It certainly can't hurt to* try* the pre-payment option to lock people into the waiting list, but I would be surprised if people bite for all of the same reasons you describe. If I'm running a team and need space for them, putting money down on an office I can't have until some unknown point in the future isn't a compelling offer, even when compared to a lesser offering that I can use now.
One thing we *have* done with larger teams is introducing a longer cancellation period in order to get their deposit back. Basically once a team is >3, they represent a larger $$ liability for us and increased difficulty/stress in replacing that income with new members. With larger groups we've had success negotiating 60 and 90 day notice windows that give us more time to fill in the gap naturally rather than scrambling. It's no different (and at 60 days, even better) than they'd get with a traditional office lease, and realistically a large group almost always knows they are moving out at least 60 days in advance. -Alex ------------------ *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Better Coworkers: http://indyhall.org Weekly Coworking Tips: http://coworkingweekly.com My Audiobook: https://theindyhallway.com/ten On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 10:20 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks @angel and @alex. We do that, and it does work great for dedicated > desks and 1-desk offices. But we've got 60 offices that are 2,4,6 and 8-9 > desks. Typically, our Commons members aren't looking for large spaces, and > the professionals who are need at least some private, dedicated space - > joining as Commons members doesn't work for them. > > We've been adding these folks to waitlists by office size (and keeping in > touch, inviting them to events, etc). Several lists were 20+ deep. This > seemed to be a great indicator of interest and gave us confidence that we'd > be able to refill offices if needed. Pretty quickly, that proved > misleading: when offices open, we find ourselves scrambling through long > lists; giving each person 48 hours to confirm can easily take a full month > to find our new member - a very nerve-wracking thing when it's a bigger > office. > > We're considering a fee for non-members to be on a waitlist. If they take > the office,it would go towards their membership. > > Not sure how much that'll help...interested parties may have found other > space in the interim... but we thought we'd try and wondered if anyone had > any similar experience. > > Thanks!! > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Coworking" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
