355. Coworking Sales Funnel Insights From a Trip to the Groomer
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Live Masterclass: on August 15th: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
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Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
TRANSCRIPTION
355. Coworking Sales Funnel Insights From a Trip to the Groomer
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how tos in coworking. I owned and operated coworking spaces for eight years and then served as the executive director of the Global Workspace association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought provoking operator case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the coworking industry."
00:00:43,"Hey there. Did you know that the three critical decisions that you're going to make that will drive the success of your coworking space happen before you even sign your lease? Most people get these wrong. Did you know that there's a stat out there that says that 50% of coworking spaces aren't profitable? I don't want to believe that stat. And yet I suspect it's probably true because a lot of people make these mistakes."
00:01:13,"So this podcast episode is sponsored by our upcoming live Master, during which we're going to help you identify and avoid these three mistakes. So join me live on Thursday, August 15 at 10:00 a.m. pacific 01:00 p.m. eastern for our live masterclass. Grab your seat at everything coworking.com forward slash live. If you can't make it live, it will be recorded, but we want you to come live. You'll get the most value."
00:01:42,"You can ask questions. We'll dig in to those three critical decisions. So we'll see you on August 15. And now into today's episode. Today we are going to talk about sales funnel. It's one of my favorite topics and we're going to do this by using my experience booking an appointment with a business that is not co working related because I think that you'll relate to this and I think sometimes I know I do this with my own business."
00:02:13,"Don't apply the things that are important to us when we are acting as a consumer to our own businesses. We make excuses. We have reasons why we don't make things easier or don't get to things related to the sales funnel that are super important. So I want to talk about that today using this example. So the reason I so I needed to book a grooming appointment for my two dogs."
00:02:40,"So I have two mini golden doodles, Louie and Charlie. Louie is nine and Charlie is two. And we have a groomer that we've been using for years and years called Groomingdale's. Yes bougie sounding. And let me tell you, it's super expensive. That was a little bit of a lesson learned as I was going through this process, but you can relate. I am sure that it's expensive because rent in our town, we have a small ish downtown, but very active people love downtown and we actually have two areas of downtown and this is the less popular one, so rent should be a little bit less."
00:03:19,"But rent for any sort of retail level business is really expensive. So I'm sure that they are just trying to make a decent living and they have to charge this rate and they have to pay a living wage to the groomers that work for them. So the owner of the grooming salon, grooming Dales, is not, she doesn't, she's not a groomer. She manages the business from home, which maybe you as a co working space owner can relate to."
00:03:49,"She, I think she bought the business, so we'd been going there even before she bought the business. She bought it. Her name is Kat and Katie. Not like Cat Johnson, but Katie. And then she had her first baby, so she went on Mat leave and I don't think she came back. She found groomers to run the space for her. She, however, did all the appointment booking from home and this is where things get a little bit tricky."
00:04:19,"So I know she's at home and so it feels awkward. Not that this is the same in a coworking business, but she did not have online booking. So I have to text her and ask her, can I get the dogs in? And we would spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to fit in two dogs on the same day at a time that worked for her and worked for me."
00:04:42,"And frankly, I would wait too long to book the dogs for an appointment because I just hated this process and I was just lazy about making time for it, frankly. And I am one of the least lazy people that I know. And so I always remind people, like, look, humans are lazy. Even I put things off if they're too much work. And I am an enneagram three and I am not lazy."
00:05:06,"So I said to her one time, I said, cat, why don't you, why don't you have online booking? And she said, she just made a lot of excuses, like, let's complicated and big dog, little dog, blah, blah, blah. And I was maybe. But basically she's created this scheduling job for herself at home. And sometimes I would call her and she'd be like a little frantic because the kid's not doing what the kid should be doing."
00:05:36,"And then I didn't realize she just had another child. So anyway, long story short, I love to support local businesses. I liked her. I loved the groomer. It was just very complicated to get the grooming done. So I texted her recently and she didn't respond. And I can't follow it up. And my dogs were like, needed a groom. So she said, oh, I just sold the business. I don't own it anymore."
00:06:04,"It was too much to manage with two small children at home. And, like, my first thought was, probably not if you had online booking. Right. Like, she really could have been almost a passive owner. She could have made the whole thing far more tech enabled and been less, way less involved on a day to day basis. But she had this resistance, this story she's telling herself about why she can't automate certain things."
00:06:30,"And I, you know, again, I didn't dig into what all of, you know, her hang ups are around doing so, but it really obviously impeded in her ability to manage the business with small children at home. She may have also have just decided she didn't want the liability of the lease anymore and that she would prefer to sell it. That. But I totally understand. But also, when things are automated, your costs go down."
