture their own products, and they pretty much exclusively sell their own product. That is pretty much what Apple does, and it's pretty much what Starbucks does. The reality is most retail cannabis dispensaries out there are working in a little bit different cup type of coordinates.

[00:12:34] Dan: They're working in the ones that CVS and Walgreens operate in. Let me tell you more about that. They both have red signs. They both have messy aisles. They both have people with red vests and white plastic name tags on their, on their suit. And they both sell Crest toothpaste for 9. 99. Which one do you pick, Brian and Juan?

[00:13:00] Dan: Convenience is a buying signal. We can all wrap our heads around. Cost is a buying signal. We can all wrap our heads around. If you're both selling Cresco flour at the same exact price, then there really isn't a great way to differentiate yourself. So you can focus on convenience. You can focus on a linear shopping experience.

[00:13:19] Dan: You can make a brand within doing things similar to other companies around you. That's, that's kind of the point I'm trying to get. I hope I've done a good job of illustrating.

[00:13:43] Dan: Yeah, it really shouldn't be about that much at all. There's an about us page. You can put all that on there. Um, yeah, you know, so a few of the things that I would recommend outside of working with us is in general, uh, geolocation outside of this being one of the only industries I'm aware of that sells products.

[00:14:00] Dan: online that uses iframes. This is also one of the only retail industries I'm aware of where you have actual physical storefronts and rather than using pretty commonplace geographic location technology to figure out which store is closest to me, the customer, we're asking them to go through these laundry lists of stores.

[00:14:19] Dan: And not have a great address information and not make it very obvious which one's closest to me You put all that burden on me as a customer There are a number of different ways that dispensers especially ones of multiple locations Can make finding the one closest to a customer much easier I strongly suggest making that investment because it will pay off in dividends We we just well, we have the same Rentally, I have stickers somewhere in my office that say this Uh, one click to cannabis now, everyone in cannabis who's running a legal dispensary, I believe has to have some form of age verification, call it an age gate.

[00:14:57] Dan: Once they've clicked that, what is the first thing that they see? Is it a story about their, about their handsome founder, Dan Mondello? Or is it a story about here are products that our other customers have found really great. Here are products that help with sleep. Here are products that help with athleticism or recovery.

[00:15:14] Dan: These are the types of areas. I think cannabis sponsors need to like wake up and look at, I mean, You know, we're all racing to the bottom on price front, but the reality is, we should not be competing with each other necessarily. We should be competing with the pharmaceutical industry, big pharma, who is, who has given us solutions for sleep that we take pills daily for anxiety, ADHD, I'll raise my hand for that one.

[00:15:39] Dan: Um, you know, pain management. Yeah,

[00:15:46] Dan: precisely.

[00:15:57] Dan: Yeah, we did. We pulled some research together and we found that 65 percent of cannabis customers buying cannabis from legal places, dispensaries mostly, are not doing it to get high anymore. They're doing it to cope with day to day life ailments. They're doing it to help with sleep. Rather than focusing on how cheap can we sell this eighth of flower?

[00:16:20] Dan: Why don't we focus on finding solutions that will help our customers replace traditional pharmaceutical solutions with a non habit forming plant? That is a winning solution. Raising the bottle on the price of an eighth is not

[00:16:45] Dan: right.

[00:17:22] Dan: Seems obvious, right? Yeah, I mean most, like again, most dispensers are saying pick a location And then you can have that experience. What I'm saying is have your site pick the location closest for you and then immediately start the shopping experience where you can say, okay, now you're shopping Dan's dispensary in Grafton, Massachusetts.

[00:17:40] Dan: Here's the things we have on sale. Here's our, our top level categories. Here's our bundles. Here's our specials. Here's this, here's that you can orient and cater that experience to be much more desirable and impactful for the customer versus, you know, Putting the burden of finding the location on them and the burden of figuring out what the top selling products are on them And then making them go through a series of filters to find the least expensive Quarter or eighth of a flower You can do a lot of that homework for them and I suggest you do and there's ways to do it with iframes And there's ways to do it better with subdomains and there's ways to do it with native e commerce, which is the one I would ignore But there's ways to do it regardless

[00:19:18] Dan: I'm going to take it back to the automotive industry because I'm actually old enough now, Brian to remember when a truck month, I'm sure many people on, on, on the call here today, or I'm listening in. I've heard of truck month, truck month used to be one month a year where Ford would sell a crap ton of trucks or Chevy would sell a crap ton of trucks or Ram would sell a crap ton of trucks.

