Knock-knock. "Avon calling..."

Imagine the Avon Lady of yore's delight if she could spy on women in a household before knocking on their door. Perhaps Ms. Avon would notice one reading all she can on the art of perfectly shaped brows for the brow-less, or catch another one holding samples of fabric up to her face, trying to determine whether she is a "fall" or a "summer..."

With this contextual information in place, the saleswoman wouldn't need to hint around about what prospects might be interested in. Instead, she'd be able to cut right to the chase.

The Context & Content of CRM Software Can Sell Products & Services For You

Today's sales professionals are fortunate because technology is automatically on their side. When you optimize your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you will glean valuable insight into how each of your prospects uses your website, social media and eNewsletters, as well as what they are looking up, downloading or spending time reading. Thus, you can more intuitively determine what their pain points are and/or which products/services they are interested in learning more about.

In other words, you can use a CRM system to gain context - and this puts you automatically ahead in the sales game.

Pre-CRM, you were grateful for the populated contact lists accumulated via website visitors' inquiries. These were great but they didn't necessarily tell you exactly what the problem was - and they didn't mean the lead was qualified. Post-CRM, you can find out exactly which eBook a prospect downloaded, giving you the insight required to check back later in a more personal way.

And - the best part of all? The CRM system can be integrated with your company's marketing automation system to generate a very specific email at just the right moment in time.

The Context of Prospects' Actions Generate More Relevant Content

If you're looking into CRM systems, odds are you know that content is considered king when it comes to inbound marketing. Here's the trouble with content, though - it has to reach the prospect where he or she is at in the buyers' cycle.

The key to content that works is creating the right content, for the right buyer, at the right time. This sounds easy, but is harder than it looks. Then, on top of that, the content needs to be diversified because different types of content appeal to different types of buyers.

When you begin working with a CRM system, you'll be able to better organize, sort, schedule and disseminate content in a timely fashion. CRM systems can:

• Populate new contacts upon request so you don't have to manually enter them (fewer mistakes = better chance of getting content to the right person)
• Organize and store content so you can access the right piece when you need it
• Sort content by cycle phase to efficiently locate buyer cycle-specific content when you need it.
• Keep track of prospects' interactions with website, offers and other inbound marketing tools so you're always sending fresh content, or different angles pertaining to their topic or area of interest when their attention seems to be wavering.
• Save templates of emails or personalized content that has been successful for you in the past.
• Keep track of the communication stream and timing so a potential sale doesn't inadvertently get away.
• Create a single source where sales and marketing teams can live together with contacts and prospect interactions - reducing the embarrassing "different answers to the same question" scenarios.

The context and content capabilities of CRM will help sales and marketing work better and faster - inspiring a steady stream of qualified prospects.