My career started in corporate life. I always had roles in marketing departments starting with a marketing specialist to the marketing director. What I've learned from my experience is that if you want to be successful in the marketing department of a company you should be;
hardworking --> most of the time you need to run and work on marketing campaigns which include many to do's to follow. You have to be hard working maybe that's the majority of the marketing departments are consists of women.
good at numbers --> you make a campaign and you need to see and evaluate the result for the next campaign. You should also be running after the numbers to determine the next target audience for your campaigns.
good at political relationships --> yeap that might be the hardest point. You should know how to be clever enough to make people work hard in your campaigns because every campaign is a project itself. Also, marketing is always the department that upper management always like to play with. Sp you should always think twice before talking to them.
My face to face sales experience started when I had first established my business. Damn it look such an easy thing to do when you look from outside, but it's a totally different experience what I had in marketing. Face to face retail sales is totally a stage job. You' are always on the stage. The tone of your voice, the way you talk and smile, your clothes everything determines how your sales numbers will go that day. If you want to be successful in F2F sales job you should be,
love communicating new people
careful about your clothes
professional on small talks and maybe networking...
What I learned so far from my experiences are sales and marketing 2 different are they have nothing in common. They are different from each other as much as sales and technology departments.
While they require such a different skill set, some companies still have a job title as a marketing & sales manager. Either they know something I dont know or they dont know what to do.
Good luck to all marketing & sales managers in the world.