366. Test Your Sales Funnel - It Might Not Be Working How You Think It Is
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366. Test Your Sales Funnel - It Might Not Be Working How You Think It Is
00:00:00,"Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how tos in co working. 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 co working industry."
00:00:44,"Welcome to the Everything co working podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. I'm so glad to be here with you today. We've had a number of excellent guests on over the last few weeks, so I'm happy to dive in. And it's just you and me today, so I hope your fall is going well. We're rolling into Halloween season. I'm still trying to talk my twelve year old into figuring out what she's going to be for Halloween so we can order her costume."
00:01:13,"The clock is ticking. Okay, so I want to talk today about member onboarding. It's a little bit of a combo of sales funnel automation in member onboarding and just some lessons learned from an experience in another industry. And yes, I'm going to talk about CrossFit today, so beware. But I think there are so many parallels to CrossFit just because um, CrossFit's also a customer acquisition business, but also not about customer acquisition."
00:01:46,"It's about fitness, it's about community, just like co working is. So I belong to a Crossfit gym. Before the pandemic that I loved, I worked, I have a full garage gym, so I am very equipped to work out at home. And I am one of those people who just loves to work out. I am super, super blessed in that way. And so I work out a lot. I follow a program."
00:02:10,"I don't make up my own workouts. I follow a program and can work out a lot on my own. Before the pandemic, I belonged to a local box that I love to go to. I didn't go every day, but I had friends there. I just got really into the community. I loved going in there. Always friendly faces and unfortunately they were not financially in shape to get anywhere near through the pandemic and so they closed the day that shelter in place came about."
00:02:42,"That was a long time ago now. So after the pandemic, I joined as a punch card member, a space that's like 25 minutes from my house. My crossfit bestie. Christine and I joined and would go like, once a week. We would do the open air. We would, you know, they'd do a local competition, which was super fun. So I was a punch card member there. I'm one of those anti committal people that we talk about."
00:03:11,"And the punch card, by the way, is expensive. It's way more expensive to be in a punch card than to be on a full time membership. So that's important to note. But Christine is not spending as much time locally anymore, and so she's not going. And for me, it's just really far. So I just recently was like, you know what? It's time for me to join a gym."
00:03:34,"I do sometimes get to the point where I have no problem working out, but when I'm by myself, I definitely don't go as hard as I do when I'm in class. So decided, okay, I'll go, you know, two or three days a week. Really interesting. I am curious about the data behind this, just from a pricing perspective. The packages at the Crossfit gym three times a week is 238 a month."
00:04:00,"Two times a week is 228. So I wonder if this works. It's basically like, look, if you want to come, you can't go one time a week. If you want to come is 238. You might as well come three times a week. It's two or, sorry, it's 228. If you want to come at all, it's 238. If you want to come three times a week. So everybody probably pays."
00:04:21,"Why not just pay ten more dollars and come three times a week? I have yet to go three times a week, so the pricing is not the point, though. I want to talk about some insights that apply to co working related to being the purchase cycle and being a new member. So the first thing I want to talk about is, and I want to do separate episodes about this topic because I think it's really important and I think it's one of the big innovations in our industry."
00:04:47,"So we will definitely be talking about this more is automation of the sales funnel, things like sales bots, more use of texting, et cetera. So when I decided I was going to join, I went to the website. You cannot get pricing on the website, which I don't like at all. And so in order to get pricing, I had to fill out a form and put in my phone number, which instantaneously got me what I think was an automated Text from the Owner with some sort of prompt."
00:05:17,"I had to answer the prompt and then the text message back and forth continued from there. And the owner, you know, actually was responding. So that, I think is a tactic. I can tell that he's part of a program that teaches a certain way to do sales funnels, which I also appreciate. It looks very transparent to someone who's used to sales funnels and thinks about sales funnels a lot."
00:05:44,"So the text messaging was okay, here's the problem I have with the text messaging, which just may be inherent, is, you know, I have an iPhone, but the text messages don't show up on my imessages on my computer. And I am of the generation where I do a lot of things on my phone, but I still like to do some things on my desktop. So I could never go back to those messages."
