211. One Thing you Can Do to Start Selling More Flex and Dedicated Desks

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211. One Thing you Can Do to Start Selling More Flex and Dedicated Desks

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert. Jamie Russo, Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. So I have a confession to make. I usually batch my podcast episodes and have a few in the bank ready to go.

00:00:39 Well, the one I had in the bank today, for various reasons, I decided I wanted to do something else. So a topic that keeps coming up in the Facebook group, if you're not in the Facebook group, join us, the everything co-working Facebook group in my mentee calls, I see it everywhere. People talking about how to sell flex or dedicated desks.

00:00:59 And I snuck in an intro on last week's podcast. I think it was last week's podcast. And that was two weeks ago. And Mark Eaton shout out to mark. He was like, I was listening to your intro. And I was like, what episode am I even listening to? So I kind of went on a rant about how buying flex or coworking is a bit more of an emotional decision because buying an office is a need,

00:01:24 but buying flex or coworking is not as much of a need, right? We have some emotional reason that drives us to get out of the office and into a coworking space. So I thought I would share a couple of practical tips for marketing flex and coworking. So it's super important to remember it's a different sale, right? So active searchers typically are looking for offices and probably what they do when they get to your website is they look at your pricing page and they say,

00:01:53 oh, what's flex. Or what's the dedicated desk or whatever crazy name you decided to name those plans, which drives me crazy. Just call it what it is. And so they poke around and they said, oh, that might be for me. Or they've been in a coworking space and they understand the product offerings, but that's still not going to be a ton of people.

00:02:15 Right? So when you think about marketing, you thinking about I'm an education mode on flex and coworking and have to show people why they want to buy this product. May not always be the case, but if you're having trouble moving it a COVID could be the case. Although there are plenty of places in the country that are selling dedicated desks and flex desks.

00:02:37 So we're not seeing that as an overall broad trend, although with the very cutting back, certainly the variant posing bigger newer challenges. We may see that become more of an issue, but in general, it is not a blanket statement that people can't sell flex and dedicated desks. So COVID aside, it's a sale. It takes different marketing skills like arguably what's your sales funnel for offices,

00:03:06 Google, Google my business, Google ads, good website, good two. We're done, right. We don't have to do all this kind of extra. I mean, to some extent maybe, but overall it's a simple sales funnel sell. We have the right tools in place, the right levers. We sell offices, but dedicated desks and coworking are just different,

00:03:28 right? I'm looking for a certain vibe. I'm looking for a certain kind of people. I'm looking for a certain kind of aesthetic looking for a reason to join or to understand why do I join? Who uses a dedicated desk who uses co-working. So start thinking about an education campaign to help your potential members understand who uses flex or dedicated desks or whatever you want to call them.

00:03:52 And what do they do for work? How do they use the space? What do they come in to do? What are the benefits they're getting out of being in the space, your private office clients, the benefits they're getting are like peace and quiet heads down. I make lots of phone calls. I do have to zoom calls. I simply need private space to do my work.

00:04:11 And I run the type of business that affords me the budget to have a private office. That's not the case for your dedicated desks and your coworking members. So if I'm thinking about justifying this or, you know, other people like me join coworking spaces and have a dedicated desk or coworking who part of those people that are like me. So in your newsletter,

00:04:34 on your social media, in your blog, post feature members and feature open space members, not just office members talk about what they do for a living show. Photos, do a simple member profile. And there are lots of great examples out there forge in Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama in the United States does a great member feature every single week in their newsletter.

00:04:59 And it's probably on their social, probably everywhere, a few simple questions, a link to their website or LinkedIn to their LinkedIn profile. So people can learn more about them. I do what other people like me do, right? Or if I want to be successful, if I want to grow my network or I want to be more productive, what do people that want other people that want those things?

00:05:20 Do they join a coworking space, educate people on that, tell people that. And there are other reasons, right? You know, your wife or your members, why they join a co-working space. And I think in my long-winded intro to the single use plastic episode, I mentioned things like, look, find the profile of your best open space are dedicated members.

00:05:42 Who are they? What do they do for work? And what are the levers you can pull to, to connect with more of them? Do you host a meetup? Do you run Facebook ads? Do you post other types of events that bring them into the space? Or is there a referral program that you can run? It simply takes more work and more hustle and like grassroots marketing to sell dedicated desks and coworking.

00:06:06 And if you don't have, I would argue if you don't have an active community and a really great community manager, it's going to be harder for you to sell those products because people join people, buy those products for bigger reasons than just, I need a place to work. So give that some thoughts and food for thought. So the one simple takeaway I would start doing to try to build the education and the connection to dedicated desks and coworking is your members tell your members stories.

00:06:40 And it can be very, very simple, simple member profile. Here's who they are. Here's why they joined the space. Here's what they do for work. So that people who relate to them will say, oh, maybe I should join the coworking space. I want to be, I want my life to look like that. Blog posts we have crystal from the L offices wrote a couple of amazing member feature blog posts that are up on her blog.

00:07:04 I'll link to them in the show notes. Again, simple. She did brief interviews with them. She's leveraging them on her social in her newsletter. You can do this. You can have your community manager, do it, have your community manager listening to super simple. Just write down a couple of simple questions, like one or two professional questions. Then,

00:07:23 then, then I like, what's your, the fourth forge does this. What's your favorite? Like weekend morning in Birmingham. And I read every single one of them kind of makes me want to move to Birmingham. They're always so compelling, but so a couple of professional, one personal, super, super simple, but start showing people who uses your dedicated desk and coworking it.

00:07:46 That's not the only thing you'll have to do to get those sales moving. But I want you to think about how do I start telling member stories in order to help people other potential members make a connection that I might belong in a coworking space too.

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