What's the Difference Between Marketing and Sales ?

Marketing is general, making potential customers aware of your product or company. E.G taking it to the market place.
Sales is actually selling the product from the market stall (to continue the analogy).

Which do I prefer?
Neither, both are necessary but generally account for an excessive proportion of the budget in my opinion.

Del

Marketing doesn't produce anything. It just gets you thinking about how the heck you managed to survive so many years without manure (agriculture excepted). Sales simply tries to get you buying more manure than you thought (after the marketing efforts) you needed.

I see your point. But in our organization the marketing guys dictate the look and feel of our manure, making them largely responsible for the mess.

And then to convince the customer that they're suffering from an appalling lack of our obviously superior manure, they create numerous sales aids. Often they digest loads of engineering and test data down to solid facts and then shovel piles of it on the sales folks.

No no, it's always design who are at fault for designing the wrong sort of manure.
Marketing and sales can alway sell what they havn't got, and have plenty of excuses why they can't sell what's on the shelf.
Del

An engineer who thinks that pi equals 3 should (and I pray he would) be fired at once. A marketing manager who makes plans for his company's selling 314 million this year and the company ends up with 300 MM would be awarded. Were the case that the company didn't sell anything at all and went bankruptcy, he would even be granted a golden parachute.

So, think of this: Weathermen, Marketing people and Presidents are the only people who cannot be blamed for being wrong 70% of the time. We can and surely will. But that's what we chose to do.

Marketing is determining what to sell, who to sell it to, how to sell it, when to sell it, where to sell it, and how much to sell. In short, marketing is the micromanagement of sales.

Marketing: promotion and sourcing for new clients .

Sales: securing contracts .

"And which one do you prefer ?"

Neither ; I'd much rather play with environmental science like what I'm doing now . It's way more fun .

Marketing, as the word implies is defining a market for a product. Sales is selling the product within that market area. Preference? Both are necessary to get the product from the manufacturer to the consumer.

Example - Hamburgers

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Marketing is the "sizzle"

Sales works with the customer to "tailor" the actual order

Production is the flipper and assembly/delivery system

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Marketing establishes that an adequate number of prospects exist

Sales converts prospects into buyers

Production satisfies buyers needs

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All are necessary to exist

just my two cents - Jim