00:06:57,"Right. Uh, fast forward to having to book and not having groomingdale's to go to. Here's what I tried next. So I am actually not in town for the summer. I was going, or most of the summer, I was going to go back home just to get the dogs groomed. So we let Charlie swim in the lake in the summer. They're a little smelly and Charlie had a, has a little bit of matting on her ears from getting in the water and not getting brushed."
00:07:30,"Quite appropriately. Dog parent error. They needed to get groomed and now my dog groomer is not open anymore. I was going to have to do a mobile groomer, which is fine. Although interestingly, they, I was thinking about this. I'm always thinking about, like, pricing and value prop. The mobile groomer is almost as expensive as taking the dogs to the regular groomer, even though the mobile groomer is not paying rent."
00:07:58,"I mean, they do have to pay for the cost of their grooming van, but that can't take that long to pay off. Interesting. We are spending a lot of the summer in Truckee and, which is near Lake Tahoe. And I looked in Truckee and they have online booking. And I could see from the online booking there's only one groomer in town and they're booked out a month. So so that doesn't work."
00:08:25,"So I said, okay, I'm going to have to go to Reno. So I don't know anybody who gets their dogs groomed in Reno. So I googled groomer, Reno, Nevada, in Google Maps. I think I did it on my computer, not on my phone. And there are a lot of groomers in Reno. It's city, there's a lot of options. And the. I didn't notice this until I came back to it."
00:08:50,"The first one that popped up is actually an ad and it is the only sponsored. I think it's the. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the only sponsored groomer on the search results list. Kudos to them. And there's a little bit more to that story and partly why we're talking about sales funnel, because I realized that if I open a new browser and I typed in something slightly different, they didn't come up in the top search results and so they must be running ads against certain keywords that are making them come up."
00:09:29,"First. I clicked on them and you can tell they've got great reviews. They've got 118 photos. They very diligently add to their Google Business post, which also should help them show up more organically. They have two locations and they I can immediately go to their website and I can book online. So that was a huge win. So I see they have great reviews and then I go to their website book online 24/7 by clicking on the desired location."
00:10:07,"So they actually have three locations. I didn't notice this before, so I picked the one that I thought was closest to me and I booked online and the booking was super easy. It was very clear I never talked to a human until I did have a question to ask. So I filled in the fact that I had two pets and it told me I had to fill out some form, liability form or something, and then I had to send them or I had attached somewhere."
00:10:42,"I can't remember the exact workflow, but I had attached their vaccine recommend records, which I also logged in and got online from our vetted, which was amazing. So I could just log in and literally pull their certificates without having to bug anyone on staff. What I. So let me. So I'm really talking about the tech enabled experience of booking and choosing a place, and you don't take tours of groomers and it's not 100% analogous to co working."
00:11:19,"But I was thrilled that this was as easy as possible. But I also was banking on the fact that I would have a really good experience and a good outcome based on the reviews that I saw online. So I booked and then, but when I was booking, I read it wrong and thought they were charging a booking fee of dollar 30. So the online, you can't do this in every state."
00:11:46,"But there was a booking fee and then a deposit, and I didn't read it right. And I thought the booking fee was $30. And I was like, that's crazy. I'm not paying a $30 fee just to book online. I hit the chat button and asked, like, their live chat button. And the live chat even says, or will usually reply within an hour at this time of day. So it's okay."
00:12:13,"That's cool. And then I looked at the screen again and realized, oh, I read it wrong. It's actually a deposit, which is, I think, really smart. And you could be doing that for meeting rooms, et cetera. So if, you know, show, which is a big opportunity cost for their groomers, you've at least paid a deposit. And human behavior generally says that if we put some money down, we're much more likely to actually do the thing."
00:12:37,"So I went ahead and booked, but they did respond pretty quickly, I want to say within the 15 minutes to my chat, which I thought was really impressive because it's a pet groomer they're grooming. So then they immediately sent me a text confirmation and they needed me to confirm. I didn't actually see that at first. I didn't see it until the next day. They really are asking you to confirm, which, again, is a great move for tours and meeting rooms if you can do it to make sure people are really committed."
00:13:13,"So super clear. They sent me a reminder over text and made it really clear I needed to show up on time. They were very clear about how long it would take to groom the pet. And actually, I noticed when I went back to look at the reviews, there's like a one star review where the guy complained about how long it took and he said it took 5 hours."
00:13:37,"And so now you can see in several areas where they communicate. They say, look, it takes two to 5 hours depending on when you get here and what needs to be done to your dog and who's in line and that kind of thing. And I was like, okay, got it. So I knew that I was going to spend the day at a Starbucks waiting for the dogs to get done."
