Last month I wrote about things I learned about sales during my 20 years of running a major CD ROM publishing company. Topics Entertainment sold to all the majors, including Costco, Best Buy, Amazon and Target.
I had a dozen sales staff at Topics Entertainment, and my team were known for their tenacity and skill. We also had kick-ass products that we published from big names like Playboy Interactive, Scholastic, National Geographic, Kaplan Test Prep and Rand McNally.
In short — and I’m bragging here — we deserved the many awards we got and our inclusion in the Inc. 500 two years running. However, great products, great packaging, a skilled sales team and aggressive pricing mean nothing if your operations department sucks. And you can guess, our warehouse/shipping team were also top notch. So good, in fact, that Costco once asked my operations manager to host a short video on how to correctly label and ship to their distribution centers. Which she did.
I’m bringing up the importance of operations for two reasons: First, you can have the best product in the world, but if your warehouse team can’t count out purchase orders correctly, ship them to the right address or invoice accurately, you might as well quit now; and second, because after eight years of reporting on the cannabis business and visiting many grows and retailers, I can assure you that many (most?) companies in this industry have terrible operations departments.
Just last week, a new accessory manufacturer who wanted me to get his product into the hands of big retailers at our Interchange event in Spokane, Washington, shipped to the wrong address, got the arrival date mixed up and generally blew it. His product never did make it to the show.
Late last year, I had roughly the same thing happen when an out-of-state edibles company wanted to send me (non-infused) samples of their products for inclusion in a national article on edibles. Three times I inquired into the whereabouts of their products. Three times I was told they were on their way, and three times they never arrived. That’s an inexcusable example of stupidity, bad management and an operations department that had no idea what they were doing. (I did finally get samples, but far too late for a review).
What’s the opposite? In Washington state, the No. 1 producer/processor is a company called Grow Op Farms, based in the Spokane area. They’ve been No. 1 almost since day one. I can remember six years ago asking some of the big cannabis retailers in the Seattle area what it was about the company that made their products so good, and the typical answer went something like this: “They grow really good, consistently top-shelf flower. However, the reason we love them is because they always ship on time, their purchase orders are always counted out correctly and, if I do have a problem, they get back to me right away.”
In short, this company, which does about $5 million per month in flower sales in Washington, became known more for its really polished operations department than its flower. That’s not to say that their flower isn’t top notch, because it is and always has been. However, what their retail customers really liked (and remembered) was their expert shipping department and the fact that they minimized the hassles (and wasted time) their customers spent sorting out mis-ships, incorrect products and late deliveries. Food for thought!
Greg James
Publisher