Part 1 of 16 Things for a Green Sales Edge.

These days you’re looking for that little defining difference that will your buyer like you more than the other guy. Help can be found inside your OSHA documents; that’s where you’ll find out how well your company supports the triple bottom line of planet, people and profits (people being the social equity part.)

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Does your facility meet or exceed OSHA standards? Do your supplier’s facilities meet or exceed OSHA standards regardless if they reside outside of the US? If you looked at the paperwork, what nuggets of information could you use in a sales presentation?What could you truthfully say that would not only make you look good, but also help the image of the company you are selling to?

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Are your diverse worker’s being treated fairly? Are they breathing better air because of your manufacturing processes? Working in safer conditions?  Using non-carcinogenic substances? Do the answers have documented proof via OHSA or a Life Cycle Assessment?

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Having a great place to work is worth sharing, because  your story can become “their” story if they buy your product.

NEXT: Where’s Your Environmental Policy?

When is selling your soul for the sake of a sale ok? Generally that’s considered a bad thing to do, but this weekend I witness the results of what happens when your soul becomes your brand and your brand is so inspiring, so motivating that others will pay to be a part of it.

After three non-stop days of meetings and trade floor displays at Greenbuild (the USGBA’s annual conference last week in Phoenix) I needed to clear my head. I drove north and covered about 65 miles of  wide open desert before spotting the ethereal place that has captured the imagination of students for decades – Arcosanti.

Arcosanti

I first heard of Arcosanti in 1970 while taking design courses at Eastern Michigan University. As you see it off in the distance, it looks like the back set for a SyFi movie. As you get closer, it takes on the essence of a reverse “dig” – only instead of uncovering a lost civilization it’s uncovering the sustainable ideals that can save this one.

Arcosanti is the sweat and inspiration of Paolo Solari, now 90 and still visiting once a week to lecture. His vision was to create a city for 5000 on only 15 acres of land. The final vision wouldn’t be a sky scraper, but an undulating system of structures where material, space and energy are minimized and spirit, delight and engagement are maximized. So far he has succeeded even though only 100 people live and work there now after four decades of construction.

This is where the soul comes in…

How many people would come visit your product’s birthplace and want to pay you for the experience of being part of the expanded creative moment?

Paolo Solari

Over 100,000 come to visit Arcosanti and 6000 can claim Arcosanti on their resume of on-site work experience.

In comparison, 30,000 people attended the Greenbuild conference which is the modern day manifestation of Paolo’s ideals.

How about it? How is the soul of your work selling?

Do you have a Linked in Profile? Should you have a Linked in Profile? The answer is a well thought out, “Yes”!

Linked In is the first place professionals go to check each other out. They want to get a better feeling of who they just met at lunch or is calling on them to make a sale.

Before you fill out the Linked in form, however, stop and do a 360 assessment of yourself first. Linked in may look like a resume-type page, but it’s isn’t. Resumes stick to the what-have-you-done lately facts. They can be tailored to fit a specific job offering. Linked in is about letting your choices tell the story about your personality. Consequently it’s really hard to write a Linked In profile if you’ve been around the sales circuit for a while.

Here’s why.

Imagine that you’re just starting out in business, your professional dance card doesn’t have one company name or product on it. From a Google search point-of-view, you have nothing to worry about as nothing is attached to your name. What people see when you walk in the door is what they get.

Now imagine that you’ve been in sales for a couple of decades and have represented numerous product lines and services. If they all are listed on  your Linked In profile they’ll say one of two things, A) you are focused and have great experience or B) you’re going from opportunity to opportunity without any planning. Consequently, what your prospect reads before you walk in the door, is what they’ll be matching you up to when you arrive.

Now layer the green factor  on top. Do your personal and professional directions line up? (notice I say line up, not add up)  Are you an expert in your topic because it’s been your field a long time? Or are you new to the green world, yet passionate about the possibilities?

Your buyers are going to be looking for people who can help them navigate the emerging world of sustainable products and services, someone who can provide context to all the facts that may or may not be valid. Does your Linked In profile provide that reassurance?

If you’re in sales, then you must have a Linked In profile. Write and edit it wisely to closely reflect who YOU are first; then let what you’ve done magnify those personality traits.

You never know who will be reading your profile and what their interests are. Jobs and opportunities will come and go over the years, but your personality will always be the same. Don’t be afraid to show your green side.

The race is on to be more transparent, more green, more sustainable than the next company/product. The only thing lacking is a set of rules, and that’s a big problem. Without firm rules no one knows how to keep corporate score and fans can’t cheer without being able to spot a clear winner.

What we have now is a mixture of sports playing on the same field and the game is who can shout the loudest and point fingers at the foibles in their competitor’s products. That’s not fun to watch and it does nothing to advance the game in a way in which companies, investors or consumers can understand.

Sustainable standards are a game changer. In many cases, how green you are comes down to how transparent you are. Just how “clear” do you need to be? When you’re trying to convey those differences during a sales moment, do you have a convincing answer or do you hesitate?

What are the top sustainable standards  in your industry? How does your product compare?  Are you trying to sell a retail product? Then at the very least you need to be able to answer Wal Mart’s 15 questions.

If you’ve read this far and have no idea what I’m talking about, go HERE and answer these questions. When you’re done with that self-assessment, you’ve made your first big step towards transparency.

In consumerland could what is said over the back fence, literally or figuratively, have more influence in the green market than what is being conveyed by business?

Read Jacquelyn Ottman’s “Whom Do You Trust To Make Green Marketing Claims”?

She delves into what makes a green product credible – is it the standard or the belief system? Are non-profits more trustworthy than for-profit business? What about your neighbor or best online friend?