00:06:06,"I had to like find them in my phone, which is just kind of a weird thing. Just. But think about that. If you are using SF, sms marketing, which I think is really important for things like tour reminders, et cetera, then know that people may only be able to see those on their phone. So you should be sending emails with similar information in case they're on their desktop and they can't remember."
00:06:28,"I had a hard time figuring out, oh, those texts only exist in my phone, so I have to do this on my phone. I can't do it, you know, on my desktop. So put them in both places so that they're findable. So basically I had to schedule a trail day, which is great because that's what I wanted. I wanted a free day to try it out. Basically. I will say for those of you who are thinking about trials, I am more than, I was more than happy to pay for my trial days."
00:06:55,"I didn't need a free one. I did want a couple more trial days before committing, but that was not an option. So I think it used to, you know, we talk about, I think there's a lot of debate around how we should trial co working. And, you know, you don't want to give away a whole free week sometimes because it feels like you're giving away too much value."
00:07:16,"But do give people a way to buy like a trial package. So maybe, you know, it's not on your website, but it's something you offer to new members. Hey, if you want to come in a few times and just make sure this is going to work for you, then you can buy a week. That's cool. One time. You can't do it repeatedly if you don't offer punch cards or that kind of thing."
00:07:37,"So if you're trying to limit that, just limit it to new members, and that's a great way to give them the ability to try. I still. Absolutely. There's someone in our mail challenge program who's running a free week next week. She's in a smaller market where people are still learning about coworking. I love that she's doing it a free week because then you get people who come in and they know they really wanted to join."
00:08:00,"My concern was fit with the community. Like, is this, you know, I don't have a problem working out on my own, so is this a place where I'm going to feel comfortable? And it does take me, it takes me eleven minutes to drive there and 15 minutes to drive back. And so, you know, it's a commitment of a commute in the morning, which sounds ridiculous when I, you know, say it out loud, but people are doing that math and thinking about it, right."
00:08:22,"So I just wanted to see, like, is this a fit for me? Does this make sense? And I only had one day to figure that out before I had to join. And then there's a 30 day notice period. So if I want, if I didn't like it in the first week, then I would, you know, I'm stuck with it for over a month. So anyway, back to the sort of automated sales process."
00:08:42,"I got my trial day and then I think he texted me to see, like a few days after that, you know, how was it? Didn't ask a lot of questions. I think he was more, you know, trying to figure out if I was going to join. And then, you know, I was, knew I was going to be out of town for a couple of weeks. So I said, well, I'm going to join."
00:08:59,"When I come back, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to start paying now. And it occurred to me later, it's probably prorated. I could have picked my start date. He should have said that. So if you're trying to close a deal, you could say, hey, just go into the system and pick, you know, two weeks from now as your start date, and then you're locked and loaded and ready to go when you get back."
00:09:16,"Close the deal. Time kills deals. So I, you know, pushed it off. He didn't follow up when I got back. I just went in and I, you know, signed up myself. But the other thing about the signup process, so there's no pricing on the website and his automated funnel is not working. And he clearly doesn't know this. He's not testing it. And I see this often when people reach out to me and they have a question."
00:09:39,"I poke around at their website, you know, look, if I can see if I can book a tour, et cetera, and links are broken, emails don't work, et cetera. So I. The. Let's see. I'm trying to remember where the email was. It must have been in there. So there was no email that ever said what the pricing was. And so every time I went back to, like, find it, I couldn't remember where it was."
00:10:06,"Like, the subject line does not say the pricing. So the automated email sequence that got kicked off, I think this would have been maybe when I scheduled my trial. Washington, it says your tribe ch one of five. I want to personally welcome you to my tribe. So the use of the word tribe is maybe not appropriate and it's really over the top, even for me. So be careful about the language that you use."
00:10:36,"I am still evaluating whether, you know, I'm going to be a fit here. And they're calling it a tribe. Welcome to my tribe. I don't love it, but the pricing link is hidden in that email, and the subject line has nothing to do with pricing. And so when I went to search for it, I. A couple of times, I was like, where the heck is the pricing? I can't find it anywhere and it's not on the site."
