Marketing and sales are both aimed at increasing revenue, but they are closely intertwined. Most people often don’t even realize the difference between the two. In small organizations, the same people typically perform both sales and marketing tasks. Nevertheless, marketing is different from sales.
The typical goal of marketing is to generate interest in the product and create leads or prospects. Marketing activities include consumer research, product development, advertising and pricing the products and services.
On the other hand, sales activities are focused on converting prospects to actual paying customers. Sales involves directly interacting with the prospects to persuade them to purchase the product.
Marketing thus tends to focus on the general population (or, in any case, a large set of people) whereas sales tends to focus on individuals or a small group of prospects.
So basically, marketing is everything that is done in order to reach and persuade prospects, while the sales process is about closing the sale and getting a signed agreement or contract.
