I am working on my pricing and packages (Plan to launch in April/May) … and a few local businesses that have multiple locations (banks, churches etc.) that have teams/groups travel between locations from time to time and don’t have the office space… seem to a need a cowork space semi-regularly are asking me if I will offer them a group rate so they can have up to 8 people per week use our facility as their coWork space… now, its my understanding that the “up to” 8 people will be different people depending on the week… so essentially X bank might have 24 people come through my doors once a month but instead of paying a membership fee for each person, they are asking me if I can give them one flat rate – I am struggling finding information on how people price out a “group” membership… ANY insight would be extremely helpful!!
The most common mistake I see here is that people say “your whole org has access to this pool of work days” and the problem becomes when individuals start skipping over the entire onboarding process because their boss they could go work for the day.
So the trickiest part of this is making sure that you still have some kind of 1-1 relationship with each of the people who are included in the group rate, and that each person who gains access to the coworking space is still treated as an individual regardless of who is paying for the space. You may get pushback from org leaders who don’t immediately “get it” - we do too - but we always push back. I explain that it’s crucial that we stay focused on people, and having relationships with each person who is coming through the doors is part of what makes the experience work. The ones who don’t buy in will just be problematic down the road, so don’t stress about it and remember that you’re there to serve and support your community, not anybody who walks in the door and wants to park at a desk.
With that in mind, the way I’ve structured group rates looks like this:
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Base rate includes up to X number of people, and a rate for additional people to be included in that pool.
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Base rate includes up to X number of days shared by that pool of people, and a rate for additional days.
I generally don’t discount our base memberships, BUT if an organization is interested in pre-paying for 6 months I’ll offer a discount. So using our rates as a template…
$20/person/month for community membership X 24 people with access = $480/month
$18/person/day for coworking X 8 per week X 4 weeks = $576/month
That’s $1056/month as the base rate. Additional people can be added for $20/month, and additional days can be added for $18/day. Removing people from the roster requires 30 day notice, and memberships are not transferrable between people.
If they pre-paid this for 6 months upfront, I’d offer a 5% discount. 12 months, a 10% discount.
One more word of warning with this, especially for smaller spaces: it’s very easy for large groups of people who work together to “dominate” your space, making it feel uncomfortable for individuals and smaller teams. I would be very cautious about building your model to be dependent on large contracts like this, both because they represent an unnecessary cultural challenge and because ending a large contract represents a much larger hit (and is more difficult to replace) than a network of smaller, individual memberships. I can’t tell you how many spaces I’ve seen pushed to the brink because a single team’s departure left a financial and emotional crater.
-Alex
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On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 10:06 PM [email protected] wrote:
I am working on my pricing and packages (Plan to launch in April/May) … and a few local businesses that have multiple locations (banks, churches etc.) that have teams/groups travel between locations from time to time and don’t have the office space… seem to a need a cowork space semi-regularly are asking me if I will offer them a group rate so they can have up to 8 people per week use our facility as their coWork space… now, its my understanding that the “up to” 8 people will be different people depending on the week… so essentially X bank might have 24 people come through my doors once a month but instead of paying a membership fee for each person, they are asking me if I can give them one flat rate – I am struggling finding information on how people price out a “group” membership… ANY insight would be extremely helpful!!
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