00:11:01,"And the pricing and the link to sign up, you know. So first I was like, well, how much? You know, how much is the membership? And $238 a month is not minor, right? Like, that's a pretty significant commitment. I understand they're paying coaches. I understand they're paying higher end. That is pretty much market rate for crossfit in my market, which is fine, but it's just, you know, it's a decision that's just like, co working is, right."
00:11:24,"That that is an investment I'm making every month. So, anyway, you have to really get people to test your funnel who aren't you, because this obviously made sense to him. But also it says your tribe ch, which must mean chapter. I have no idea what that means. One of five. I never got more emails. I didn't get email two, three, four or five. And it wasn't because I joined right away."
00:11:51,"So, like, I could see if there was an automation and then I was, you know, they tagged me as a member and it cut off the automation that I totally get. But I didn't join for another, like, three weeks. So I didn't get any of that. So then I joined. I got my login. I got a little you know, bit of detail about the membership and then the."
00:12:15,"Hold on, I got to see what this. Oh, this is what happened. So I go to my first class and I immediately get an automated email that is in all bold, by the way, which is a no no. It just comes off as really aggressive and it says, your feedback equals one. So it says, follow up for Jamie. So I think they're checking in. Like, how was your first week?"
00:12:39,"No, they did not ask how I'm doing. This is what the email says. Your feedback equals one meal donated to feeding America. And we hope you had a great experience with CrossFit X. We wanted to follow up because we haven't. We see you haven't left a review yet. I just went to one class and it wasn't that great. Ps, we donate a meal to feeding America. For every customer who leaves feedback, would you mind taking 20 seconds?"
00:13:05,"Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so I actually kind of like the positioning around the reciprocity for leaving a review. Hey, if you lead us, leave us a review, we're going to donate a meal on your behalf. I'm sure this is a tactic that they. Somebody has researched and says, you know, this works. Okay, cool. So I don't mind that. Although I also think it is 100% enough to ask for review and just say, look, this is really important to our business."
00:13:33,"You know, if you're having a great experience, then can you leave us a review? I love the fact that I did get an automated message about a review that should absolutely be in your automated email sequence. For new members, it should not be after the first day because I did not have that great of an experience in my first week. I'm still not ready to leave. A review would not be a positive review at this point, which is not necessarily the case for your space."
00:14:00,"People may come in and want to write a positive review right away, but really goodwill towards a space builds over time. Unless you're asking for a review for a meeting room. Great. Ask for reviews for meeting rooms right after the meeting has happened. I'm all for that. That's a smart move because then their really great experience is fresh. They can write a really authentic review. Do not ask for a review after the first day or week of a membership."
00:14:27,"You should wait at least a month, you know, maybe two months. So that was. Nobody checked in to say, how's it going? Literally, the first thing was, we hope you're having a great experience. Please tell everyone else how great we are. Leave us a review that, you know, that's bad vibes. That is not the right approach to getting a good review. And I will say that I think CrossFit is like co working spaces in that once you're in, you're in."
00:14:56,"But when you're not in, you're not a member yet and you're new, it's pretty uncomfortable to walk into a space where everyone knows each other and you're the new guy. Sure, there are new people every single month and there are people who leave. In both businesses it is, you know, a customer acquisition business. People churn every month and you have to replace them with new members. Clicks form groups."
00:15:18,"Groups form. People who are there for a long time, get to know each other well and are very comfortable. But the new person has a very different experience, especially if they're new to co working. If they, you know, don't even understand the, the etiquette or the norms around how to use a co working space. And I am not new to CrossFit. I can only imagine the experience that someone who's totally new to CrossFit would have in an environment like this."
00:15:46,"I'm interrupting for a second. Are you working on starting a co working space? I often emphasize how important the planning stages. You've heard me say most unrecoverable issues happen well before you open your doors and they are related to the size of your space, your real estate deal and a few other things. If you think you are going to pick your favorite co working space and reverse engineer what you think you see happening in there and then pick your own paint colors and your favorite furniture, you are in for a surprise."
00:16:25,"This business is really about making the right fundamental decisions that align with your individual, personal and financial goals. So we want to help you avoid the mistakes that a lot of operators make in planning and launching that can really set you back in terms of time and finances. So we have got your back. We have created a free training to help you really get behind the three key decisions that we think are the most critical for you to get right when you're designing your co working business."
