It is important to understand the difference between sales and marketing because you need to integrate both functions in your organisation. Understanding the thin line between them helps you make them work in tandem to increase the revenue of your organisation. While preparing an organisation's budget, you need to make a proper allocation for each business function. A good understanding of differences helps you prepare a balanced and efficient budget.

Sales is the process of selling goods and services. It involves convincing potential customers to buy from your company. The convincing can be through various means such as explaining your product's benefits, offering discounts or making your product more attractive than that of your competitors. Some common sales generation methods include making cold calls, holding one-on-one meeting with business leads, participating in trade fairs and promotional events and cross selling (selling another product to an existing customer).

Sales is the starting point of a contract between a business and its customers. A company often looks to retain its customer base by nurturing a positive relationship with its customers.

Marketing is the process of making people interested in your product through various strategies like pricing, packaging, positioning (creating a perception), placement and promotion. Marketing efforts of a company may or may not focus on generating direct sales leads, but they definitely intend to make sales easier and increase revenues over a longer period of time.

For example, marketing teams often work on intangible strategies like creating a brand image and improving public relations. Having a good brand image may not generate direct sales leads, but it influences customers to make a purchase decision in favour of the company's products. Thus, marketing mainly focuses on analysing customers' needs, interests and behaviour to make products more appealing to them.