The old "if you build it, they will come" mentality? It's not just outdated, it will bring your coworking space to a standstill.
DeShawn Brown, CEO of Coworks, and David Walker, founder of Coworking Consulting, recently teamed up for a webinar that tackled one of the most persistent challenges in coworking: converting leads into paying members.
What they revealed wasn't just another sales strategy. It was a complete reimagining of how understaffed, under-resourced coworking operators can leverage AI to turn their existing data into a conversion machine.
"Half the battle is just getting the data right," Brown explained during the session. "Half the battle is just not losing a qualified lead in your inbox."
But here's where it gets interesting. Most coworking spaces are already sitting on a treasure trove of leads. They just don't know it yet.
Brown walked through Coworks' CRM dashboard, highlighting something that might surprise you: every interaction with your space creates a potential lead.
Not just the obvious ones, like the people who fill out your "I'm interested in membership" form, but the seemingly transactional visitors too.
"You can think of leads as the people who you've designated, or they've self-designated as, like, 'Hey, I'm very interested. Like, I would like to move this conversation forward,'" he said. "But the contacts might be somebody that you've interacted with or has interacted with your space."
The magic happens in the subtle touches. Day pass users. Conference room renters. Event attendees. Even someone who just bought a single ticket to your happy hour.
"These are your best leads, because they've already had some sort of hopefully positive experience with you and your space, in your community," Brown noted. "They've already done a tour of the space too. Because they came to your event."
Walker added a crucial insight: "It's like basically group tours, if you really think about it, right?"
The Coworks platform automatically funnels all these interactions into their CRM. Membership requests become leads. Day pass purchases become contacts. Event RSVPs get tracked. Room bookings get logged. Everything flows into one consolidated view.
But here's the challenge every coworking operator faces: now what?
"I think this is what this is where a lot of our customers think, 'Hey, we've done it for you. You've got a whole inventory of really valuable information, customer potential. And you didn't even have to lift a finger,'" Brown said. "'But now what?'"
This is where Walker's expertise becomes invaluable. As a coworking consultant, he's seen operators struggle with the same pattern: they build beautiful systems for capturing leads, then freeze when it comes to follow-up.
"The hardest part about the follow up process, from my experience, is that you know you're supposed to follow up. You don't really know what to say," Walker explained. "You're like, 'Hey, how's it going, John, how's it going?' What's the cadence? Do you do it immediately? Do you give him some space?"
The solution? Let AI handle the heavy lifting.
What you’ll notice in the replay isn’t a list of tricks; it’s a rhythm. Data flows in without friction. AI surfaces the next best move. You send a link that lets someone join on their own time. And every one of those steps stays personal, because you’re still the voice.
Walker demonstrated something remarkable during the webinar. He took a screenshot of Brown's CRM dashboard—showing real leads with real context—and fed it into a custom ChatGPT he'd built specifically for coworking space management.
The AI didn't just read the data. It analyzed it, prioritized the leads, and created personalized follow-up emails that would make seasoned marketers jealous.
Take “Paul Jones,” a fictional web designer who had purchased a day pass six weeks earlier and expressed interest in a dedicated desk. Walker gave ChatGPT just a few additional details learned on the tour and capture in the Coworks notes field, such as Paul works remotely two days a week, he liked the natural light, he mentioned the space was expensive—and watched as the AI crafted three different email options.
The first email subject line: "Paul, did our space spark ideas? 💡 Let's make it your design studio twice a week (first week on us!)"
The body included personal touches that felt genuinely human: "I'm still thinking about the splash of color you added to our day when you stopped by. Our team loved hearing how the natural light helps you power through wireframes."
But the AI went further. It addressed Paul's price objection head-on in one of the email variants: "I remember budget felt tight last time we chatted. That's why I pulled together two flexible options."
"Sometimes the best sales tactic is reminding people that you know who they are," Walker observed. "Because at the end of the day, coworking is about community, and the best way that you show someone that you care about community is meeting them human to human. And sometimes that can happen through emails."
What stood out most about Walker's approach was how it leveraged AI not to replace human connection, but to amplify it. The AI-generated emails weren't generic templates; they were personalized conversations informed by real interactions.
