Travel-tech^GrowPro

Taking a study-abroad agency from sales-led to product-led

Eight tools became one catalog, without stopping a 180-person sales team.

Context: GrowPro, a study-abroad agency, grew revenue tenfold, but every sale still ran through an advisor and eight tools.
Finding: in 50+ hours of sales calls, students weren’t after a course but a change of life. For most, the course was the visa.
Result: the eight tools became one catalog shared by students, advisors and partner agencies, proven in Dubai first. Queries to booking managers fell from 15 to 5 per booking.

Company: GrowPro Experience
Role: Lead Product Designer
Years: 2023-2024
Scope: Travel-tech, Marketplace, Sales-led → product-led

8 → 1 tools turned into one platform
3 user types on one catalog
50 h+ of sales calls

From tech-enabled to omnichannel product

Before and after

	Before Sales-led	After Product-led
Tools	Eight, one per team	One platform, one catalog
Data	Re-typed at every handover	Entered once
Buying	A call, a closed proposal, endless WhatsApps	One page, adjusted together
Price	A “from” price	The real price, customised in real time
After the sale	A department per step	One travel portal
Growth	Hiring more advisors	Self-service, agencies and providers

Before Sales-led

Tools: Eight, one per team
Data: Re-typed at every handover
Buying: A call, a closed proposal, endless WhatsApps
Price: A “from” price
After the sale: A department per step
Growth: Hiring more advisors

The MVP storefront in Dubai: Eric’s Business English plan at its real price, with the course, start date, school, visa, insurance and housing each adjustable

The old course page: English in the UAE from $5,000, a request-information button, what’s included and the Experience Pack

After Product-led

Tools: One platform, one catalog
Data: Entered once
Buying: One page, adjusted together
Price: The real price, customised in real time
After the sale: One travel portal
Growth: Self-service, agencies and providers

My role

Lead Product Designer, leading a designer and a researcher, and reporting to the CPO.

Decisions: the what and the how

Some calls were the business’s or product’s, others came from design. Each had an owner for the what and one for the how.

	What and why	How
Going product-led	Business	Design: the system map and the research
The reframe: a change of life, not a course	Design, from the research	Design
A catalog that starts from the goal	Design	Design
Cohorts instead of one-offs	Business and design: on the calls, advisors invented urgency	Design: places and real urgency in the storefront
One storefront for student and advisor	A hackathon with people from every area	Design
The travel portal	Design	Design
The HUB, formerly the Experience Pack	Product	Design: the reframe and the name
The B2B network	Business	Design: the white label and the provider back office
The Dubai MVP	Product	Design: usability tests and iterations
Moving advisors over in batches	Product and business	—
Metrics and the AARRR funnel	Product	Design: a qualitative review of each step

Constraints

The innovator’s dilemma. 180 salespeople and 30 partner agencies sold every day with the old tools. They paid for the change, so the change couldn’t stop them.
A marketplace with many faces. Students, agencies, providers, and internal sales, booking, visa, support and finance teams.
Every destination has its own rules. Visas, work permits and course lengths decide what a student can actually buy.

Problem space

01 Opportunity

Behind every sale, eight tools. In front of the student, a process they couldn’t see into.

GrowPro helps young people study and work abroad, in seven countries. In one year, revenue grew tenfold and headcount 120%, but it still sold the same way. GPX replaced that with one catalog that students, partner agencies and providers all work from.

How a sale worked before.

The longer the proposal took, the less it converted.

No organic conversion. The product needs advice: what set GrowPro apart was the person advising, not the course. The catalog only sold courses; the change of life came up on the call.

Hypothesis: with so many tools, processes and people in the way, the student’s experience became confusing.

And if the product did what the advisor did on the call, the proposal would arrive in real time.

02 Research

Listen before designing.

Four sources, one hypothesis.

Method: System map, interviews with internal teams, search analytics and 50+ hours of sales calls (Grain)
Who: Internal teams, around 50,000 search users and calls between advisors and students
Output: System map, concept cloud, feedback river and three archetypes

What we found

01 Students and agencies needed the same catalog.

I mapped actors, journeys, systems and products. Students and agencies needed the same catalog, and every sale got stuck between the CRM and the quoting tool.

02 Every handover started from scratch.

We sat with the teams who made GPX work day to day: sales, bookings, visas, support and finance. Each one worked in its own tool, and the student’s data was typed in again at every handover.

03 Nobody searched the way the catalog was organised.

About 50,000 people used the site search from May to September 2023. Fewer than 9% filtered by country or course type.

86.8% didn’t use a single filter

04 The why was already recorded.

The analytics showed what people did, not why. The why was in the sales calls: we transcribed 50+ hours, grouped recurring ideas into a concept cloud and placed doubts along the journey in a feedback river.

