To open a jar, says my crossfit trainer, you don’t use your fingers. The muscles in the hand are tiny and weak, they are used to do fine things like fiddling around with the pen. Opening the jar, however, is not a fine thing. You need power for that.
The most power would come from the bigger muscles, like the shoulder ones. To open the jar therefore, you grab the lid and hold it tight — that’s the only thing you do with your fingers –, then start turning the lid by rotating your shoulder and elbow, while keeping the fingers straight. You’ll have the jar open in no time.
You lift weights the same way: instead of using your back and the fine spinal muscles, use your core and legs. Those are the strongest muscles in the body, which means you can use them more effectively and impose less opportunity for injury.
Marketing goes like lifting weights.
To oversimplify for the argument’s sake, sales and marketing are for introducing a product to an audience. You find a target group first, and then explain to those people how you can improve their life through a single purchase.
Working on headlines and advertisements, experimenting with messages and formats are the fine muscles. Most of the time they get the job done — in the end of the day, you can open the jar the wrong way too –, but there are stronger muscles out there.
Heavy lifting should be done by the product you’re trying to sell. The sales department will have an easier job if it’s already obvious who will use the merch, when, and what for. Marketing really shouldn’t waste their time on explaining simple things: they should be able to explore new appeals and play around with fine details in messaging.
Don’t skip leg days: build the product so that it’s obvious what it’s for — just by looking at it people should be able to tell what they can do with it.
You’re done when they also want to use it right away.