A coach finder that made $112K. $1,815 an enquiry, on average.
A New Zealand business growth organisation where finding a coach meant speaking to the team first. Now the website makes the match.
- Client
- Project lead
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
- Industry
- Business coaching and advisory
- Location
- New Zealand
- Build
- HubDB custom development
- Award
- 2022 Impact Awards
01 The briefA custom coach finder on HubSpot: a run of qualifying questions that filters the coaches, a profile page for every coach, and a roster The Icehouse can manage without code.
The right coach existed. Finding them meant asking.
The Icehouse helps owners and leaders of small and medium businesses in New Zealand grow, through programmes, workshops and one-to-one advice from a roster of business coaches.
Much of what The Icehouse does depends on putting a business owner in front of the coach who suits them. On the website there was no path from a visitor to a coach. The information and the booking were not there to find, so a prospective client had to speak to The Icehouse directly to learn who could help.
It had stayed that way because the roster keeps moving. Coaches join, leave and take time away, so any set of coach pages built one by one goes out of date and needs a developer to keep current. What was needed was a tool the team could add a coach to themselves, that also did the work of a lead form.
What they asked for
- A qualifying form built around the customer. Easy to use and well designed, so answering it feels like getting help.
- A tool that works for both sides. It finds a prospective client their coach and brings The Icehouse a lead.
- New coaches added without a developer. The team adjusts the roster on the website themselves.
A few questions, then the right people.
The questions that qualify a lead are the same questions that pick the coach. One set of answers does both jobs.
Answer a few questions, One at a time
The area of the business that needs help, its pain points, how the owner prefers to work, and how many full-time staff it has.
Each answer narrows the roster
See the coaches who fit, On the suggestion page
A suggestion page lists the matching coaches, with filters to narrow it further, such as coaches who work online against those who meet in person.
Built on an Isotope filter
Read a coach's profile, Generated from HubDB
Every coach has a page of their own, set out in order of what a business owner needs to know first, with two of the coach's blog posts beside it.
One page per coach, none built by hand
Get in touch, From the profile
The owner asks to work with that coach from their profile page, and The Icehouse's sales team picks up the lead knowing which coaches suit it.
Sales suggests coaches from real answers
A profile reads in this order
Business specialties
What the coach helps with, such as finance, governance or people development.
Industry experience
The industries they have worked in.
Country experience
Where they have done that work.
Company size
The annual revenue of the businesses they can make the most difference to.
One row per coach, and the page builds itself.
HubDB is a database table inside HubSpot that website pages can read. Each coach is one row in it, so every change to the roster is a change to a row.
| The change | Page by page | With HubDB |
|---|---|---|
| A coach joins | A landing page duplicated and edited by hand | Their form answers imported as a new row, and their profile page is generated from it |
| A coach leaves | An individual page to find and take down | One row to manage |
| A coach takes leave | Their data deleted, and the process started again on return | The Show Data box unticked, so the profile hides and the data stays |
One set of answers finds the coach and qualifies the lead.
Customers still asking who they should talk to?
From the first question to the coach's page.
Stills from the recordings published with this case study in 2022.
How the three goals turned out.
What The Icehouse asked for before the build started, and where it stood four months later.
Goal 01
A coach qualifying form built around the customer
We built a few questions a screen at a time, then a suggestion page of matching coaches with filters, and a profile for each one.
31%
increase in customer retention rate, across the finder's first four months. The form is built around the business owner: it asks about their business a screen at a time, then takes them straight to the coaches who suit them.
Goal 02
One tool that brings in leads and helps the client
We made the same answers that pick the coach qualify the lead, and put the enquiry form on the coach's own profile page.
$112K
in revenue from the tool in its first four months. A single form submission was worth $1,815 on average, and each lead reaches the sales team with the owner's answers and the coaches who fit them.
Goal 03
New coaches added without a developer
We set up a HubDB table with one row per coach, a generated profile page for every row, and a Show Data box for coaches on leave.
1 row
to edit when a coach joins, leaves or takes leave. The team adjusts the roster on the website itself, and every profile page is generated from its row.
Put together, one tool now does two jobs for The Icehouse. It matches business owners to a coach who suits them, and it turns that match into a lead the sales team can act on.
Sales suggests coaches from real answers instead of researching a roster that keeps changing, and the team keeps that roster current by itself. The work has carried on since, with The Icehouse and Neighbourhood going into further projects together.
“We’re on to project number 2. Things have gone really well and really smooth. Geordie, Trav and the rest of the team are all talking the same language.”
Trent Slater
The Icehouse
Who ran it
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
Led the build of the coach profiles, the lead generation tool and the HubDB behind them.
HubSpot Certified Trainer, Multi HubSpot Impact Award winner, Founded Neighbourhood in 2015
A team that changes faster than your website can?
The neighbours next door.
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