Marketing vs. Selling

Marketing and sales are both activities aimed at increasing revenue. They are so closely intertwined that people often don’t realize the difference between the two. Indeed, in small organizations, the same people typically perform both sales and marketing tasks. Nevertheless, marketing is different from sales and as the organization grows, the roles and responsibilities become more specialized.
Comparison chart Improve this chart | Marketing | Sales | Approach: | Customer orientation - Listens to and eventual accommodation of the target market and determine futureneeds | Customer orientation - makes customer demand match the products the company currently offers | Process: | One to many | Usually one to one | Focus: | Generate leads - fulfill customer's wants and needs thru products and/or services the company can offer | Generate purchases/orders - fulfillsales volume objectives | Horizon: | Longer term | Short term | Scope: | Identifying customer needs (research), creating products to meet those needs, promotions toadvertise said products. | Once a product has been created for a customer need, persuade the customer to purchase the product to fulfill her needs | Strategy: | pull | push | Concept: | Marketing is a wider concept | Sales is a narrower concept | Priority: | Marketing shows how to reach to the Customers | Sales is the ultimate result of marketing |
EDITSales vs Marketing Activities
Marketing activities include consumer research (to identify the needs of the customers), product development(designing innovative products to meet existing or latent needs), advertising the products to raise awareness and build the brand. The typical goal of marketing is to generate interest in the product and create leads or prospects.
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