The Secret To Building a Franchise Sales Team

Your CBD Store, which claims to be the largest seller of hemp-derived CBD products in the world based in Palmetto, Florida, opened with a single store in 2018.

It’s mission: To sell a CBD product line called SunMed, which was made by Your CBD Store parent company, SunFlora. Their products are marketed as supplements for general health and wellness, sleep, skincare, and even pets.

To grow, the company started a Your CBD Store affiliate sales program. Fast forward to mid-2019. Your CBD Store already had 277 affiliates on board. 

By March of 2020, the company decided to switch gears and fuel growth through franchising rather than affiliates. “A franchising model allows us to be an integral part of each of our franchisee’s operational support and overall success,” Your CBD Store President of franchise systems Jay Benge said.

Fast forward again to the end of 2020. Your CBD Store gained approval to open brick-and-mortar franchises in 46 states, and had 161 franchise agreements signed. 

How did they create such a vertical trajectory? 

1851 Franchise spoke to Benge, and his colleague, Bill Van Den Acre, vice president of franchises, to understand their secrets to growing an effective sales team.

1851 Franchise: Tell us a little about Your CBD Store.

Jay Benge: We offer SunMed-branded products available in our brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, we're also the manufacturers of our products and have over 180 different products of hemp-derived cannabinoids with different properties that help you in different ways. Additionally, we also have an award-winning line of pet supplements.

1851: How did you build your sales team? 

Benge: We use metrics and data to determine the size we needed. We developed a one-, three-, and five-year plan to build out our franchise sales team to match our expected growth. We asked ourselves, what was the growth we wanted to see over those respective periods, and then did the math behind it. What does that look like on a monthly basis? What does it look like on a daily basis? From there, it gave us numbers that we're able to translate into the total number of team members we need to accomplish those goals. 

1851: How do you budget for a sales team? Is there a rule of thumb?

Bill Van Den Acre: I guess the short answer is not really. As an executive team, we looked at that one-, three- and five-year strategic plan, and asked what number of operating franchise locations do we want at the end of that period? That's really the key driver that gets broken down into bite-sized pieces. So, what is the goal on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis? Then you look at your success rate, then ask how many leads does it take to get a successful franchise. Then determine the math as to what your sales team can handle. It really does become a numbers game.

1851: What are some ways that franchise sales teams make mistakes?

Benge: It really relates back to having a plan in place and following the plan. When sales teams deviate from the plan, you start to run into errors, mistakes, lack of documentation or the sales team just going off the rails and having no way to salvage it. We use a sales management tool where we've outlined probably about 30 steps that sales reps need to accomplish in order to close sales. We find that when our sales reps deviate from those 30 steps, typically that’s when the sale becomes at risk. 

The steps include things like when to call your leads; when to help them fill out the application; have we run their background check?; have we talked to them about their business plan? It’s important to follow a series of steps to help lead sales representatives target potential franchise owners, to assist them to open their doors in about 90 days and finally, to become a successful business.

1851: So it's more than a “sign here on the dotted line” approach? 

Benge: It is a nurturing process. Becoming an independent business person or independent owner can be a scary proposition. As a franchisor, it's our responsibility to help franchisees with that. A simple two-minute phone call to say, ‘How you doing, how’d you make it out with that franchise document or whatever it is,” can go a long way.

1851: How do you balance growth with franchisee support needs? 

Benge: Our CEO, Marcus Quinn, recently was featured in an article and said one of the top five things that he wished he had known when creating this business was the importance of anticipating manpower needs and hiring people with the knowledge prior to actually needing those people. 

Van Den Acre: Once you have a goal or a budget of what you're looking to grow over a specific timeframe, it becomes easier to determine your franchise support needs. At our brand, our franchise support team works hand-in-hand with our sales team. We're selling franchises and selling a way of doing business. So from early in the sales process, our franchise support team is heavily involved with the franchise sales consultants.