[00:19:41] Dan: And then. All of these OEMs, before it was the Chevy's corporate office, figured out, huh, if we tell them it's truck month and give them a national offer of lease or whatever, whether it's a good lease or a bad lease is kind of irrelevant. They think they're getting a deal. We're making a lot of buzz about it.

[00:20:02] Dan: Let's make truck month twice a year. Let's make truck month Truck month is almost every month as far as I can tell right now. So you can create buzz around anything. Yeah, I mean as a dispensary, 420, you should be rolling out those 420 deals in mid March, maybe even a tad earlier. Especially if you're on native Vcom, those pages will start to rank, those pages will start to index.

[00:20:25] Dan: And let's talk a little more about 420. Don't just create one special for 420. Create your 420 ounce deal. Create your 420 H deal. Create your bundle pack. Create your like, you know, buy everything that's legal, legal dosage package. I mean, create a special for every single category, especially the top performing sales categories like flour, pre rolls, you know, edibles and vapes.

[00:20:50] Dan: Those you should have specials for year round. You should always have those four categories at a minimum. But you know, I wouldn't know. I would also say like 420 topical deals, 420 tincture deals. I mean that having specials consistently and having a strategy around it is incredibly important. Uh, how to season that?

[00:21:07] Dan: I'll go out, sorry.

[00:21:46] Dan: Absolutely. I mean, I think you should be flipping out your, your homepage look and feel. You should be changing that up frequently, often. I mean, you and I were just talking about both East coasters. It's 90 degrees out last right now. I would love to be picking up a Levia drink or a good feels beverage right now after work, of course, and uh, enjoying it.

[00:22:04] Dan: Um, that summertime is a prime time to be promoting cannabis, seltzers and cannabis drinks. There's no better time. In fact, this is the time to be outside having a good, uh, social cocktail. Um, you know, seven 10 it's next month. It's actually the couple of weeks we should be promoting oil. Like I'm not a big concentrates guy, but I'm also not a big concentrates guy because no one's ever sold me on like, you should check this out.

[00:22:26] Dan: It's cool. Education could be a thing we could be focusing on right now to get people excited about, about oils. not. And we should be p Um, green Wednesday, man, the days leading up to gr a giant spike. You know w talk about friday, which after green Wednesday. Li go and you have your Than smoke some weed of your f Friday is always a great day to sell things in this industry.

[00:22:55] Dan: We see humongous sales every Friday. Why not every disc ball in the country is not running some sort of great offer for Friday to raise those margins and pack those carts. I'll never understand, but you know, seasonality can be, you know, summer, fall, winter, spring seasonality can also be every Friday is a good day to sell something in cannabis.

[00:23:15] Dan: So let's take advantage of it.

[00:23:32] Dan: Oh, I'm sure they will Brian. I feel very confident that many brands would love to be proactive and coordinate and collaborate with dispensers that want to promote their products. I think that'd be a real easy conversation to have.

[00:24:02] Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll also make a link available to all your listeners. I actually have a webinar I've done on this particular topic. It's incredible. I think it's insightful. I think everything I do is insightful.

[00:24:15] Dan: But, um, yeah, so top down specials in cannabis, we think I'll have a page on my iFriend that has specials on it. Mission accomplished. That is not mission accomplished. We did a really, really unique study on how big retail handles specials and how they show off their specials. I want to talk about target cause they are a prime example of this.

[00:24:36] Dan: So we started doing this study right around the end of Valentine's day, beginning of like spring and Easter. So about two and a half, three month period target changed their homepage up. We lost track of it was at least a hundred major changes just to their homepage over the course of approximately three months.

[00:24:56] Dan: You know, so the days leading up to valentine's day Everything was chocolates and candy and flowers. It was pink. It was red It was white and then as soon as valentine's day was nearing an end All those candies were still there, but they were at like a 55 percent or a greater discount because that stuff needs to go No one's gonna they don't want to warehouse all the bouquets and stuff.

[00:25:16] Dan: They can't there's expiration dates on a lot of this product as well The second that that was no longer relevant They were trying to convince me to go on a spring vacation or new year new use like I mean

[00:25:30] Dan: Exactly. I mean, like these other companies are changing stuff up frequently and they're promoting it throughout. So having a specialist top down strategy doesn't mean I have a page. I put specials on it. It means I have multiple links to that specialist page and multiple areas of the navigation. It means that we have a section on the homepage that promotes our best deals.

