At some point or the other you might have been poised to answer this question, I actually didn't understand the difference until I was given a sales task a few years ago, checking the action point on the task given I found out it was so different to what I have been doing as a marketer, I wasn't shaken, all I did was to look for an answer and get the job done. I got on a few resources which helped.
Driving straight into the purpose of this content. I'm here to explain what I discovered a few years ago, that is the difference between sales and marketing. Both sales and marketing are closely interlinked and they are both geared towards common goals, but if the differences are not understood and made act independently it might cause a big problem for your business.

Well, how is sales different from marketing?
Difference between Sales and Marketing has been a widely discussed topic for ages. However, both the functions are critical for the long and short term success of any business.
Both the function drive ROI for business and depend on each other for the overall success of an organization. However, the way both functions to achieve organizational goals is different.

According to HubSpot, marketing and sales are differentiated thus,
Marketing informs and attracts leads and prospects to your company and product or service. Sales, on the other hand, works directly with prospects to reinforce the value of the company's solution to convert prospects into customers.

I hope the above is clear and helps you understand the difference between sales and marketing. The bottom-line is:
Both Sales and Marketing are critical functions. One can not survive without the other.
we consider marketing as strategies geared towards making people aware of a product or service and that can be done via any form or channel of marketing, while sales deal with closing deals, making sure that the already informed prospects buy the products and service.

There are some products or services that typically need little actions from the sales department, for example, beverage companies like coca cola might need no sales effort to get customers to buy but they will rather need to pull up great marketing campaigns to inform people about their products.
In contrast, businesses like real estate might probably not be able to make a sale without the effort of a technical and intelligent sales department while they also need a vast marketing effort to keep their sales funnel full.

 In a business where marketing and sales are needed to generate a sale, you have to be very careful so that you won't be putting sales action where you actually still need marketing action, you have to understand your funnel deeply here. Though the marketing aspect might be skipped when the person already knows about your product, if not you should be sure that the prospect is already deeply informed about the features and the benefit of your products or services before you try selling to him.

 Using the service I provide as an example, I offer various digital marketing service, before I can close a deal I need to put both marketing and sales in action, starting with marketing I may decide to pull up an  advert with some creative copy to get the attention of my audience, immediately I get a prospect from the marketing action I quickly switch my follow up action to sales this is where I go more personal with the prospect, telling them what value exactly my service will add to their business. I try to understand the business more here and then I give a more precise solution.

In conclusion, the goal of marketing is to generate desire in the product and create leads or prospects. Actionable 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.
• pricing products and services to maximize long-term revenue.