00:17:03,"The model, not the colors, the model. And these insights come from years of operating, designing the model for two different locations and then my work with hundreds of operators as they work on their businesses. So grab your spot in our training class. You can watch it anytime, it's totally on demand and start your co working journey with confidence and the right strategies in place. You can grab that training at everything coworking.com"
00:17:34,"forward slash masterclass so you know, I went to my first class which was probably fine. I did not get introduced. I did not get a, you know, official welcome. I'm sure the coach came over. Oh, the coach came over and thought I was a drop in, and I was like, nope, I'm doing a trial. You know, he didn't even have that information. So they should be using a CRM."
00:17:57,"You should be using a CRM. If you got all this automated sales funnel business going on that puts notes in so that the coach knows who you are, it's like, nope, I live here. I've been doing CrossFit for 13 years. I am trying out the space because that guy is there to sell me. Right. So anyway, I made it through the first class, and then if you're on my newsletter list, then you got a little story about how awkward I felt in one of the first few classes where there was like a back squat was part of the workout."
00:18:28,"And so there are not enough racks in the gym for everybody to have their own rack. Their classes are pretty big, so the coach asked everybody to partner up, and I don't know anybody, so of course I'm not going to have a partner. It's like 6th grade in recess. There's me feeling, like, super awkward, and I'm a grown ass woman, and I'm pretty comfortable with strangers, but I still felt pretty awkward."
00:18:52,"So I end up at a squat rack by myself. Everybody else has a partner. Some people have a trio, and so it's clear, like, nobody's making a move to make the new person feel comfortable. And the coach should have done that, acting as a community manager. And I think that's just a really great example of hospitality. Right? Like, I think we might overdo hospitality a little bit in our heads."
00:19:19,"Like. Like, it's a. It's a, you know, big thing that even a, like, how does a small co working space achieve hospitality is really little things, like, be really intentional about how you treat your new members. It's not just about saying hello to them when they come in and making sure they know where the coffee is. It's doing those little things to help them feel comfortable introducing them to new members."
00:19:43,"So Kristen Hardwick was on the podcast, I think, right when this was happening, and she was like, oh, yeah, I'm being right now her one of her initiatives, and she's been open for a while. So it's, you know, some of you may have this down and some of you may still be working on these things, which is why we talk about it on the podcast, is to get the wheels turning."
00:20:02,"She said, yeah, I'm trying to make sure that when people come in, they meet somebody in the first week, it makes a huge difference, especially if they're new to co working. But you have to be really intentional about that as the owner, or if you're a community manager, then you as a team, and I'm not saying the owner has to do the introductions. The owner has to make it a KPI."
00:20:24,"KPI, OKR, whatever your acronym is, so that your team is doing it. It has to be systematized. It can't be just a nice to have because people will forget this coach is not mean. He just wasn't, you know, I don't think he was thinking about how I might feel as someone new who has no partner and really wants to connect with people. That's why I wanted to leave my garage."
00:20:47,"I mean, yes, because I wanted to, you know, work harder in workouts, which I know I do in a gym, but also I just wanted a connection, you know, I wanted more connection in my day, and I love doing crossfit, and so that's an easy opportunity. And he just wasn't, you know, delivering on that. So again, even if you have people who are coming in to use an office and they're going straight to their office, just go out of your way, because they're not, you know, I didn't tell him I was feeling awkward."
00:21:17,"I'm not going to tell him that because then I'm more awkward, you know, and again, I'm pretty comfortable in new situations. But your members are not going to tell you that they're not, you know, 100% comfortable or that they wish you were making more of an effort to introduce them. Anything you can do to just immediately kind of get over that stage where, you know, people don't know anyone, connect them, introduce them to someone."
00:21:42,"Offer up something they have in common, if you can. And I love it when spaces have new member lunches or breakfast and invite the new members, anybody who's new, and invite a couple of, like, ambassadors who are really into your community and, you know, will make an extra effort to make that connection. And I think sometimes we. We have to identify those folks and ask them to do it."
00:22:07,"Sometimes you have, I love to call it, and I know other people call it the mayor of the space who's going to make all the new people feel comfortable. They may not be there that week. They. Maybe you don't have that person. So until that person shows up, you might have to be really deliberate about having your team do it or asking a couple of people in the space to play that role."
