The sales team in SaaS companies are shouldered with the responsibility to achieve sales targets which often requires them to close the lead quickly. Much of the conversion in a sales cycle, from initial touch base to final conversion, involves communication with various stakeholders—ranging from initial contacts to final decision-makers.

B2B SaaS sales reps thus need to engage a diverse group of individuals within the client’s organization. It includes potential users, key influencers, financial approvers, and technical evaluators, each playing a critical role in the purchasing decision.

Because a typical B2B SaaS environment often has decision-makers who are not the end-users of the product. For instance, email marketing software will be used by a marketing executive but the decision on which software to buy rests on the marketing head or CMO (chief marketing officer).

What happens in such cases?

Deals stall, prospects disappear, and revenue targets remain unachieved. HubSpot reports an average SaaS cycle of 84 days. So, how to gauge whether you are on pace with the average?

By focusing on the pipeline acceleration. 

What Is Pipeline Acceleration?

Pipeline acceleration is a strategic approach to gauge the velocity of your sales cycle. The outcome is insights that help unlock faster growth by aligning marketing and sales. They can then be tasked to boost prospects through the sales funnel at lightning speed. 

Implementing the right tactics for sales and marketing can shorten sales cycles, boost win rates, and have a direct impact on your bottom line.

Here’s what pipeline acceleration can do:

• Ensure fast revenue growth: A shorter sales cycle translates to revenue hitting your books sooner.
• Allows improved forecasting: Pipeline acceleration over time presents a pattern, making it easier for the team to predict sales. This makes pipeline forecasting significantly accurate where resources for sales and marketing are allocated based on the forecasted revenue. 

This allows — 

• Shortening the sales cycle by creating a more predictable flow of leads.
• Enhancing visibility into future revenue.
• Smarter budgeting and efficient resource allocation decisions based on reliable data.
• Providing better sales efficiency: Sales efficiency isn’t just about closing deals fast. It also ensures that the efforts of your sales teams translate directly into maximum revenue, without wasted time or misdirected effort.

In this piece, we’ll explore how marketing teams can chip in to accelerate the sales cycle.

High-Quality Lead Nurturing

Once prospects show interest and advance in the sales funnel, marketing teams need to keep these leads engaged. This involves nurturing relationships with leads throughout their buying journey.

Marketing teams run targeted content and provide personalized communication to educate, guide, and demonstrate value

Often, their actions will rely on the lead score. It involves using lead scoring tools to rank leads based on their engagement and fit. This helps prioritize and customize marketing outreach for the most promising prospects.

Here’s how marketing teams can nurture leads to accelerate the sales cycle.

Email Drip Campaigns

Automated sequences that deliver personalized content to drive sales based on lead behavior (e.g., website visits, content downloads, etc.). It works by delivering relevant and timely content based on lead behavior.

When a lead performs a specific action, they are automatically enrolled in a predefined sequence of emails, text messages, or in-app notifications. Each message in the sequence is crafted to educate, engage, and advance the lead further down the sales funnel.

For example, if a lead signs up for a free trial of a software product, they might be enrolled in a sequence that includes:

• A welcome email with instructions on how to use the software,
• A series of emails offering tips and best practices for effective use,
• A case study or testimonial from a similar customer, and
• An offer for a paid subscription.

ToFu, MoFu, BoFu content

Blogs, webinars, case studies, and whitepapers that address prospect pain points and position your solution across the different stages of the funnel.

• ToFu (Top-of-Funnel) Content: To attract and engage leads with blog posts, infographics, social media content, etc. This should address industry challenges and offer helpful insights.
• MoFu (Middle-of-Funnel) Content: Leads with favorable (high) scores demonstrate that they are more interested. For them, provide case studies, webinars, and ebooks where your SaaS solution is presented as a tool to solve their specific problems.
• BoFu (Bottom-of-Funnel) Content: Equipping prospects for the final decision with demos, free trials, and customer testimonials, reinforcing their decision to choose your product.

