Maths Pathway grows with Salesforce to help more students succeed

Maths Pathway’s model is a leap forward from traditional approaches to learning and teaching and, when the company first started out, the process of bringing schools on board was long and complicated. Sales leaders had to engage and educate multiple stakeholders and the sales cycle could stretch over 12 months. Even renewals took ages as quotes and contracts were put together using information from spreadsheets and had to be printed out and signed.

To grow beyond the startup phase and reach as many students as possible, Maths Pathway needed a solution that would streamline sales processes and improve customer engagement. The company also sought to better understand potential and current customers. It had a lot of customer data, but it was all held in different spreadsheets and there was no easy way to connect the dots.

“We reached a point where we needed a solution that would integrate all our systems and data to support everything we’re doing,” said Marinesco. “Salesforce was ideal; it’s all about using data to make better decisions and engage with your customers.”

To ramp up sales productivity, Maths Pathway implemented Sales Cloud first and used it to apply more automation and intelligence to sales. Sales reps were able to build up a picture of all decision makers involved in opportunities and set up dashboards and alerts to ensure regular follow up with leads. This brought more structure and efficiency to sales, but there was still too much manual effort required to nurture and communicate with leads.

“We were collecting all these data points manually— like what people were looking at on our website— and it made it hard to segment our data and personalise messaging,” said Marinesco.

Adopting Pardot allowed Maths Pathway to bring more of its data into Salesforce and nurture leads in a more sophisticated way. Using features like the Engagement Studio, marketing is able to send customers the right message, at the right time, at every stage of their journey. It is also able to spin up personalised landing pages and forms to improve the efficiency and impact of campaigns. As a result, Maths Pathway’s open rates almost doubled and CTR improved by 367%.

The increased engagement has helped to shorten the sales cycle by an average of 6 months. Maths Pathway also now has a better understanding of leads and customers and can personalise their experience.

“All our information on decision makers and our communication with them is now in one place, and we can identify trends like 80% of those we meet with, will likely want to meet again. With all of these insights and efficiencies from Salesforce, the way we progress leads is pretty incredible,” said Marinesco.

Complementing all of this, Maths Pathway has automated quoting and contract management using Salesforce CPQ as well as DocuSign and Breadwinner from the AppExchange. These activities were a drain on time for sales reps and account managers in the past and renewals were left to the last minute. This made it difficult for the business to forecast and it was also inconvenient for teachers and school administrators as it meant they would be finalising the renewals at one of the busiest times of the year.

The difference between then and now is like night and day; renewals can be triggered with a click in Salesforce and contracts are just as easily signed by customers online. In addition, the sales team has completed nearly forty renewals three months ahead of the school year, as compared to zero the same time last year.

Maths Pathway is continuing to expand its use of Salesforce as it gets set to break into new markets. The company has integrated Salesforce with its product platform to gain a complete 360 degree view of customers, including insights on how schools, teachers and students are progressing with its model. It’s started to apply predictive intelligence to sales using Einstein Next Best Action.

“With all of these solutions in place we can provide a much better experience for customers and take away all of the admin from sales and account managers so they can spend more time with teachers in the classroom,” said Marinesco. “At the end of the day, that’s the work that really matters and will help us achieve our mission.”