The goal of marketing is to make sales easier.

I consider marketing to be a supporting and promoting point to grow the sales. It is much more related to increasing awareness and making the product available and easy to reach.

IMO Marketing should serve sales. Let's take an example, From my personal experience of buying Apple products, I always get excited to get my hands on the latest iPhone or Macbook that is launched. Their marketing team does a stellar job with the product launch and buying experience is so smooth. I think salespeople need not put a lot of effort to get the buy-in from customers. Maybe I could be wrong, I would like to know what y'all think :)

I feel like these should not be mutually exclusive. Marketing operations as a whole do serve in boosting sales and helping promote the brand/product/etc for people to become and buy those. But this is not a one-way street, marketing and sales (if we speak in terms of departments) should cooperate to have the ongoing awareness of the current situation in the market. Trends and public opinion can be highly overrated, and marketers do need to see what actually sells to serve the demand better. Just my two cents on the subject.

I think marketing and sales are related things. Therefore, the 3rd option of the survey )

For me, marketing should serve sales, the product is limited on the time and any company can trust their customer. that is why we need strong marketing.