If you go in for laparoscopic surgery, you get holes in your stomach.

Four to five small incisions where a doctor will place tubes. These tubes allow her to insert her tools for work.

Then, she’ll blow up your stomach with gas to give her room to work. Lastly, she’ll place a camera in there to see what she’s working on.

After this prep work is done, she performs the surgery. It can last anywhere from thirty minutes to hours. It all depends on what needs to be done.

Once the surgery is complete, she begins to stitch up your stomach. Closing those holes properly is important. If she doesn’t close them right, you can get a hernia during recovery.

In order to close those holes properly, some doctors will use a specific tool.

That was the tool I sold.

It was used for a minute or two at the end of a surgery.

While important, the tool didn’t really take up that much of the doctor’s attention.

It was my job to make that one to two minutes seem important enough to think about using my specific tool.

The reality is, your product probably only plays a small part in something bigger.

Just like the tool I sold for the end of surgery.

If your product plays a small part, your customer will probably only give you a small piece of their attention.

As marketers, it’s good to know where we fit. Chances are, you are not the most important thing in that customers day.

We can’t market to customers like we are.

While the work we do is important, there are other important things as well.

Just like in that surgery, closing up a patient is important. But, the doctor is also concerned with removing the problem area that was the reason for the surgery in the first place.

My tool was not more important than that.