[00:25:50] Dan: It means that we have consistent deals. You know, it doesn't have to be something to do in, in the back end of an e commerce tool either. You can literally like have sections that say, flower ace under 50 or 35 pre rolls for 10 or less. These are not specials. These are just things that people are naturally going to be looking for, make them prominent.

[00:26:08] Dan: That is a top down special strategy.

[00:26:25] Dan: Yeah. You know, SEMrush is one of those tools that I know has a lot of value. I'm not a particular, um, subscriber to it. Where we get most of our data from is, you know, we have great first party retail data because we're on a zillion websites across the country. So we look at that. There are other products out there.

[00:26:42] Dan: I know that hoodie has amazing analytics on this, on this type of retail stuff. And there's others as well. We really subscribe to those types of tools, understand where the market's going, because. What I found, I found this even in automotive as well. Just because someone is searching for something doesn't mean they have the intention to buy it.

[00:27:00] Dan: I'll give you a kind of current example. I'm not taking on a political stance on this. I want to make sure I'm very clear on that. But electric vehicles were the top of every search and they still are in many areas. Have you seen what ford and hyundai and others are doing? They are very kind of quietly backing out of them because the consumer Has actually spoken and they don't think they're ready buy in march 4 because of the inconvenience of charging So there's still a Crap ton of search volume for EVs, but that doesn't necessarily translate to sales on the showroom floor.

[00:27:36] Dan: So don't be misled by search trends. You always want to have that scope, but also be looking at your retail microscope as well to understand, okay, just because there's a lot of interest in this doesn't mean I should put all my ducks into this one, this one bag, all my eggs in this one basket rather.

[00:28:08] Dan: Yeah. So, uh, Hoody has done a lot of great research on this. Green State has a lot of great data on this. The average customer age for cannabis in this country is a male under 40 years old. The average amount of money that they spend is between 25 to 50. So we're talking about mostly millennials and younger who don't have a lot of capital, what products are going to speak most to them.

[00:28:33] Dan: And then in the sales results, I'm going to show it to you. I know that all of the major e commerce tools and every single major POS is going to have some sort of report you can get to I've seen flourishes reports. They have amazing reports on this stuff. They're going to show you what products, what product categories are moving.

[00:28:50] Dan: That's always going to be these four. And mostly this word is always going to be flower. Number one, in some major metros like New York, you might see vapes number two or number one, but usually it's flower. Number one, vapes are pre rolls number two or three. They kind of switch places. And then edibles is always rounding out that top four.

[00:29:07] Dan: That is always going to be it. Now, that means everyone should focus on that. At the same time, topicals need some love too. Tinctures need some love too. The reason these products aren't flying off the shelves is because we don't spend enough time educating the customer about it. I went from never using topicals, Brian, to, I like to work out.

[00:29:26] Dan: I use CBD rub on my joints. nightly now, which means that I'm buying that stuff all the time. It's not cheap. This is like 120 CBD free. And I'm buying it frequently too, which means I'm a loyal customer, not always price conscious, because this is like 120. That doesn't feel super cheap to me, but I'm buying it routinely because it has improved my life.

[00:29:54] Dan: So, um,

[00:30:34] Dan: It's kind of the same answer to your previous question. But how do you identify what's working and double down on it? Well, you know, I see a lot of dispensaries make this mistake as well. Brian, they have a team or an agency that they're paying a good amount of money to every single month to make all types of social media posts.

[00:30:53] Dan: They go out to their 250, 300 followers, and those aren't always customers, those are competitors. You're not letting them know what you're up to. Those are your staff who already does know what's going on, and it's yourself, and a few customers mixed in there. I think what dispensaries should be looking at is where is the best ROI?

[00:31:12] Dan: And typically when it comes to an email newsletter or a text newsletter, however you're deploying it, those are people who have already come to your dispensary and bought something and supplied you with their contact information. The cheapest customer you can, you can solicit or market to is the one who has already bought from you.

[00:31:28] Dan: So I think that it would be foolish to not have a newsletter, some sort of loyalty program or retention tool in personal dispo in America, social media. You know what? It's a strategy that I don't think fits all one size does not fit all on that. There's too much investment. They're not enough ROI and it's impossible to track how many dispose out there, Brian.

[00:31:49] Dan: I've gotten their Instagram shut down for reasons that they'd never find out. And then they've got their three or 4, 000 completely abandoned. And they can start over from scratch. One of the major newsletter companies out there, the, the, the, the Alpines and the whatnot's out there, they do a pretty good job of navigating that compliance piece for you.

