A Traditional Question: What comes first Sales or Marketing ?

A traditional answer... any of those comes before or after.. 

Both have different roles in a company, but somehow the same goal: increase in quantity and in quality the company market share.

Marketing "wake´s up" the latency desires in the consumers, satisfy their need´s and maybe somehow will make them desire more and even different things. Marketing leaves the consumers with "open arms" for Sales...

Marketing, if it will well develop, will bring more productivity for the sales as this area does for it self.

So, at the end, I think these two disciplines should be walking "au pair", with hands crossed like two happy children..:)

You need good marketing to maintain sales. Marketing reinforces sales. There is no sales without a good marketing strategy. If your marketing strategy is good you reach more people and your target market increase which results in more sales for the business. 

Is it a question like: 'who was first - an egg or a chicken'? If yes, there is no good or better answer. 

Anyway, from my experience - you will not increase your sales without marketing unless you have very good sales team. 

Marketing will come first.

Marketing will create a brand image, i.e. a market for your product.

Sales is an integral part of marketing. 

Thanks for invitation ,

I like this question , and always searching for more answers about it , anyways ,virtually Marketing comes first in traditional situations and that is what happened to create the demand then the sales take actions accordingly , but sometimes sales come first to ensure the mass availability in assigned market then marketing come. 

This question is useful for non marketing or sales people but rather it is meaningless for professional business management or marketing management and sales team.

Why it is so because ( for instance) marketing is like an umbrella and under this umbrella many items should be there, sales is one item among the items . I hope you got it.

According to American management Association: Marketing encompasses a broad spectrum of activities including, market research, product discovery, product production, pricing, promotion, distribution and sales, therefore, sales is just only one activity in the process of marketing activities .

Sales

Sales  is an act persuading or convincing a customer to buy a product or service. 

Marketing is a huge department in which sales lies. 

Hi Mr. Abhineet

When it comes to Traditional Question, yes Marketing comes first, because when new product launch we need to market in brief about  particular product before we could sell product to a customer.. 

I would agree with the answers... Variety of helpful info and opinions .... !

However I believe that Marketing comes first.. Marketing tells you what you should sell !

Thank you