00:13:56,"So I showed up and it's, they've got a cute little sign out front and I go in and groomers are always busy because they're grooming. Right. But they had someone at the front desk and she just immediately addressed me. She was not looking at her phone, she was nothing. Drinking Starbucks and talking to me at the same time, which I've had happen at co working spaces before, not yours."
00:14:17,"I'm sure she was totally focused on me and my dogs and checking us in and just, she was so warm. And I know that's one of the things you're looking for in your community managers, but it just reminded me, and we run a community manager program, so I meet a lot of your community managers and interact with them, and I can tell they are like this person, they really care."
00:14:41,"But in case you ever think it doesn't matter, it totally matters. My first impression after this tech enabled booking process and reminder process, I didn't interact with a human except for the live chat, which I loved because it was really efficient. I get this really warm, attentive greeting, and it was very simple. She did not do anything out of the norm, out of the usual. She was just very friendly and warm, and that made me feel really good."
00:15:09,"I adore my two golden doodles. And so I wanted to leave them in good hands, and she just said, okay, let me go grab your groomer. And the groomer was on the phone talking to a client who had a specific challenge with the dog that she needed to talk about. So the groomer came out, and again, we had a really nice interaction, and the groomer knew exactly how to get my dogs to stop barking like crazy while they had were being greeted."
00:15:34,"And the groomer asked me a lot of questions about what was important to me in the grooming. They even had this sample hair length template. So she was like, do you want a four? Do you want a three? Here's what it would look like. So very consultative, asking me what's important to me so that I don't have any surprises when I pick up the dogs. And that is, again, not totally analogous to co working, but that's exactly what we should be doing on tours, asking lots of questions."
00:16:04,"What's important to you? What makes you a fit here? What's going to make you a really happy customer? Right? Because she's thinking, when I hand these dogs back to you, I want this to be as expected, no surprises, and I want you to feel really comfortable. So that's part of the sales process and part of setting up a potential member to make them feel like we're going to take care of you."
00:16:25,"We understand what's important to you. We're going to recommend a solution. Workspace meeting room event space, whatever it is, that's a good fit for you. So I left the dogs and I knew I had, I asked her about the time and she said, yep, it's probably going to be 5 hours, like setting expectations. So I went to the Starbucks to do my work and uh, when they were done, I got an automated voicemail, which I also thought just made a ton of sense because then their team doesn't have to take time out to call and take time away from actually doing the grooming because it's a lot to manage."
00:17:05,"And I thought about this, I'm trying to think of exactly how that's analogous to co working. It may not be, but the automated process, I don't know how it works on their back end. I did get a little glimpse into their app. There's definitely, I think it was called groomer IO that's managing all of this. So I think it's just a really integrated tool that they're using for the full sales funnel, which is very cool."
00:17:32,"So in co working, we have to pull a lot of those pieces together, but I think it's really worth it. So automated phone call and they said, your dog will be ready in 20 minutes. Great. I could, I set a little timer on my watch, I could wrap up what I was doing and make sure I was there on time. And it was very clear to me through all the communication that like, hey, we're buttoned up, you need to be here on time."
00:17:53,"They also mentioned we can't hold your dogs for an hour after their appointment. So they're really setting expectations, which is fine because then I can plan and I know what to expect and I'm not unhappy if they're unhappy because I waited too long to pick up my dogs again that was automated. And then I got there and they just, they, before they brought out the dogs, I had a little chit chat with them."
00:18:18,"I think they had me pay before they brought out the dogs because they know it's mayhem when the dogs see me again because they love me. And I actually said, the woman at the front desk, I said, this has been such a great experience. I just, I really loved how tech enabled it was. And she said, oh, that's so nice to know. I'm the owner. And she's, some people just really struggle with this process and don't like it."
00:18:45,"She said, basically like people who are a little bit older. And I said, I love it because she seemed maybe a little younger than me, like younger kids. And she's, I know how my day goes. If sometimes I just can't get to making phone calls, and then I want to do it at night, and if I can't do it online, then I can't get it done, and that can be really frustrating."
00:19:07,"So a couple things here that I just want to relate to our business. One is let me finish the process. So the groomer brings the dogs out, and I chitchat with her. They look great. All good. We do not spend. It's a couple minutes interaction. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody's happy, and we leave. I get my receipt. By the way, the grooming was half the price of what I pay in my local town."
00:19:32,"I'm sure that their rent is less expensive. And. But one thing I wanted to note there, I was thinking, like, you know what? It was half the price of what I was paying. For a not so easy experience in my hometown, I got half the price and an even better experience. Right. It was very respectful of my time and the ability to book online. But then they were lovely and very customer service friendly when I actually went in with the dogs and it was great."