Deliver Sales Enablement

Sales teams need the tools, resources, and knowledge to close deals effectively. While they are the ones communicating with prospects, marketing teams can work behind the curtains to create compelling sales material tailored for each prospect.

Sales enablement will help deliver warmer, more qualified leads to sales, enabling them to close deals faster and increase overall win rates.

Here’s what the marketing teams can expect to do.

Create a Content Hub

Marketers create a centralized location for sales to easily access the latest marketing content, customer success stories, and product updates. Sales reps can thus save time searching for the right content, assuring them of using the most current information.

Offer Sales Collaterals

Marketing teams can infuse much-needed creativity that interactively showcases your product’s features and how they solve customer problems. 

Here’s what it includes:
 

• Organizing live demos (led by a sales rep) or pre-recorded for prospects to explore at their own pace.
• Visually appealing slide decks provide a high-level overview of the product, company, and customer success stories.
• One-pagers that offer concise summaries of key product information, ideal for quick reference by sales or distribution to prospects.
• Comparison sheet to put competitors’ products for side-by-side comparisons to highlight your product’s advantages.

Providing a Seamless Sales Handoff

A fast-moving sales cycle requires marketing and sales teams to break data silos. This means the information of qualified leads from marketing to sales should transit faster with clear communication and context. 

Achieving this handoff requires both teams to — 

• Define clear lead qualification criteria across different stages of the buyer journey.
• Gain contextual Insights beyond just contact details by including behavioral data (content viewed, questions asked), giving sales a richer lead profile.

Apart from these, marketing teams can work on a seamless sales handoff in the following manner.

Implementing Advanced CRM Integration

Integrating CRM lead management helps automate the transfer of lead data from marketing to sales so that all relevant information is instantly available to the sales team. 

Such integration provides real-time updates and alerts on any activity — from opening an email to downloading a case study. Sales reps can then engage with such leads while they are still hot. It also includes triggering workflows that prompt sales actions based on specific marketing interactions or lead behaviors.

Regular Training and Feedback Loops

The marketing and sales team can attend training sessions to understand the full capabilities and information available through CRM and other tools. Such trainings encourage an ongoing feedback loop where sales provide insights back to marketing on lead information that was most useful and which needed refinements. This allows the marketing team to refine their data collection and lead scoring models.

Conclusion

When it comes to boosting revenue through sales, marketing teams too can contribute. Their involvement throughout the sales cycle as discussed above can help sales reps to move the prospect further in the funnel, faster.

Visionary brands break departmental silos where marketing teams are not just responsible for generating leads. They also need to take steps to nurture prospects with the right content at the right time, equipping sales for success, and tracking results to optimize future performance.

A better alignment between marketing and sales can streamline the pipeline, leading to shorter sales cycles, and faster revenue growth.

About the Author:

Hazel Raoult is a marketing manager at PRmention. She has over six years of experience writing about startups, entrepreneurship, and all things to SaaS.

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Every Outlook user tries to keep his vital data safe and secure. Locking a PST data file with a password is one part of this strategy. And the other part of the strategy is remembering that very password. It may be opined that importing a password-protected PST file into the Outlook profile, Office 365, or live Exchange Server needs the password. If this protected file is marred by some corruption issue, then you cannot import or open it in Outlook, Office 365, or Live Exchange Server, even if you possess the password.

If it were the case with web-based email services like Gmail, users would simply contact support for assistance. But in the case of Outlook, clouds of uncertainty surround the mind of the user. Well! Worry not. You are in the right place. This post will illuminate your knowledge regarding repairing password-protected PST files.

What are the Methods to Repair Password-Protected PST Files?