00:22:29,"Hey, we have a new member coming on Wednesday. I'm going to bring them by for an intro. Is that cool? You know, maybe ask them, maybe, you know, give them a Starbucks card. Can you take them for a coffee? These little things, I think are so, so worth the investment, but you have to really be thinking intentionally about what that experience looks like for a new member. And I would also insert here, because we run a community manager program."
00:22:53,"We teach onboarding. We teach having a new member onboarding meeting. We have an agenda template. We have all the things, but we definitely get resistance. And, you know, we don't teach it if it's not the way you want to do it, but we offer the idea and easy resources to help folks implement it. We do hear resistance. Like, our new members don't want to do a meeting. They just want to come in and get to work."
00:23:16,"Okay, that's fine. I get that you get people who are really like, just, you know, don't want to take extra time for all the admin type stuff. That does not mean that you can't interrupt them, you know, while they're getting a coffee to introduce them to someone. Because I guarantee you it's not that they don't want to connect with other people and be made to feel at home."
00:23:38,"They just think your 1 hour onboarding meeting is a waste of their time, that those are two different things. You know, they don't like the administration, but. So they're probably like, yeah, I don't want to sit down for a half hour while you make me download all these apps. That's annoying. So I totally get that resistance, but that doesn't mean they don't want the other aspects of being a part of a co working space."
00:23:56,"And if they don't, they don't. But I would guess the majority of your folks are completely open to that. And if you had to draw a line, then draw it with your open space members. If somebody's coming in for a flex membership and you might call it something different, that is. You know, we talk about this idea a lot. This, that's not a need, it's a want. Right?"
00:24:18,"They can do their work from home if they're sitting out in the open and using just a phone booth. People in offices are having private conversations. They're on Zoom all day, so they may be at an office for a different reason. Your flex members are there because they want to connect and they want to feel a part of something. So if you have to figure out where to focus, then be a little more hands off with the office members, but go harder on your flex members when they're new and help them make those connections."
00:24:46,"And you might have introverts who don't, you know, want to play along. So just, you know, read the room and feel it out, but make an effort for sure. Hey there, I'm jumping in again. This time I'm speaking to those of you that are either getting ready to hire a community manager or who have a community manager and you would like to support their training and development. We know how challenging it can be for co working space operators to create their own training and development material to support their community managers."
00:25:25,"And this is so important in terms of onboarding new community managers and supporting the growth of your existing community managers. And we're getting towards the end of the year, what a great holiday gift, end of year gift to give to your community manager. So the platform is really around a couple of things. One is access to a community of like minded folks. We have a very active slack group with really wonderful questions that are posed every single day and we find that's one of the biggest values."
00:25:59,"We have community managers from all over the world, and this is an excellent group of community managers that have invested time and effort into getting better at that role. And they are the kind of folks that you want your community manager to be by and hanging out with, and they know their stuff, or sometimes they don't, and they ask questions and we help them out. So I'm in the group, we have coaches that are in the group to support them."
00:26:24,"So we love when they ask questions for things they need help with because the other aspect of the program is really around helping them get resources they need to make their jobs easier and to learn things that they can use in their role to be better at their job. So we provide some done for you resources like Google business posts, detailed event ideas, et cetera, that they can just kind of grab and go and use."
00:26:52,"And we also provide monthly resources that add to our training library so they can do our certification. And then we have a lot of electives that help them kind of get better at all the things that, that go with the role. So that our community managers wear a lot of hats. So we break our content into industry knowledge for new community managers, community building, operations, sales and marketing, and leadership."
00:27:20,"So the leadership bucket is great for our more advanced community managers. We also have virtual office and digital mail training and coffee training for anybody who needs to know how to use commercial coffee brewers. So we have some of the I'm just going to give you kind of a sampling of content that we have. So in our community building modules, we have hosting your first member events, building community with budget friendly events, member event swipe files, our sales and marketing modules, we have tour training."