[00:32:08] Dan: And those are already customers who have bought something from you They should be fairly reasonably easy to convince to come back in. So I would put Yeah I'm gonna

[00:32:41] Dan: plug some stuff too. Hold on So I love that alpine and and some of the others do as well But I love that alpine makes it really easy for a brand that's in a dispensary's menu To collaborate and co market with them in a newsletter. We do similar things. I know you guys do some similar things You Back to social media, every dispensary, I think, across North America does pop ups where a brand will come and sit in your showroom and occupy space for, you know, a couple hours and no one will show up and it'll just be embarrassing.

[00:33:10] Dan: Not that that always happens, but Wouldn't you do a much better job promoting this if your website said, Hey, PAX is coming in this week. Come check them out. We're going to have free hot dogs. Or you send out an email blast that says that, or it's also in your social media all or you put it in all of your marketing channels and maximize your exposure.

[00:33:28] Dan: I'm pretty sure a brand like PAX or Awana would be willing to set aside some marketing resources to help maximize that megaphone. You just have to ask. I'm sure they'd be, you got to ask. Yes.

[00:34:18] Dan: Yeah, there's um, absolutely. There's a, a couple big mainstay solutions out there that offer somewhat limited customization options. I mean, there's definitely ways to get around that, but there's not. It's fairly limited. We're talking about an industry, Brian, it goes back again to that Walgreens, CVS example.

[00:34:37] Dan: We're selling the same stuff for the same price, a menu, a stack that looks the same as our competitor. How do you stand out? You can go to bestbuy. com, go to walmart. com, go to Target or Lowe's and put your arm over the brand bar where it says Lowe's and it has all their colors. Nine times out of 10, you're still going to be able to recognize, Oh, I'm on Home Depot.

[00:34:57] Dan: It has orange colors. It has a lot of this. Or, oh, I'm on Target because it has the Target Plus Members Club. They do things outside of just their colors to make their brand succinct. That's challenging in cannabis, but not impossible. Um, one thing that you can do regardless of what e commerce you're on, is it, especially if you're vertically integrated, If you have a product you're selling at your dispensaries and elsewhere, get a watermark on there.

[00:35:25] Dan: There's a brand out in Michigan, Butter, that has their watermark on all their flour. So if they're like syndicating their products through another dispensary or to a Weedmaps, a Leafly, or wherever, It says their brand name on it. So it creates this massive amount of brand awareness that they don't pay anything.

[00:35:43] Dan: We did that in the automotive industry at needs to come to cannabis as well.

[00:36:13] Dan: Yeah. You know, I think we talked to, I know that in some markets in some states you can't have a loyalty program. We've talked about some of the companies on this call, like Alpine's and the spring makes it have ways to sign up for those types of things. Brand them, you know, no, no one, I, sorry, Nick, nobody knows what Alpine IQ is who doesn't work in the cannabis, like retail network, like your customers don't even a hundred percent know what that is.

[00:36:39] Dan: So having a page on my site that says Alpine doesn't really help. But if I was to say, you know, Weber dispensary loyalty program, you can brand this stuff. Alpine helps you do this with logos. Go ahead, go further. Don't just put your iFrame in there and say, I'm done. What's some one, two, three steps on how to, how to enroll, make it, what are the perks, what are the benefits show that up front?

[00:37:01] Dan: This is what, you know, honestly, the biggest thing, Brian, go look at what big retail is doing, spend some time on their homepage, spend some time on their footer, see what they're doing and see one of those strategies you can cheaply. Adopt and there's a lot, there's a ton in it.

[00:38:38] Dan: Yeah. You know, I, I, as you said, I love LinkedIn. I'm on it all the time. It's my fa, it's my favorite social network, which is how you know I'm old. Uh, yeah. Search for Dan or Daniel Ello on LinkedIn. You'll find me pretty easily. I'm also on Instagram. Uh, you can always email me at dan@ranklyhigh.com. Pretty easy to remember.

[00:38:56] Dan: Then go to ranker hi.com if you wanna check myself or any of our sales team. One more thing for your listeners, Brian, that I want everyone who listens to this today to go and do. It's a small exercise. Go into an incognito, um, browser, you know, no, no search history saved. Google yourself, go to your website, and then from the age gate, count how many clicks it takes you to find your closest location, and then put the number one purchased product nationally in your cart, which is a inexpensive.

[00:39:29] Dan: Eighth of flower. If that takes more than four clicks, you're in big trouble. If it takes more than one, you're in big trouble, but if it takes more than four, you are well outside of the industry average right now. I have seen this.

[00:40:02] Dan: Brian, you're a gem. I really appreciate you.