05 Three archetypes.

The learner English is the goal; work pays for it.

The professional International experience is the goal; English comes with it.

The emigrant Moving abroad is the goal; studying is the way in.

Solution space

03 Catalog

A user-centred catalog.

We flipped the catalog: the student states the goal and the plan builds around it. The goal is fixed, the route is theirs, and that made self-service possible.

What you want

“I want to learn English in Dubai.” That’s the whole search.
A programme that fits

“Eric, this English programme in Dubai is ideal for you.” One plan, one price.
The variables, in your hands

School, length, dates, visa (by nationality), insurance (by country), housing and HUB. The price updates live.
Buy in one click

Or call an advisor, book a call, or book on your own.

Hand-drawn sketch of the new catalog: a product page at the centre of a triangle of three choices, each one a category. 1, motivation, which profiles the student and sets the level of study (growing means a master’s, migrating means diplomas); 2, the field; 3, the city. Together they write the page’s promise, “Boost your career with a Master’s in Marketing in Madrid”. Underneath, the variables (schools, programmes, schedules and intakes) become comparable, within a range.

From one-offs to cohorts.

We also changed what we sold: not one experience per student, but cohorts with their own places. On the calls, advisors invented urgency to close; cohorts made it real. A call shared with the business, since it touched marketing, suppliers and the post-sale.

	Before One-shot	After Cohorts
The unit	One student, one process	A group with its own places
Measuring	Case by case	By group and by season
Urgency	Invented on the call	Only X places left
Suppliers	Bookings one at a time	Predictable demand
Post-sale	Each visa on its own	Visas benchmarked across the group; sales regrouped by category

04 Storefront

One tool to buy and to sell.

The idea came out of a hackathon with people from every area of the company. If students and advisors needed the same catalog, they could share the same tool.

The Dubai storefront: Alexa’s English programme in Dubai, with the price in up to 6 instalments and a countdown up top. Alongside, the length, the start date and “Want to change anything?” with a Modify button, the school, and the UAE visa, included by default.

Modify your programme: the course type (practical, academic or business English, each with its price) and the school, with the plan and its price at the foot, updated before Save.

The student buys alone.

Every parameter comes from the student’s preference, not from our assumption, and the price updates as they choose.

01 Qualify before proposing.

A few questions (what they’re after, when, their nationality) qualify the lead before any plan appears. We kept the lead score from the old qualifier: depending on how qualified they are, the storefront offers different ways forward, such as a call with an advisor or a place in a cohort.

The first qualifying steps on mobile: let’s find your ideal programme, with no commitment and no call unless you want one, at 25%; and when you’d like to travel and for how long, at 75%.

The last qualifying step on mobile: name, English level, date of birth and nationality, before “Find my ideal programme”.

02 Destination and country.

The destination follows what they want to live; the country is narrowed down by the visa they can apply for with their profile.

The proposal on mobile: “Eric, this English programme in Dubai is ideal for you”, with the school, the total in USD with the old price struck through, and the assistance level, medium-low.

03 Course and schedule, by preference.

The course type follows their preferences, and so does the time of day: if they want to work in the morning, the plan offers afternoon courses.

The plan’s course and schedule on mobile: 12 weeks (3 months), the minimum needed to work; starting in March 2025; semi-intensive at ES Dubai, the best international school; with B1 English required and in person.

04 Accommodation up front, not after the sale.

Accommodation is a decisive pain. With GrowPro Houses it was solved from day one, in a cared-for setting, and some students picked a destination with GrowPro Houses over one without. It was a primary decision, so it moved into the storefront.

Accommodation in Dubai on mobile: handle it on my own at no cost, or medium assistance with guides and listings to find it, for €25; underneath, verified houses, hostels and hotels.

05 Visa and insurance.

The type of visa, how to apply for it and how urgent it is. Insurance or none, and whether the visa requires it.

The visa for the Emirates on mobile, under the course total ($13,000, down from $14,000): medium assistance, with an advisory session and guides, for €150, or full assistance, where GrowPro does it all with a few documents from the student, for €1,300, selected; below, the ES Dubai study visa, for one year.

06 Everything included.

A SIM card and an airport pick-up: a complete experience from the moment you land.

Access to the Emirates Hub on mobile: no access at no cost, Basic at $250 ($50 a week), selected, or Premium; below, community and assistance at the destination, from GrowPro’s Hubs around the world.

The storefront became the advisor’s co-pilot.

The advisor ran the call on the storefront: the same page the student sees, with extra controls to negotiate the plan and guide onboarding until the booking closed. The proposal stopped being a document sent after the call and became the call itself. Fully bespoke plans kept an advisor-guided path.