00:20:03,"And I could pay online. My groomer at home also, you can pay with a check or pay with Venmo. So I have to get out the Venmo app and do the scanning. No big deal. But this one was like Apple pay kind of point of service payment, which was awesome. And immediately when I get in the car, I've got the receipt, and then when I get home, I've got an email that said, thank you."
00:20:29,"Would you like to provide feedback? And it's got the default to the Google five stars. I clicked it and left them a review, and the owner responded by this morning pretty quickly. Thank you for the review. Ba ba. They're just really on it. Everything was automated. I paid. It triggers the review email. I leave the review. The response is obviously a personal response. And that's not automated, I don't think."
00:20:57,"But I don't know. It is amazing what's happening out there, and I don't want to. No spoiler alerts. But there's a team that's working on a customer service, an automated customer service approach that leverages AI that I think is really well done and will help. I think the tech enablement is making some pretty big advances right now. I've seen chat bots, like live chat bots, that seem like they're real people, that are pretty incredible, because even I'm guilty of this."
00:21:35,"In my business, if you hit our live chat, we do not respond right away. We don't have it manned all day. And so if we can create an AI version of it that tells you what you need, you don't really care if that's a real person or not. You just want to know what you need to know. So the advancements and then Gio and I have had flex AI on our podcast."
00:21:56,"They do a few things. They do dynamic pricing, but one of the simple things they do is they enable a frictionless experience for on demand booking. So not people who are buying memberships, but day passes, meeting rooms. If you go to a co working website who's using Flex AI, you don't have to create an account to book a day pass. I think it's really challenging when we ask folks to do that through some of the space management platforms."
00:22:23,"I'm not picking on them. I totally get why it is like that. But the conversion rate is higher when you're making it frictionless. No account and my credit card info is defaulted. If I have the stripe thing that auto populates it. It makes it so easy and so fast. And that's a great customer experience. So just a couple of things here. I think enabling tech on the front end, we don't need this human interaction."
00:22:53,"And your team wants to focus on the value add of interacting of people who are interacting with people who are in the space. So if you don't have e commerce enabled purchasing of basic things like day pass, meeting rooms and mail, we've been doing our mail program and one of the big things that I'm really trying to help people think about is enabling e commerce purchasing not just when they're using lead gen partners, but of their organic packages."
00:23:20,"Because if there's friction there, people just put it aside or they go back to it later or they'll go to somebody who makes it easy. I was like, man, I would go to this groomer all the time if it was my home based groomer. But the I won't ever go back, I don't think, to a service where I can't book online. I know that sounds really basic, but it is a big deal when people are busy."
00:23:44,"We have so many commitments and work, volunteer, kid stuff, things we're trying to get done that if it's hard, if you make it harder for people and you can tell your story. People don't want to buy things online. Yes they do. I don't need to make this tech enabled. It's expensive. I don't want to pay for that. I'm sure that this groomer IO platform probably is not inexpensive for this groomer to be running."
00:24:13,"And yet the simplification of her business and the ease of interacting that it creates for her customers and then lets her team focus on the interaction, not on making phone calls to tell people they have to pick up their dog and telling them you got to come within 20 minutes or you're going to get one extra fee. Like, it's so nice for the team to not worry about these things."
00:24:36,"So if you are not, if you've been, if you have some resistance to being tech enabled, you haven't looked at your sales funnel in a while, or you're just starting and you don't want to invest in those things quite yet, reconsider that because you want to make it really easy. Now, if you've created a model where you just simply cannot pay for some of these technologies, I think still there's little things you can do here and there, um, to automate things."
00:25:03,"So do what you can, be scrappy if you need to, but think about, you have to always think about the Roi of how much time is it taking humans to do this? Or how much more likely is someone to book because it's just easy. And make sure you're listening in to podcasts and newsletters and industry things so that you know when new advances are made in these platforms."
00:25:27,"And we certainly will be talking about some of those things on the podcast coming up. So just a little food for thought, because for me, I love going through someone else's great experience and thinking about like, how does this apply to the co working business? What are the little nuggets? And sometimes I think we get so just ingrained in how we do things that we don't pick our head up and realize, oh, it's time that we update that."
00:25:52,"It's time that we make this easier. So that is it for today. I hope you are all having a great summer or great winter for friends in Australia. I will actually be live on the FWA beach, what is the flexible workspace of Australia conference on Thursday. I'm looking forward to that tomorrow. It's tomorrow. Anyway, hope you are all well. If you have any thoughts on this, send us a message and we'll see you same time, same place next week."
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