and this is where the
Story begins. . .
Our goal was to enable the sales team to take ownership of their accounts and really be able to find those resources that are going to make a difference for their customers.
The reps could use a self-serve tool that was very visual and could help them find what they were looking for.
From a marketing perspective, we could monitor usage, effectiveness, and engagement. That was really what we wanted to solve as we were looking for different tools”
- Dori veto
1
Scene
Act
Matt goes on to express how it was just
and how they immediately had complete confidence that it would be picked up by the Sales teams.
Dori, a visual person by her own account, was instantly captivated by the platform’s visual appeal and found the content structuring and searching capabilities really appealing. The reporting and insights on Paperflite, along with the ability to categorize and tag content, also caught Dori’s eye.
Matt was more taken in by the ease of implementation.
He says, "One of the things that I was excited about was it being very easy for implementation. We have reps at different skill levels, but we had the confidence that we could roll it out and that even the less technologically savvy reps would be able to pick it up".
Sometimes, there are features of a product that really convince the buying team. And at times, it’s everything else about the platform — the demo experience, the freedom to try your hands on a sandbox version of the platform, the roadmap, the service response time.
For Perfection Learning, it was all of this, together with the features, that really moved the needle.
- Matt adds
When we were exploring other sales enablement platforms, we weren’t really given the keys to the car. But the Paperflite team did, and it gave us an opportunity to try out the platform before we even decided.
In the world of educational publishing, the customer journey takes a shape of its own, and
Matt & Dori
is definitely not like buying a pair of jeans
“It’s not really B2C or B2B, and it’s oftentimes a decision made by a committee, sometimes a school board when funding’s available in the right bucket that our products fall into”.
Sounds complex? Clearly.
At the heart of this intricate journey are Matt Pollock, the Director of Creative Design, and Dori Veto, the VP of Product Marketing and Engagement.
Perfection Learning is an educational publishing company dedicated to providing high-quality educational materials and resources. With a mission
to empower educators in the classroom, Perfection Learning offers a range of educational solutions designed to enhance learning experiences and foster academic success.
In a setting that is constantly evolving, Perfection Learning strives to stay at the forefront, adapting its resources to meet the changing needs of educators and students.
This was
earlier managed in
Their goal?
Serving the right content to nurture and educate their buyers
Make content discoverable and easily accessible, and
Enable marketing to tie content performance to revenue.
search for a solution
that could navigate this chaotic landscape and steer sales enablement ship faster.
With a set of clear objectives, they began their
Despite their best efforts, sales teams were still struggling to find relevant content and
Not having intelligence into how their buyer group was consuming their shared content.
Serving the right content to nurture and educate their buyers
what Matt and Dori would call “a system
without structure, organization or usefulness"
That’s when they realized they were falling short on three counts:
1
2
3
“We’ve found the Paperflite team incredibly responsive and supportive. We bring ideas, and you either say, ‘Great, let’s roll it out!’ or ‘Not the best, but we’ll customize it for you’. That level of engagement is hard to find” concludes Matt.
I rave about it to anyone else I talk to in the industry. If you are looking for a solution for sales enablement, and you want to get away from sending files through email or chat, this is really a way to empower the sales organization to find the resources that they need to
In the nuanced realm of educational publishing, buyer journeys are uniquely complex, often shaped by groups like committees or school boards. Against this backdrop, Perfection Learning grappled with challenges in sales enablement and facilitating a smooth path for their primary buyers: educators.
At the center of navigating this complex maze are Matt, the Director of Creative Design, and Dori, the VP of Product Marketing. Both have specific roles but are united by a common mission: to empower educators and inspire students through high-quality educational materials.Their initial system, SharePoint, proved inefficient, leaving their sales representatives with limited content accessibility and hindering effective engagement with educators.
Paperflite emerged as a solution that could offer an intuitive, self-serve model for the sales team and could also attract and engage educators. Its visual interface and ease of implementation attracted both Matt and Dori for different reasons.Perfection Learning adopted a phased rollout strategy. Initially, a ‘Tiger Team’ of tech-savvy sales reps was selected to test the platform, serving as internal evangelists for wider adoption across the sales team.The introduction of a resource center, “Literature Corner,” built using Paperflite’s Cleverstory, further refined the buyer’s journey for educators.
