Why is it so hard to sell sustainability?
This Friday 9/10 it’s Dutch Sustainability Day and in honour of that occasion I’d like to talk with you about selling sustainability. As a fellow change maker I imagine you want to have positive impact on the world with your business. I know this can be quite the challenge, though. Selling sustainability isn’t as easy as it should be. Why is that?
And at the same time we need sustainability more than ever:
“Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do.”
—Steve Howard, Let’s go all-in on sustainability
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO SELL SUSTAINABILITY?
We know that consumers and clients care about sustainability. So many surveys have told us so:
“We know from asking people from China to the U.S. that the vast majority of people care about sustainability after the day-to-day issues, the day-to-day issues of, how do I get my kids to school? Can I pay the bills at the end of the month? Then they care about big issues like climate change. But they want it to be easy, affordable and attractive, and they expect business to help, and they're a little bit disappointed today.” —Steve Howard, TEDGlobal 2013: Let’s go all-in on sustainability (link to the video of Steve's TEDGlobal 2013 talk)
Watching Steve’s TED Talk reminds me of a guide a recently read on Selling Sustainability by BSR, Futura and other members of BSR’s Sustainable Lifestyles Frontier Group. In this guide they explain why it’s so hard to sell sustainability and how you can turn that around. I’ll tell you a little more about their interesting approach.
GIVE YOUR CLIENTS WHAT THEY WANT
As change makers we tend to build our marketing and sales strategies around guild-tripping consumers and clients into buying our sustainable product. Or we focus our efforts on making them feel good about themselves when they’re doing the right thing. We totally forget to actually mention what’s in it for our clients. And therein lies our problem and that’s what we should change.
We need to shift our focus away from the feel-good factor and the guild-trip and move towards the benefits of our superior product. And if we combine that with taking away the barriers that prevent consumers and clients from buying our product, we set to go!
“Sustainable products […] are better for the planet; we need to make them more obviously better for the person.” —Selling Sustainability
In the guide they portrait their approach in an easy-to-follow formula:
From: Selling Sustainability
I’ll explain the 3 elements of the formula in a bit more detail:
FEWER BARRIERS
In the (recent) past there were quite some barriers that prevented consumers from buying sustainable products. To name a few: higher price, less comfort and sub-par performance.
Steve Howard takes us back to the time of the first sustainable products: “We had detergents that could wash your whites grayer. We had the early energy-efficient light bulbs that took five minutes to warm up and then you were left looking a kind of sickly color. And we had the rough, recycled toilet paper. So every time you pulled on a t-shirt, or switched the light on, or went to the bathroom, or sometimes all three together, you were reminded sustainability was about compromise. It wasn't a great start.”
However, things have changed. These barriers shouldn’t hold us back anymore as these can be overcome more easily with each passing day with all the technological innovations that are taking place. We now have choices. He continues: “We can make products that are beautiful or ugly, sustainable or unsustainable, affordable or expensive, functional or useless. So let's make beautiful, functional, affordable, sustainable products.”
MORE BENEFITS
If we start to focus less on the sustainability aspect and more on the benefits of your superior product, we can tip the scale in our favour. What’s in it for your consumer or client? What are the benefits of your product? —I also wrote about this in a previous article: Why should I do business with you, but the guide describes it in a very practical way:
“If the balance towards benefits isn’t strong enough, then it’s back to the basics —you need to build in more benefits.”
—Selling Sustainability
Benefits can be placed in 3 categories: functional, emotional and social. Here are a few questions from the guide to help you brainstorm about your benefits:
Functional
- Can sustainability add or detract from value for money?
- Enhance or hinder performance and efficacy?
- Improve or worsen quality?
Emotional
- Can sustainability strengthen or weaken sensory experiences?
- Offer more or less physical comfort?
- Provide a thrill of excitement or only a dull experience?
Social
- Can sustainability facilitate or disrupt family bonding?
- Make them seem more or less desirable in others eyes?
- Prove how cool, smart and able they are or make them look foolish?
VALUE
So, remove the barriers, put your focus on the benefits and you’ll create a much more compelling value proposition.And until you do, your sustainable product will continue to struggle.
Read more about this approach in the free-to-download guide: Selling sustainability.
With pleasure,
Simon, Atelier pan
President at LeadingAhead Energy - EV Charging Infrastructure Strategist - Building a Genuine Business in the Energy Transition - BIV 40 under 40 - Sport Fanatic | Triathlon - Hockey - Golf - Ski
8yInteresting article Simon. What I find very hard to do is to create that value on a B2B level instead of the B2C. There is a big lack of education and knowledge towards sustainability as it needs to be viewed as a long term vision and not a short-term profit gain. I have started interviewing SMEs who are doing just that trying to empower other companies to find value and tools to implement them within their business practices.
Studio Astragal Ltd - Conservation, Urban Design & Planning.
8ySimon, both top down and bottom up approaches are needed. Indeed, to get governments and business leaders to act, pressure from voters and consumers is needed.
Culture of Ethical Apparel Manufacturing
8ySustainability is in it for 'we' . Climate change doubters are most likely heavily vested in coal and oil.
Published Freelance Writer, Owner of Hastings Business Service
8yA previous poster wrote: “An ‘eco-friendly’ product must answer ‘what’s in it for ME’ rather than ‘what’s in it for the Environment’!” Agreed. This is where the promoters of green energy have seriously failed. So they try to sway us with scare talk about ‘climate change’ – saying that the sky will fall and Earth will perish if we don’t act – that is, if we don’t buy their products and services. I am not a denier – climate is constantly changing; but the process generally takes centuries – even millennia. And it’s largely due to forces beyond our control. BTW, Earth hasn’t warmed overall for about 18 years. As always: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Certain parties have a lot of big bucks invested in the climate change/global warming scam. I posted on this 3 months ago -- see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climate-change-follow-money-jim-hastings?trk=mp-reader-card
IQ GOD at Yes, Please
8yLet me give you the penultimate vision of the science versus laypersons understanding. You got told by govt that coal and oil were cheaper than green energy. But this was always a fraudulent cost/ benefit analysis comparing installation costs to maintainence costs and ONLY ALLOWING THE SIMULATION TO RUN FOR TWO MONTHS instead of 20 YEARS. ANY real world cost benefit analysis that runs in real time shows that green energy is cheaper and always has been. The corpzillas lied to the government with math and then the government was either that stupid or that evil, probably both. Either way what you heard was con scam lie math of the oil industry and coal and oil have always been more expensive than green energy. Double up factoid. You already paid for your gas with taxes before it ever reaches your pump. If you paid ZERO at the pump, your tax dollars would still have ensured a barely working proffit for said corporations to continue. Their cost/benefit analysis LEFT OUT the SUBSIDIES you pay to make it even feasible.