85. Part 2/3: The Coworking Sales Funnel Dissected

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85. Part 2/3: The Coworking Sales Funnel Dissected

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything coworking 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, episode number 85. This is Jamie Russo. I own a coworking space in Palo Alto, California. I am the executive director of the global workspace association and the host of the everything co-working podcast.

00:00:34 This episode is brought to you by my program. The coworking startup school. This program is for you. If you are investing in your own coworking space and want to avoid costly mistakes and stress by getting expert and peer support in a highly facilitated environment, I want to make sure you create the right space for you and your target market, right from the beginning.

00:00:54 I want to make sure you get the business model, right? So that you're set up for financial sustainability that matches your goals. I will review your proforma, help you with your product mix. Get you going on the right design framework, help you with sourcing furniture, working with vendors, getting your marketing systems down, hiring the right team, getting the space set up with the right tech and more.

00:01:13 If this sounds like a fit for you, learn more at www dot co-working startups, school.com. I'm reformatting the program a bit, but the next cohort will launch shortly. So make sure you get your name on the list. Okay. So this is the second episode of a three-part series on the coworking sales funnel. Last week in episode number 84, we covered how to assess whether or not you have the revenue potential that you thought you had in your prelaunch proforma.

00:01:39 And then we talk in detail about the components of the coworking sales funnel and the top of the coworking sales funnel, which is getting people to your website, to book a tour this week, we are going to cover the important layer of the sales funnel, where you convert website, visitors into tours. So now that you have some consistent activities in place to drive traffic to your website,

00:02:01 or you're going to start them bright. Now let's move down to the next step in the sales funnel, which is converting website visitors to scheduling a tour. So, as we talked about, your goal is to convert a percentage of your website, visitors into tours, because you and I know that once you get them in the door to know you is to love you,

00:02:22 and you should know what your conversion rate is, track it. I don't care if it's on paper, like, you know, you need to know how many people come in for a tour. And how many of those sign up for memberships? Is it half of them, 50%? Is it 25%? Is it 10%? And again, I don't have a great industry average for you.

00:02:40 And it probably depends on marketplace. 10% feels low. You know, if they're actively searching or getting the right people into the space, you know, you probably want like half of them to convert probably your goal. But again, I don't have good industry numbers on those. And I'm making notes for our next GWA report to try to collect some of these really useful metrics.

00:03:00 So let's talk about some math here, again, just to kind of frame for you what this looks like and why it's so critical that you optimize these steps because you need to squeeze the highest percentage out of each phase of the sales funnel. There might be 500,000 people in your Metro area just to use an example. So some small percentage of this group is a in your geographic target market and be actively looking for workspace at any given time.

00:03:27 So then when you are thinking about your market size, make sure to whittle it down to the population of self-employed business owners slash remote corporate employees within say a five mile radius of your space. So that might get the number down to say 20,000 out of 500,000. So your market size is not 500,000. It's the, you know, whatever sort of in that real specific target group that might actually come to your space.

00:03:54 So what percentage of that 20,000 people is actively looking for space at any given point in time? Is it 1%? What does 1% of 20,200? So when they come to your website, you need to suck them in. It's not a huge number. And again, maybe it's more than 1%, but it's not 50%. You know, half of the people who live nearby your building are not looking for workspace.

00:04:20 It's a small percentage. So when they come to your website, you need to magnetize them and give them what they want immediately. They want an address, membership options, pricing a sense of what your space offers in terms of vibe and community and culture. You have a lot to do in the few seconds that the visitor will spend assessing whether or not you can solve the problem that they have.

00:04:43 And that problem may be meeting space or event space or community, or just a really productive place to work, whatever that is. So your website might have thousands of visitors per month, that don't fit into your target market. You know, Google may serve you up to people who just are not that relevant. So when you're looking at your conversion number,

00:05:03 which is calculated by dividing number of tours booked, so the conversion numbers sort of for this layer of the funnel, which is what percentage of your website, visitors book a tour you're dividing number of tours booked in a month by number of website visitors in a month. And that number, as I mentioned, is going to be tiny. So you want to do everything you can at this level of the funnel to avoid leakage.

