Zaner-Bloser Upgrades Their Sales Technologies

I’ve had a lot of experience with other vendors and contractors in the past, so I have perspective on how relationships can go really well or not well at all. I’m definitely happy to say that working with Torrent, communications and interactions have been great. We’ve had a really positive experience with Torrent.

Corbin Neike | Lead Salesforce Administrator | Zaner-Bloser

Reading, writing and grammar. Handwriting, spelling and vocabulary. These are the building blocks of a quality education — the kind of education that prepares students for success and fulfillment across disciplines. It’s hard to learn science, history or algebra, after all, without a solid grasp of the language arts.

 

Part of the Highlights for Children family of companies, Zaner-Bloser produces top-quality educational resources that empower teachers to provide instruction in fundamental literacy skills. From The Superkids Reading Program™ to industry-leading handwriting materials, the company’s products are designed to engage, delight and foster joyful learning — and ultimately help children become their best selves.

Business Challenge

 

The challenge lies in sustaining a sales strategy that makes these products available to teachers, principals and superintendents across the country. When a new VP of Sales joined Zaner-Bloser, he realized the team had the right people in place, but not the right processes or technologies.

 

The company’s CRM was an outdated on-premises solution, and they lacked an effective marketing automation platform. For users, logging in meant loading an entire 30GB SQL server — a process that took 10 minutes. Running a report could take up to 20. Contacting prospects, meanwhile, consisted of sending thousands of individual emails. As Zaner-Bloser’s lead Salesforce® administrator Corbin Neike put it, “Everybody just hated it.”

 

It was time for (cloud-based) change.

Outdated technologies

Lack of data visibility

Struggles with email marketing

Solution

 

After considering their options carefully, Zaner-Bloser decided on Sales Cloud® and Pardot™ as their next-gen platforms, and hired Torrent Consulting to help with implementing both. Together, the two teams worked on solutions designed to make traditional sales activities far more user friendly. Now, logging in takes sales reps only a few seconds, reports can be run in real time, and email marketing efforts create a greater impact thanks to segmentation and automation.

 

Following the implementation process, Zaner-Bloser also signed on for a year-long managed services contract with Torrent. This provided their team with the additional consultative support they needed to optimize certain aspects of their platform post-launch, design a brand-new custom lead process, and understand best practices for Pardot. For Neike, the continued collaboration between Zaner-Bloser and Torrent Consulting was a big win: “It’s very comforting to know the people who you’re [working with] were stakeholders [during the original project].”

Sales Cloud

Pardot

Einstein Analytics

Managed services

Results

Faster, more intuitive systems boost user efficiency

Improved data visibility empowers better sales management

Powerful marketing tools make prospect outreach far easier

With Sales Cloud, Zaner-Bloser’s sales reps and leaders have a powerful, cloud-based CRM that enables them to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. With Pardot, they have a platform that powers email campaigns capable of reaching hundreds of thousands of educators. And thanks to their managed services contract, they’re able to get the most out of both solutions. All of which will help the company expand their influence and make a positive impact in more children’s lives.

 

“We’re moving in a good direction,” said Neike. “We’re making short-term investments for long-term gains.”

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