00:27:56,"We have the training on the full co working sales funnel so they understand what that looks like. We have social media planning frameworks. We have. What else do we have? Three simple steps to an effective marketing newsletter. These are just some of our samples. Ooh. These are some of our best utilized topics. Demystifying the process of letting your co working members use your address for their Google business listing how to close a tour operations modules, how to set up automations how to do a new member onboarding audit, simple ways to use AI to boost your productivity."
00:28:33,"We have over 40 courses in the program, so we cover kind of higher level topics and then we also cover things that are timely, like the CMRA updates, Google Business updates, et cetera. So we get together monthly to do official training and we also host a best practice sharing call, which is one of the fan favorites of the group and the Slack group. So if you have any questions at all about the program, don't hesitate to reach out."
00:29:04,"You can learn more and register at everything coworking.com forward slash communitymanager now back to our episode. So, okay, so we talked about the so I'm sort of balancing like new member experience with this overlay of technology that feels felt weird. And so I want to make sure that as you are implementing automation sales bots, all these things that I think are actually really helpful in terms of creating, you know, conversions and making it easier on your team because if you don't automate, it oftentimes it just doesn't get done right."
00:29:39,"So I know that's true. In my business it was true, you know, when I was running co working spaces and true of all the folks running co working spaces that we work with every month, that just hard to get things done because every day is so different. So I am absolutely pro automation, but I want you to think about that human intervention. So you've got the automation layer running."
00:30:03,"Make sure you're managing the tone. Make sure you're having other people look at the automations who might be able to tell you if the tone feels off or nothing. Your new members are not going to tell you because it's embarrassing to insult a community manager or, or somebody who owns a space. And I will tell you again, I'm a pretty direct person. My twelve year old daughter is wildly irritated with me all the time because I just tell people what I think."
00:30:28,"And yet I certainly don't actually want to insult people and I don't want to make, you know, it's. It's uncomfortable, right. I don't want to be seen as that person who's like the complainer, even if those thoughts are happening in my brain. And again, I'm guessing you're listening to this podcast. You probably are on top of these things. On the other hand, this gym owner invested in this sales program, and there's no soap in the bathroom."
00:30:53,"So while he's asking me after week one for a review without asking me how it's going, there's no soap in the bathroom. And one of the days, the garbage was overflowing at 06:00 a.m. so the coach who comes in in the morning should make sure that the trash has been taken out, and there should always be soap. I'm sorry, but in a crossfit gym, I mean, my hands at the end of a workout are black, so I don't want to get in my car and touch my steering wheel with black hands, regardless of all the germs or whatever."
00:31:21,"Like, if you don't care about germs, that's fine. My hands are literally black, probably because of the mats that are black in the space, is my guess. But anyway, they're almost always black. So I need to wash my hands, and I need to wash with soap, and there's almost never soap. They have two bathrooms. One bathroom never has soap. The other one sometimes had soap, and sometimes the garbage is overflowing."
00:31:43,"And yet I have never met the owner, and he's asking me for reviews, and he has no soap. Also, one of the classes that I was in had 30 people doing snatches. And if you're a crossfitter, you know, it's not very comfortable to be doing snatches in a room that's not big enough for 30 people. So he's overcrowding his classes, there's no soap, and his equipment is rusted, and I'm paying $238 a month."
00:32:07,"So my insight there is just sometimes it's hard to have the right lens on your own experience because you're not experiencing it the way your members are anymore. You're not experiencing it the way new members in particular are seeing it. And so you need to have some way to be in touch with what it looks like from a new member's perspective. I get he probably doesn't want to buy new equipment because his assault bikes are rusted."
00:32:36,"I don't know why they're rusted, but, um, they certainly never get cleaned. I can tell that. So he's not caring for his equipment. I understand they're expensive. From a business owner's perspective, I understand why he would wait and wait until they actually break. Um, but it's not a great look, you know, when you're paying $238 and, and there's no soap and the equipment's rested, but at the same time he's got this, you know, automated system running, asking for reviews and there's no way for me to give feedback without being the guy who's texting him like, hey, so and so, you know, there's no soap in the bathroom."
00:33:12,"I'm not going to give you a review until there's soap in the bathroom, which is how I feel, but I'm not going to say that. So he does not know. He probably thinks everything's great. And he probably has some die hard members who've been there forever who keep him feeling like they're having a great experience. So I wish that he had a QR code that allowed for feedback."
