Marketing is having the ability to understand the customer’s needs and wants and utilizing those specific tenders into design inputs and marketing outputs. Sales is understanding the design outputs and communicating them as benefits that will meet the customers’ needs and wants to sell the products.
Both Sales and Marketing require communication skills, but I disagree with amd29 and believe Sales is more hinged on communication compared to Marketing. In my opinion the areas of focus for Marketing are as follows: discussions with the country representatives to determine needs, wants and interest in a product, creation of the content for Marketing research studies, explaining the marketing results back to the project team to be incorporated as design inputs, creation of marketing materials to display the benefits of the product, relaying product outputs back to the global representatives to determine volume forecast and distribution models, creation of the launch plan, and communicating marketing outputs back to the corporation to determine market trends. While for Sales, communication is the entire job. Sales representatives are trained to have an in-depth understanding of the product, are designated to specific regions to build relationships with clients, communicate to potential customers or at sales conferences to promote and sell the product, and return any feedback they may have from either the rate of the sales or from the customers to the Marketing leads.