What happens when it becomes obvious that the product you’re selling is not perceived by your prospect as meeting a core business need?

Don’t sell your product to them.

That’s right. Remember, you’re dealing with the emotional human mind. People prioritize their business challenges – and products, services and categories associated with them – in their minds. Center-of-the-plate issues keep your audience up at night – business-critical concerns. In human resources, it’s healthcare costs. For an owner of a trucking company, fuel costs and driver retention are certainly center-of-plate. But what if your offering is not perceived as an answer to their core issues? Keeping the dining metaphor, you’re selling a side dish. Not that the product or service is not relevant or remarkably unique. They just require a different communications strategy. Unfortunately, the harder you push a side dish product directly to an audience whose minds are consumed by more center-of-the-plate issues, the less likely they’ll listen. “We don’t need that.” “What we’re doing is fine.” “I can’t think about that now.” Been there?

Put simply, if you recognize you’re selling a side dish, you need to find a link to your audience’s central concerns. We’ve worked with plenty of companies with this communications challenge and have gotten awfully good at getting the side dish into the center-of-the-plate mix. Here are few ways to do it:

Find common ground. Change the perceptions by changing the game. Think bigger message. Make the association by linking your product within the context of a larger topic. Talk trends. Invent a word. Do what it takes to be included in a list with the center.

Find something else to sell. Can’t find a believable connection between what you sell and the center? Do an end-around. Lead with the center, backfill with side dish. Become a solutions provider. Arm them with center-of-plate information. Lure them to your Web site with a white paper central to their pain. Suddenly, you’re not the company that sells the side dish, you’re the company helping your customer meet its needs.

Find the person with the pain. Okay, forget the corner office. Find the people in the organization likely to champion your offering. They’ll fight for you. Put them in the center of your bull’s eye and give them the tools necessary to elevate your perception internally.

Find a channel partner. Find companies that sell to the center. Piggyback. Bundle. Get a referral. Sign a distribution agreement. Let them make a valid recommendation for your product. They have the ear and the trust of your audience.

First, acknowledge where you fit in the mind. If it’s not perceptually of central importance, take alternative approaches to get there.