00:05:28 What is the leakage? It's a term I use to describe what happens when you have a website, visitor, whose problem you can solve, but who leaves your website without booking it to her? Because you made it too hard. Your users are busy. I mean, this is the whole world, right? The whole world is busy, impatient, distracted.

00:05:49 Did I mention impatient? So I'm going to paint a little example here, which is going to take a moment, but I think it's important because I think we don't internalize how impatient people are on our website, because we think our website is beautiful and so intuitive and easy to use do not be the judge of your own website, ask your worst enemy to rate your website so that someone tells you the real deal on how hard your website is to use and then fix all the things.

00:06:17 So I wanted to use an example here to sort of show leakage points. Let's talk about, cause I love alliterations Anna in Atlanta, Anna started a marketing consulting firm. She has been working from home, but she's about to hire a new team member and doesn't want to have team meetings at her kitchen table. So she is ready to build an office into her budget.

00:06:38 And she's kind of excited about getting out of the house, having a routine, meeting new people and making friends she's ready to find her tribe. So she Googles for coworking spaces at Atlanta and finds that five of them are within her preferred commute time of about 20 minutes. So she decides to peruse their website, book tours for Wednesday to tour them. And then she'll do trial days at a couple of them and make a decision.

00:07:05 Anna starts diving into websites. She has about a half hour to look through all of them because she's busy. She has client calls all day and deadline. She needs to hit for her clients. So she wants to find the right space, but she cannot spend a lot of time on this. She could have her assistant do the research for her, but she wants to get a sense of the vibe of the space before she wastes time touring.

00:07:25 Even if they're in the right geographic region. So she feels like she needs to be the one to do the research. So the first website she finds is yours. Hoo, because you've done all the right things. You've got your Google ad running. You've got your Google, my business listing rocking. You're doing your blog posts and content marketing. You have active social media accounts.

00:07:45 You're in the top three results in the search results page. Your Google and Yelp reviews are very positive. And you have two to three from each month that you've been open. So she starts scanning your homepage. She loves the images of people in your space that she feels like she can relate to. She scans your membership packages. They look good. She tries to figure out exactly where you're located,

00:08:08 but she can't find your address anywhere on the homepage. She doesn't know where you are. She is starting to get a little bit impatient because she still has four more spaces to research before her next client call. But she sticks with you and clicks on your contact us page because she really likes the vibe of your site, where she finally finds your address when then accompanying map of the area.

00:08:29 Okay? So she makes a few notes and thinks she'll probably come back and schedule a tour. She moves quickly through the other websites, makes notes and narrows her list of three that she wants to tour. She wants to do all of her tours on Wednesday and make a decision. Now as a co-working space operator, this is annoying because you may want to have all of your tours on one day,

00:08:48 but Anna does not want to come on Friday. She wants to come on Wednesday. So I would keep that in mind when you're thinking about how to manage tour schedules. So she goes back to your website to book a tour, but she has a dog. And she wants to know if your space is junk friendly. And she doesn't see any pictures of dogs or any mention of dogs,

00:09:04 but she feels like she needs to ask because she'd really like to bring her dog in on days when her dog Walker is out of town, the other websites also supported online booking. She could just click a button and choose a time to come in for a tour that worked for her super easy years. However, it does not have that. It has a contact form.

00:09:20 So she has to fill in several fields and requested to our time and wait for you to respond. She also doesn't see an answer to her. Dog-friendly concern on your website and there's no phone number for her to call and ask because you think no one wants to use the phone. She likes your space, but she's feeling a little bit frustrated that it's not as user-friendly as the others,

00:09:39 so on the website. So she decided to tour the other two spaces first. And if she doesn't love them, she'll add yours to the list. She tours the other two spaces. One of them seems to fit the bill. And so she chooses that one. You lose Anna. Okay. So let's talk through some of the points where Anna found some trouble,

00:09:57 which I call leakage points in your sales funnel. Once you get someone to the website and talk through how we might address these and not lose Anna in Atlanta next time. Okay? So here are some of the leakage points. Potential member wants to know where you are just because you know where you are. Doesn't mean others do. If I had a diamond,

00:10:17 I mentioned this all the time, but I'm not going to stop. If I had a dime for every co-working space, without an easy to find address on their website, I would be rich. It's unbelievable. No one knows where you are until you tell them just because they know you're in Atlanta. That's not helpful. And I can't tell you how many times I've looked up a coworking space for somebody that joins like the Facebook group.