This allowed Perfection Learning to direct educators to relevant, quality materials, converting site visits into high-quality leads and filling the gap between initial engagement and meaningful sales conversations.By adopting Paperflite, Perfection Learning was not only able to improve sales enablement but also significantly streamline the complex buying journey for educators. This dual achievement made content more accessible and actionable for sales reps while also creating a valuable touchpoint for educators in the purchasing journey.
close deals and to get insights into content engagement,
- Dori
Perfection Learning has been able to use both Paperflite and Cleverstory to transform the sales enablement landscape. Paperflite ensured the content was easily discoverable and offered engagement insights and allowed marketing visibility into content performance, while Cleverstory allowed them to create a resource hub that attracted and converted their target customer personas
Director of Creative Design
Matt Pollock
Dori Veto
VP of Product Marketing and Engagement.
The World Before and After
Not wanting to throw another piece of technology at their sales reps, Perfection Learning took a meticulous but creative approach and chose a strategic phased rollout.
The Perfection Learning team rolled Paperflite out to a set of key sales reps, as part of a Tiger Team, that could try it out and endorse the usage of the platform.
“Adoption was actually a really important factor for us, and we wanted to make sure that we had a really well-thought-out process for getting them excited, getting them on board”.
A Bit of Persuasion: Marketing 101
To drive wider adoption of the platform, Dori, the Marketing veteran, crafted a clever strategy involving internal marketing and borrowing “peer credibility”.
This peer endorsement strategy effectively encouraged others to follow suit and embrace Paperflite.
"So we were marketing Paperflite internally first to the Tiger team. It's always more believable and more credible when you have your own colleagues on the sales side vouching for a solution that they're going to be using as part of their job"
Remember that complex customer journey we talked about in the beginning? Yes, the same.
Dori, previously, had envisioned a model to increase territory-specific business for sales reps. A freemium model that would act as a “pull” to bring educators they serve, their ideal customer persona, to the Perfection Learning website.
With the help of Paperflite's Cleverstory, Perfection Learning built a
"Literature Corner",
a resource center
that acted as a destination educators could visit to access content that was free to download with rich, high-quality, tested content for educators to use.
Instead of having to pay for these resources elsewhere, educators were attracted to Perfection Learning’s trove of tried and tested materials.
Once the Literature Corner was set up and ready to go, Perfection Learning ran search ads and keyword-based ads to drive traffic to their destination page — built on Cleverstory.
Light At The End of The Sales Enablement Tunnel
“We were using SharePoint, and it just wasn’t working for us. SharePoint didn’t have thumbnails. It wasn’t searchable, and it became unusable for our sales team. But a sales enablement tool that puts the power back in the sales rep’s hands to find what they need and engage with their customers is something we just weren’t getting out of SharePoint”, recollect Dori and Matt.
“With Cleverstory’s resource center, we’ve grown organic traffic through search and it has allowed us to be where our customers are”, shares Dori.
Cleverstory didn’t just facilitate the creation of the Literature Corner, but it was also instrumental in ensuring that it served as an effective funnel for converting site visitors to high-quality leads. With Cleverstory, Perfection Learning could engage, attract, and meaningfully connect with its target audience in a way that was not possible before.
However, after a thorough search and implementation process, Paperflite emerged as the light at the end of its sales enablement tunnel. It effectively placed the reins back in the hands of the sales representatives, allowing them to find what they needed and engage more meaningfully with their customers. With Paperflite, the Perfection Learning team could not only make content easily discoverable but also understand how their content was being engaged with.
Maintaining a Single Source of Truth
For Dori, one of the significant advantages of Paperflite was having that one 'single source of truth'. This allowed the latest versions of collateral to be easily available and accessed by all team members, anytime and anywhere, without the need to be logged online or dependent on her. It reduced her burden and allowed the sales reps to be self-sufficient in accessing necessary resources.
Moreover, the team also had insight into whether a piece of content was not available or missing on Paperflite which allowed them to identify gaps and understand the needs of their internal customers better.
Goodbye to the ‘Spray and Pray’ Approach
With Paperflite, the Perfection Learning team was also able to move away from the ‘spray and pray’ approach of information dissemination. This method involved sending blast emails with multiple assets to numerous recipients, often leading to little to no engagement. With Paperflite’s insights, the team was able to understand that quantity doesn’t always equate to quality. They started focusing on sending targeted and relevant content to smaller, more defined groups of customers.
Prioritizing Meaningful Follow-ups
For Perfection Learning, Paperflite was now not just a sales enablement tool, but a platform that gave them the ability to prioritize follow-ups based on prospect engagement insights. It has helped them create a more effective and efficient sales process.
Buyer educate and nurture
“We have a wealth of legacy resources at Perfection Learning that we wanted to be sure people were finding. We were thinking about building out a top-of-the-funnel resource so that when educators are searching for free resources like grammar worksheets, vocabulary worksheets, literature guides”, notes Dori.