Repairing a password-protected PST (Personal Storage Table) data file is challenging. There is a manual method that repairs using the Inbox Repair Tool or Scanpst.exe. We can also use PST file recovery software to perform the repairing task. But before starting the PST repairing process, always take the backup of the targeted file to prevent data loss. The step-by-step guide is listed below:

Method 1: Repairing Password-Protected PST using Scanpst.exe:

Microsoft Outlook is empowered with the Inbox Repair Tool of Scanpst.exe to troubleshoot different operational issues related to PST. We can also use Scanpst to repair our password-protected files manually. Take the backup of the file and then follow the below steps for repairing a password-protected PST file:

·  Step 1: Press Windows + R to explore the run dialogue box

·  Step 2: Type %programfiles%/Microsoft Office or %programfiles(x86)%/Microsoft Office; press Enter

·  Step 3: Open the Officexx folder. Look out for scanPST.exe, and launch the tool

·  Step 4: Browse and choose the desired password-protected PST file for which repair is needed

·  Step 5: Click Start to scan the selected PST file

·  Step 6: During the scan, the tool may discover errors; click Repair to fix those errors; and close all other programs

·  Step 7: When the repair process is over, you can open the repaired file or import it into your Outlook profile

o  Note: The tool may crash or freeze while repairing. The tool may fail to repair a password-protected or encrypted PST file due to its limitations. 

Limitations of Repairing Password-Protected PST Files Using Scanpst:

As discussed earlier, repairing a password-protected PST file using Scanpst is a challenging task. Firstly, it can’t handle a large file.. The following are the main limitations of repairing PST files using Scanpst:

• It can’t give a preview of repaired PST mailbox items
• It can’t repair a large PST file
• It can’t save repaired PST file in the multiple file formats such as MSG, EML, RTF, PDF & HTML
• It can’t migrate repaired PST file to Microsoft 365 or Exchange server
• It can’t recover the deleted PST items while repairing it  

Method 2: Repair Outlook PST files using PST File Recovery Software:

Even though Outlook is equipped with Scanpst.exe to troubleshoot PST issues, it may not be able to fix issues with challenging and complex scenarios. It may sometimes lead to the loss of crucial data. There is also an expert-recommended solution that assures  to recover the data from password-protected PST files. In this method, we employ advanced PST file recovery tool like Stellar Repair for Outlook. The step-by-step guide to repair PST files using this software is mentioned below:

• Step 1: Download and install Stellar Repair for Outlook on your system
• Step 2: Launch the software and select Manually[GKA1]  or choose the List profile option
• Step 3: Press Browse to select the corrupt password-protected PST file you want to repair
• Step 4: Press repair and wait
• Step 5: Once the repair process is over, preview all emails and choose the content you want to recover, restore
• Step 6: Click Save Repaired File and then choose PST > Next

o  Note: In case, the software is not activated, an activation will pop up. Enter the activation code to save recovered items

• Step 7: Click Browse to choose a save location and click OK

Striking Features of Stellar Repair for Outlook:

Acclaimed by IT administrators, this PST recovery software comes in three versions: Professional, Technician, and Toolkit. Some of its main features are listed below:

·  It repairs password-protected PST files with 100% integrity.

·  It is capable of repairing and recovering all mailbox data with no file size issue

· It restores the deleted emails.

·  It provides users with advanced filtering options to include or exclude emails.

·  It offers the option to export data files in varied file formats like PST, EML, MSG, RTF, HTML, and PDF (professional) and MBOX (Technician).

·  It offers opportunity to export the recovered PST to Office 365, Live Exchange Server (Technician).

·  It offers functionality to split and compact the restored PST file (Technician).

·  It has the feature to export contacts in CSV, merge multiple PST files, and improve scanning and saving speed (Toolkit).

Conclusion:

The ScanPST.exe, or Inbox Repair tool, is the first-hand remedy available to Microsoft Outlook users to troubleshoot the PST issues, including the repair of password-protected PST files. Even though this free utility is capable of solving minor issues, ScanPST may fail to address some complex issues like repairing severely corrupted PST files, malware attacks, etc. Therefore, it is better to use an expert-recommended PST recovery tool like Stellar Repair for Outlook. Multiple features of Stellar’s software that may catch your fancy include an advanced filter option to include or exclude emails and enhanced scanning, saving speed. Also, it offers options to save and export data in multiple file formats, like PST, EML, MSG, RTF, HTML, and PDF. So scan your corrupted PST file like a pro using Stellar Repair for Outlook.