00:33:34,"Like, hey, see something in the bathroom that needs to be taken care of. And I know there are lots of operators who are doing this, totally leveraging the QR code to go to a slack channel or to go to an email address and you could make it anonymous or not. I don't care if it's not anonymous. I can say it nicely. I just feel uncomfortable. This might sound funny again, I'm a grown ass woman, but I feel uncomfortable texting him just to say, hey, you know, there's no soap."
00:33:59,"I thought we should just do it. But if I'm having this challenge in my brain, right, imagine, you know, how your members are feeling. If there's something that's not quite right in your space or something they really wish you had, maybe they really wish you had, you know, coconut milk and you don't. Is coconut milk a thing? Maybe soy milk, oat milk, you know, whatever it is. Like if you had that, it would make their day."
00:34:21,"Or maybe you're always out of something that you know you should have, but you don't really pay attention to. It doesn't have to be soap. It could be anything. So my insight there is have ways for people to give easy feedback. It doesn't have to be anonymous because I know that could get messy too. But you may not be seeing everything that your members are seeing. And so give people an easy way to provide feedback."
00:34:49,"So, okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. I'm just making sure I hit all of my points. So I think overall, I just want to say, you know, it's important to provide a really intentional new member experience. And I could go into checklists and all those things. We do that in our community manager program and we are making a shift in how we approach our community manager program, which we're the going to talk about in more detail."
00:35:16,"But we will be working on projects that are can be individual to the member. And so if new member onboarding is something you want to go hard at for Q one, for example, put your community manager in our program and all of our templates and perspectives and swipe files, et cetera, will be yours and be very organized in a neat little onboarding package. Onboarding is just one of those things that we can always be tweaking right?"
00:35:45,"How can we make it a better experience? How can we keep it manageable for our team? How can we use our onboarding experience to drive retention and to eventually get those Google reviews? So intentional onboarding experience and be getting feedback from people who will give you honest feedback because you no longer are the right perspective, probably for what that actually feels like because you're comfortable in the space, you know people, your team knows people, etcetera."
00:36:12,"Does it feel like to be a new member? And I am very pro automated sales funnels because that's how we make sure we don't have sales funnel leakage and make sure, you know, we're getting the messaging and sales flow done that we need to get done without leaving it to chance that something, the coffee machine breaks and we don't respond to leads for a week, but test them and, you know, get feedback."
00:36:42,"Have someone you know shop you once a month and go through your flow and provide feedback about how it feels for a new member. I was going to. You know what? I forgot one more thing, which about the tone, which is that I got my one month anniversary email today and it says from the entire Crossfit blanken family. No, you're not my family. You don't even give me soap."
00:37:08,"We love having you as a member and want to recognize you for your hard work and dedication to your health. Please let know how you experience two typos. There's three sentences in this email and the third sentence has a typo. Again, I'm not saying you're doing this, but you might be. So please review all your stuff for accuracy because it's not. Again, it's just not a good luck."
00:37:32,"And then it signed. Much love? No. Do they've used the word love twice in this email? I do not feel any love. After one month, I've been in, I don't know, six times. And again, there's no soap. And sometimes I don't have a partner. So I like it and I feel like it's probably going to work, but I do not love it yet. And so it makes me feel like maybe I'm feeling, not feeling like I should because I don't have feel love."
00:38:01,"And so they're using this whole tone and vibe that they probably feel after many years of being in business, but new people are not ready for that. It's like we just got married, but I'm barely dating you and you're telling me you love me. I do not love you back. So watch the tone. Watch the vibe. We know how you want people to feel, but let them ease into it a little bit."
00:38:24,"So just make sure you're testing. And again, if you're automating messages, you got to review them for typos. I do see this a lot with, like, broken links, things on websites that aren't quite right because we get busy and we just rock and roll. So test your funnel. Okay, that's it for today. Would love to hear any thoughts you have about this topic. Send me a note. Respond."
00:38:51,"Get on our email address and respond to the weekly newsletter. I love it when people respond. And I know you're out there and you're listening. And we'll see you next week with another great guest. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to everythingcoworking.com."
00:39:16,"we'll see you next week."
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