How Do You Leverage Sustainability to Sell More?

Sustainability Sales Series #1

Emerging regulations, increasing stakeholder expectations, and the looming specter of climate change are making the intersection of sales and sustainability as relevant as ever. What’s more? B2B buyers across industries, geographies, and company types are increasing the ESG requirements and sustainability criteria of their vendors, making a company’s ‘sustainable value proposition’ a critical component of the B2B sales cycle.

So how can you leverage sustainability to sell more? Here are three key steps any organization can take:

1. Get Third-Party Validation for the Positive Impact Your Offering Enables.

2. Demonstrate the Impact of Your Offering on Customer Net-Zero Commitments and ESG Goals.

3. Engage, Educate, and Empower Your Sales Team.

Let’s dive into each section in a bit more detail.

1. Get Third-Party Validation for the Positive Impact Your Offering Enables

ESG regulations and stakeholder lawsuits have made any unsubstantiated impact claims, also known as greenwashing, from ‘corporate fluff’ to ‘corporate fraud.’ Greenwashing can create a wide range of strategic, reputational, and financial risks, underscoring the criticality of getting an objective, third-party to validate and sign-off on claims about what your product, service, or overall offering can deliver. Given the increasing calls for transparency, traceability, and auditability regarding company claims, no one can “grade their own homework” anymore. The impact of your offering must be validated by a third-party to be viewed credibly in today’s business landscape. Here’s a great example of the power of third-party validation from our collaboration with Gecko Robotics.

2. Demonstrate the Impact of Your Offering on Customer Net-Zero Commitments and ESG Goals.

Enterprise and governmental buyers have long-term, enterprise ESG goals and pressures. Contextualizing how your offering is relevant to these substantial, public commitments helps close the comprehension gap between long-term organizational priorities and how you’re able to contribute to them. This moves the discussion (and their perception of you) from a simple vendor relationship to a critical strategic partnership.

Make your ‘impact narrative and numbers’ explicit early and often in the sales cycle. Proactively provide your buyers with your impact narrative (what your offering does to create positive impact) and your impact numbers (how effective the offering is in enabling the impact). Finally, quantify the positive impact your product or services has on their long-term goals and broader industry positioning. This moves you from vendor to sustainability advisor. Here’s a great example of this in action from our partners and friends at Grenova and My Green Lab, discussing the role of the Customer Impact Calculator in delivering both commercial and climate impact (without the greenwashing).

3. Engage, Educate, and Empower Your Sales Team

The sustainability comprehension gap between B2B buyers and sellers is real (and substantiated by Bain’s survey of over 500 B2B executives). It’s critical to engage, educate, and empower your sales team to move beyond transactional sales and move into transformational sales. More specifically, positioning your offering as transformative to their ESG goals, net-zero commitments, and associated pressures. Additionally, ESG vendor requirements are becoming the new normal in B2B procurement. An inability to meet requirements can result in reduced interest and even terminated contracts.

So how do you get your foot in the door? By demonstrating the ‘sustainability fluency’ of your sales team. Greater fluency of customer sustainability goals (and associated pain points) results in more interest, more meetings, and ultimately more sales. Engage and energize your sales team with sustainability training on your offerings, your prospective customers’ goals, and how to ‘connect the dots’ between the two. Here’s a great example of ESG training offerings, developed by Rho Impact and in collaboration with the Corporate Finance Institute.

If you’re ready to maximize your commercial and climate impact (without the greenwashing), reach out to Rho Impact now at info@rhoimpact.com to learn more about our software, services, and contributions to the field.