00:10:36 And I can't even tell what city they're in. You must put your address in the Google preferred format, which you can Google and find on your homepage. And on in the footer of every other page, you must because people find that inexcusable. If they can't figure out where you are, they will stop paying attention to your website. The potential member wants to understand who else is a member of the space,

00:10:55 and if it's a right fit for them socially and professionally, but your photos are stock photos, or you don't have any actual members in them, just your fancy new furniture. You don't showcase any members nor do you have any member profiles on your blog, posts your social media, curates generic entrepreneurial content. And doesn't give any clues as to who's actually working on the space.

00:11:18 So we'll talk about that in a little bit, but make sure that you have photos of real people in your space. How can you do that? Craigslist ad super simple or friends and family buy them pizza and beer doesn't matter. Nobody cares if your friends and family, they just want to see a variety of people in your space. Over time, you can update these photos to be a real members,

00:11:36 but do you want to get a photo shoot done? When your space is still looking all nice and neat and organized that have real people in them. You must have people. We are not just selling space. We are selling the human connection that happens within the space. And so there must be humans in your photos. The potential member wants to see your membership options and they have to click too times to get them.

00:11:54 Or you've called your membership options. Very crafty names that are hard for the potential member to understand you think they're super creative, but your potential member is confused. Your potential member wants to book a tour and you make them fill out a form in today's day and age, where you can book a restaurant reservation with a single swipe of your finger, rent a house in Bora Bora with a click of a mouse and ask Siri to get you an Uber.

00:12:18 You had better make it as easy as possible for your potential customers to book a tour on your website, having to fill in a contact form in play email tag, to decide what day and time your tour will be. We'll lose anyone that doesn't, isn't desperate to be in your space. So make sure that you use plugins like Calendly or Bookly for your website so that you can show your availability on the website.

00:12:43 It's super easy to do. It's just a connection and API with your Google calendar. So that it's very, very easy to do another leakage point. The potential member wants to ask a question before booking a tour for the love of God, have your phone number on your website, let them call you if that's what they prefer. People still want to talk on the phone.

00:13:04 Those people exist. They are not just your grandma. There are real humans who are busy and want a quick answer. And if they call you'd better pick up that phone. I have a whole blog post, which I'm going to link to in this article on how you can beat the competition just by answering the phone because the GWA did a study and called 300 coworking spaces and only half of them answered their phone.

00:13:25 And that's unacceptable. Have a live chat option available. People are used to texting and messaging and doing things really quickly and on demand. So use a live chat app that your staff maintains, or you can outsource it to a company like DaVinci virtual office solutions. That's what we do. Okay. Sneaking into your funnel outside of your website is the perspective member that never even goes to your website.

00:13:49 So today searchers have a lot of ways that they might get to you. They might search on their laptop. Google has 75% market share overall and 90% market share on mobile. So make sure that your site is mobile friendly and responsive because, and I quote more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U S and Japan,

00:14:13 and in 2017 mobile accounts for 50% of all web traffic generated worldwide. So mobile is a big deal. So picture this you're on your mobile. You want to know if there's a coworking space in your area. You probably don't open safari. If you're on an iPhone or Google Chrome, if you're on an Android device, you probably go into welfare on your iPhone.

00:14:37 You go into Google maps. So your Google, my business listing is going to show up if you do that. And that's why my Google, my business listing gets 20 times more visitors each month than my website. They don't have data on this across coworking spaces, but I encourage to look at yours and see what yours is because I bet this is pretty similar across coworking spaces.

00:14:57 So as I said, above your Google, my business listing is critical. Make sure it's complete. Take it very seriously, like your website and create offers monthly and test them on that note. We're going to wrap up this episode, which has been the second episode of a three-part series on the coworking sales funnel tune in next week for the final installment until then have a great week.

00:15:20 Thanks for joining us on this episode of everything. Coworking, be sure to click the subscribe button so you can stay up to date on the latest trends and how tos until next time.

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