This addresses two of the same issues we are covering in Ecolutionary Selling, what is truth in green advertising and whose voice do you trust delivering that truth that makes it more plausible. It’s something we’ve been covering for years on the consumer side of things over on In Women We Trust as women turn to each other for products and advice.

Business can learn two things from this – start answering the questions in the most honest way and begin hiring sales reps who understand Social Media and all the back fence implications. Are they can kind of people that your customers would trust with your message?

It’s the holy grail of sales, getting specified into a long-term contract. Today, as compliance and regulations set in, being part of an approved group is even more imperative.

How do you get in bed or embedded with a new client? How to you hold the high ground and keep your product the first choice in a long-term contract?

Back when I was selling directory ad space for Thomas Register of American Manufactures (now Thomas Net) we media reps all knew the drill – do whatever you can to make sure your account gets the first call. The first call had the longest chance to sell the business. The first call is when companies are looking for a solution and they think that you are the best answer.

Of course they’ll also have to call a second and third company during their due diligence period, but that’s just to check pricing and to see if #2 and #3 know more than company #1 knows. Both have to work twice as hard to win client away from the first call choice who spent quality time answering all their questions and creating a friend. Pity the poor company who didn’t make the top three cut. The first three have to really mess up before the company will start the process over again.

So what did it take to get the first call? Credibility and one more thing…

It wasn’t selling bigger ads, as much as it was a combo of bigger 800#s, better pictures, more content, listing every standard they could meet. As the Internet competed for print mindshare, the new threshold for content was having a website, an online catalog, specifications and drawings ready to drop into AutoCAD or an e-commerce site… whatever it would take to establish credibility plus make it super easy to buy.

Fast forward a decade of Internet years.

Today’s competitive market includes all of the above as well with two new additions:

1. Proving how green or sustainable your product is. (If asked to comply, can it?) Companies need to know every transparent detail about your operations and supply chain.

2. If you had to load up your catalog into a client’s database, could you? Do you have a datamaster just like you have a webmaster?

If you’re lucky enough to win a long term bid, the next thing you’ll be asked to do is load up the products specifications into your client’s e-catalog. That’s scary turf for companies who want to be in control of their information. It’s also yet one-more-hoop that must be jumped through when you’re already stretched to the max. Is this new hoop worth it? Absolutely.

Besides gaining a sure thing in future business, you’ve successfully become “the first call” for anyone in the company. Your product has been vetted and blessed.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Once you’ve been through the approval process, you can now demonstrate to other companies how safe you are to buy from.

Let’s say you won a Master Agreement with the Los Angeles Community College District and now your product(s) are in their E-Catalog. Not only do General Contractors, architects, designers and buyers from 10 campuses have access to you as the first choice, but all the other schools and municipalities who want to use the same e-catalog.

That’s not a bad trade off for loading up a few products and yet with a sure thing on the plate, why do some companies hesitate? For the same reason some hesitated at putting up a website, drawings or product pricing. They aren’t prepared for the new way of doing business. It’s scary loading up your database on another’s site. It’s expensive paying for the person who has to do the loading. It’s time consuming in a time-crunched world.

Getting embedded does take time, but unlike trade magazine marketing that requires new offerings and pitches month after month, this just requires that you show up when searched for.

If you’re in sales, add ease of database management to your product’s deliverables. Show up and ship it on time.

JoAnn Hines has been provided excellent advice on the packaging of products for decades. This morning she sent out five tips on making your packaging better. She commented on how every product needs a package. It got me thinking about that statement, is it really so true anymore? If a package’s purpose is to protect and sell and the selling part is over, can we dispense with the expensive shell?

Take food for example. This weekend at the farmer’s market I saw a plethora of items all wrapped in their own skin with absolutely no writing on them – yet the texture, shape, color and smell told me the condition of the product inside. I already knew what the product did, now it was a matter of replacing or updating last week’s purchases.

In the same way once your product is embedded into a company’s pre-approved database of suppliers, the outside packaging can come down to minimalist standards. The buyer will be reading off of a database specification chart and won’t need all the writing on the package as to what the product can do; as long as it arrives safely and what is inside matches what you ordered, all is well.

That said, they will be caring about what that box is made of and can they add it to their resource recovery program.

Take the LACCD for instance. They will be spending billions in construction and green building products and furnishings to create 40 new buildings and retrofit 50 or so others over 10 campuses. That’s a lot of shipping pallets and boxes. The last thing they want is more stuff to manage.

While JoAnn’s list was directed at consumer goods, this green B2B construction world is changing the way things need to be packaged. As more things are ordered directly from the web and the “selling is done online,” I can see a new pattern in consumer purchases as well.

In the resource recovery world of the LACCD if you want to score extra points with purchasing:

1. Create the need for LESS packaging. That becomes a selling point when you’re positioning new goods inside a system that may be unwrapping scores of boxes for flooring, chairs, and walls.

2. If you can’t use less due to shipping restrictions or the weight that one person can carry, make sure that package can be recycled. Not only does the paper need to be recyclable, but the inks in the writing as well. What about the tape or glue holding it together? Everything must be considered.

3. If the box is recyclable, how was the box made? Did the cardboard come from FSC managed forests? Can you prove that the content is 50% or 100% recycled?

4. How easy is it to break down into flat sections? I’ve seen construction workers struggling to make things flat.  Anything that creates friction in the total resource recovery process should be eliminated.

This sounds like more more hoop to jump through for a sale, but it’s a good hoop for business. As more companies order directly out of their own catalogs, the less you have to spend on packaging and marketing. Of course your sales rep might want a raise…

Need more green packaging info? Start here in California.