	The advisor’s day before	With the storefront
Quoting	Re-typing between CRM and quoting tool	One page, built with the student
Proposal	Sent cold, then edited over WhatsApp	Adjusted live on the call
Ramp-up	6 months on eight tools	One tool to learn (target: 3 months)
Handover	Bookings and visas redo the data	Contract and payment close in the flow
Focus	Every case needs an advisor	Simple cases close alone; advisors take the complex ones

Service blueprint: student, advisor and back office, before and after

05 Post-sale

From signing to the flight, in one portal.

Once the plan was sold, every step before the trip had its own department. The travel portal holds it all: what’s done, what’s missing and what’s next, for GrowPro and agency students alike.

The travel portal: the trip as a line of steps, from home today to Dubai in November, through booking, enrolment, visa, flights and the checklist; below, the portal’s home, “Alexa, are you all set for Dubai?”, with the booking paid, and behind it the documents for the booking.

From the contract to the flight
1. Signing the contract
  
  Signed online, in the same flow as the plan.
2. Payment method
  
  Choosing how to pay, and the payment plan.
3. The visa
  
  Each visa’s documents, translations and steps, tracked.
4. Insurance
  
  The policy, its status and documents.
5. Enrolment
  
  School enrolment, no emails back and forth.
6. From the Experience Pack to the HUB
  
  The Experience Pack nobody understood became the HUB: training, local jobs, 24/7 support, community and GrowPro houses on landing.
7. Before you fly
  
  A final checklist before travelling.

06 B2B

One catalog, two kinds of partners.

GPX opened the catalog to two kinds of partners: agencies that sell it and providers that feed it. A SaaS-like network: one catalog, three ways in.

Agencies sell the full catalog under their own brand.

Partner agencies got the storefront as GrowPro Agents, connected to their CRM. They stay out of GrowPro’s day-to-day and need no onboarding: the product explains itself. Focus on selling, we’ll do the rest.

Providers run their own catalog, from sign-up to payout.

Providers feed the catalog from their own back office. GrowPro’s Supply and Ops teams only step in to check quality and manage bookings.

GrowPro Providers on tablet: the sign-in, “Welcome to the Club®” over a photo of young people on a staircase, beside “Sign in to your account” with the provider’s email.

07 GTM and PMF

GTM and PMF expansion.

Moving 180 advisors and 30 agencies at once was one big bet. We split it into stages: a small first one, each opening the way for a bigger one.

The MVP: a new market, a new team.

Dubai’s advisors worked on the new storefront from the start, with no years of habits on the old tools to unlearn. The usability tests and the MVP’s funnel turned their friction, and the students’, into each iteration before the model opened to the rest of the business.

Why Dubai

New destination, an offer easy to bring in, and a team without old-tool habits.
Learn before scaling

Semi-moderated usability tests set the fixes before opening it further.

Then, the 180 advisors who already sold.

While Dubai proved the model, the rest of the business kept selling as before. Then the advisors moved over in batches, and self-service took the simple cases off their desks.

Old and new, side by side

Dubai ran the full model; the rest kept selling on the old tools.
How to migrate

Dubai showed how to bring them over: by booking type or by destination.
B2C: Self-service

Simple cases close alone; advisors take the complex ones.

Last, the network.

With the advisors on board, the same catalog opened outwards: first to partner agencies, then to the providers who feed it.

B2B: Agencies

Market expansion through agencies.
Providers

Efficient scale: providers manage their own catalog.

08 Metrics

Where we started, and where we aimed.

The old, already-optimised tools set the benchmark. Every figure is a target, except the one marked Result.

Metric	Benchmark	Target	Why
Sales
Advisor ramp-up	6 months	3 months	No CRM or quoting tool to learn
Time to first contact	4 days	1 day	The plan arrives built
Sales won per advisor	8 a month	14 a month	Simple cases close on their own
Bookings and visas
Open bookings per booking agent	10	30	Bookings arrive complete
Open bookings per visa agent	15	×1.5	Visa by nationality, documents in the portal
Queries to booking managers	15 per booking	5 per booking	Result with the travel portal
At destination
Support interventions	300 a month	100 a month	Answers before a ticket
Event sign-ups	8,000 a month	16,000 a month	Events built into the HUB and portal
Ambassador referrals	90 a month	150 a month	One community for all students

09 Learnings

Going product-led doesn’t remove the salesperson. It removes the black box.

The problem was never the advisors; it was the opacity. Once both looked at the same plan, weeks of back-and-forth fitted on one page.

How we measured and iterated

An AARRR funnel from day one, semi-moderated usability tests and a qualitative review of each funnel step. Every iteration came from those numbers.

What I’d do again

Listen to the calls before designing the catalog, and start where the change was easiest to prove.

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