Your sales are down and leads are rare. The phones not ringing. Lets blame marketing!

If you join this band wagon to rationalize your poor sales results, you need to step up and take responsibility for your own fate. Its amazing how often sales teams play the victim here. They blame the marketing department, team or an individual, for their lack of sales.

Dont get me wrong, Im on your side. Often, in a typical, lets say traditional organization, there is disconnection between marketing and the sales organization. There is a lack of communication, team work and common goals. Sad but true.

Often, the larger the company, the less marketing serves the individual sales professional. In corporations, it seems the norm for marketing is to concentrate on selling the brand and not products and services. Corporate marketing sells the logo to trigger trust and positive emotions when people see it. Not all, but most, traditional marketing leans on advertising which fails to work directly for you in attracting new prospects and leads.

In small to medium-sized companies, there is usually a very small marketing team or a single very, over-worked marketeer. Worst, as a business owner or independent professional, you dont have a budget and you do everything! Again, marketing is absent or not good enough to generate enough new opportunities.

The most important and singular point Im making is that you must recognize and deal with what is, to improve your situation.

Recently, I turned 40 years old. A friend said to me, Dont worry, 40 is the new 30. If you want to improve sales and your commission, guess what? Marketing is the new Sales!

Understand YOU are your own marketing department. Accept it and take action.

Just like the decline (if not extinction) of personal assistants, sales administrative assistants and secretaries to support sales teams or individuals, there is less marketing support too. You type your own sales letters and other correspondence and keep your own schedule.

Today, you need to work on your own public awareness, lead generation and sales support materials and communications. With tighter budgets, less staff and more responsibility, its up to you.

Any way you look at it, as a sales professional you must take charge. Sales superstars and expert managers know this. They devise a strategy and implement their own marketing systems, in addition to the brand-like corporate, marketing efforts. Marketing is continual communication to influence someone to take an action. Marketing departments do it through various means and on a mass scale, via print and media advertising and public relations. Single, sales people can market effectively through personal contact and working in the field. You can source new deals and increase lead generation within your existing sales process without as much pain or work as you think.

If you dont accept that you have to take action yourself and keep looking outside for leads and prospects, youre going to continue to fail to reach your sales objectives. The good news is that the technology and tools available today are powerful, affordable and effective for solving this challenge.

Keep an eye out for future Customer Catcher articles, where Ill give you strategies, tips and tricks for creating a profitable, Personal Marketing program to drive your sales skyward. Youll get the sales you want and become your own marketing machine with bigger, better and more immediate results.

Until then, think about evolving into your latest role because

Marketing is the new Sales.