while many companies have a single vp to control sales and marketing, they are totally seperate functions. marketings job is to analyze the marketplace to determine how to position the companies products (including product mix and pricing) and also convey marketing messages to its consumers.

sales is responsible for presenting specific products to the consumer/client and collect feedback regarding pricing, product mix (which have been determined by marketing), etc. the number one difference is sales is revenue GENERATING whereas marketing is just a cost center. this is the reason why marketing folks get axed when times are bad.

good salespeople have the BEST knowledge of the customer because they are the ones who made the sale. they know the competition better because they had to sell against them. this is firsthand knowledge based on experience vs. spreadsheet analysis of gathered data on the marketing side. operations and finance people often become officers because they know how to run a business efficiently and at low cost.

of course a marketing teacher is going to tell you execs are from marketing, more marketing students means job security for them. dont get me wrong, there are a lot of really cool marketing jobs and im sure there are marketing people who are officers, but i seriously doubt they are the highest percentage. the new favorite mba focus is product marketing and im sure a lot of those people will move on to become execs somewhere.