"I think you know that that's something that you're kind of tapping into here, which is like, personalized emails," Brown said. "I'm all for automated batch, you know, 'Hey, thank you for your purchase and how was your experience?' Those are great. But I think the personalized emails are a lost art, especially if you're a small coworking space."
The key insight? Small coworking spaces shouldn't try to compete with WeWork on scale. They should compete on intimacy.
"Exactly what you just said, David, remembering they're a designer, remembering what they're interested in. I mean, that's how you compete with some of the big box brands or people that are bigger than you. It's just being more personal," Brown explained.
All it takes is the right mindset. Let DeShawn Brown and David Walker take you through it with this hands-on walk through.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the demonstration came when Walker fed an entire CSV export of leads into ChatGPT. What looked like overwhelming spreadsheet chaos to human eyes became organized, actionable intelligence to the AI.
The AI automatically triaged nine leads into categories:
For each hot lead, it generated ready-to-send emails with personalized subject lines, relevant offers, and appropriate calls-to-action. When Walker provided additional context about available membership plans, the AI updated all the emails accordingly.
"This is a little overwhelming to me as a human too," Walker admitted, looking at the AI's comprehensive analysis. "It's given me a lot of things here. And so I'm just going to say, 'Pick the hot leads and give me an email for each one of them.'"
The result? Three polished, personalized emails ready to copy-paste.
The conversation revealed how AI can extend beyond single interactions to comprehensive marketing campaigns. The AI suggested follow-up sequences, SMS variations, and even automated reminder systems. But both speakers emphasized starting with the basics: manual, personalized outreach.
"Obviously, your high value resources are what they are. You might not be able to give crazy discounts on your really expensive, 30 person office," Brown noted. "But for coworking, I've found that you can be pretty flexible, and you should just focus on the conversions."
Brown demonstrated Coworks' built-in tools for conversion optimization: direct signup links that automatically remove converted leads from the CRM, customizable discount codes (including time-limited offers like "30% off for your first three months"), and punch-pass memberships for flexible users.
The goal isn't to automate everything immediately. It's to create a sustainable system that grows with your space.
One overlooked aspect Walker highlighted was internal communication. AI doesn't just help with customer outreach—it can generate comprehensive reports for your team.
"Can you help me send a sales report to my team to let them know what's going on behind the scenes so that we can all stay transparent?" Walker asked the AI.
The result was a professional report detailing active leads, follow-up activities, pipeline snapshots, and key opportunities. The kind of report that keeps everyone aligned without requiring hours of manual work.
"It's one thing to do everything in a solo box," Walker explained. "And this is the thing about community managers—often it's really easy to get overwhelmed with all the tasks, but it's also important to share what you've been up to."
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the webinar wasn't technical, it was philosophical. Both speakers emphasized approaching AI with curiosity rather than fear.
"It's all about an experimental mindset," Walker concluded. "If you're too intimidated to just try to copy paste something in, or try to get it to do something, then you're never going to get to see the realized potential."
The beauty of their approach is its accessibility. You don't need expensive software or complex integrations. You need a CRM that captures your leads (which Coworks provides automatically), a willingness to experiment with AI tools like ChatGPT, and the confidence to hit send on personalized outreach.
"We're trying to turn the community managers into superheroes," Brown said. "We're trying to supercharge them. It's helping your team get to the real, valuable, actionable insights and follow ups, and not the time it takes to get to that point."
The webinar revealed something profound about the future of coworking sales: the winning strategy isn't about having the biggest marketing budget or the most sophisticated automation. It's about combining human insight with AI efficiency to create genuine connections at scale.
"You know, you can't automate just to do," Brown warned. "You have to think through what do I want that process to look like? How many touch points do I want? What's the call to action?"
The process they demonstrated, from automatic lead capture through AI-powered personalization to conversion optimization, offers a roadmap for any coworking space ready to stop losing leads in their inbox and start turning casual visitors into committed community members.
Want to see this process in action? The full webinar replay walks through every step of the CRM setup and AI integration, complete with live demonstrations of lead triage and email generation.
It's worth watching not just for the tactical insights, but for the mindset shift that could transform how you think about sales in your space.
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