Michael Dubicki from Flex Engine shares why elevated blanket incentives are probably the wrong approach for 99% of spaces and brands. The alternative, use patterns in your data and double down on who truly gets your brand and ICPs.

Michael Dubicki from Flex Engine shared some insightful thoughts in a LinkedIn post on the challenges of balancing relationships between operators and occupiers. While brokers are typically paid by the operators, their focus tends to lean towards benefiting the client by driving competition and reducing costs. This dynamic is great for clients but can create tension with operators, who invest in quality service and are reluctant to reduce margins.

Michael Dubicki from Flex Engine shared why companies considering flex spaces should weigh out the pros and cons of chasing big discounts from flex space providers. In short: big discounts usually mean either moving every 12 months, or seeing a big increase as prices normalize to where the new target desk price is.

It’s an interesting look behind the curtain (especially highlighting how brokers are actually disincentivized from putting their clients in communities for terms longer than 12 months) and where some operators may be able to leverage lower discounts to build longer member relationships. At least that’s the angle I took from it.

Michael Dubicki from Flex Engine shares a checklist-style scorecard for people doing flex space tours or viewings. Worth checking to see how you’d score.

(And Michael, I’d recommend making a simpler printable version that won’t empty 3 color cartridges hehe)

Michael Dubicki shares that Flex Engine analyzed 150 sequential broker leads for a leading UK flex space operator. The study returned some interesting findings around lead qualification, and the time it took to gather, qualify/disqualify leads for the workspace operator.

They estimated around 5k leads are sent from brokers to operators each month, although the number could very well be higher. Extrapolating their findings that 85% of leads are only partially qualified, and that it would take each operator around 15 minutes to qualify or disqualify the lead, the marketplace-wide inefficiency adds up to between 5,312 and 10,625 hours per month.

I’ve shared previously how the time to process leads (including those that don’t fit) can quickly drive up the bundled overheads for all leads. Great to see more public data to quantify how expensive bad (or badly qualified) leads can be for flex space operators.