This article looks into how to sell sustainability in 60 seconds. This is the amount of time that you may be lucky enough to get with an influencer or a decision maker in your organisation who can help make sustainability happen.

You may be unlucky and only get 30 seconds. But the points in this article become more important if that is the case.

This is a fairly typical way for getting sustainability moving in an organisation. Particularly in large public companies, CEO’s will divert large parts of their attention to the financial success of the business. Some farsighted CEO’s may connect their financial success to social and environmental parameters, but a lot will not. In this case, they will need persuading.

So, let’s say you work in a large organisation, you are passionate about sustainability and you are lucky enough to get a moment with the CEO. How should you structure your approach?

I came across this great article in Triple Pundit recently, which helped me think about how to approach this. You can find the article here.

The key points from the article for how to create a successful elevator pitch for sustainability are as follows.

1. Confidence in your offerings
2. Enthusiasm and energy that is contagious
3. Conveying a sense of the experience of being a client of your company
4. Effectively communicating your competitive advantage
5. Clearly stating the problem you solve
6. Your delivery

I thought that these points nicely summarised exactly what is needed to persuade people that a sustainable approach is what is needed.

Having confidence in your offering will make sure that people begin to listen to you. Having enthusiasm will ensure that people continue listening whilst you are speaking. Being able to convey something from a client’s perspective will ensure that you position sustainability as something which is very much in demand. Communicating about competitive advantage will ensure your idea is presented as a good business idea, not a nice to have. If you clearly state the problem that you are solving, it will be obvious that sustainability is about solving problems for people and organisations, which it is. Lastly, delivery is very important and holds the key to the success of the whole approach.

What you need to know

This article looked into how to sell sustainability in 60 seconds.

We looked into, CEO’s, who for the most part take an economics first perspective and see environmental and social considerations as less important.

This provides an opportunity for people who are passionate about sustainability to persuade these influential people over to their way of thinking if they happen to meet.

We looked into 6 essential elements to include in this pitch, based on recommendations from a Triple Pundit article.

Overall all 6 are important, but impeccable delivery above all else will ensure that people listen and remember your message.

Thank you for reading,

By Barnaby Nash

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or reach out to me on social media. What do you think is the best way to persuade people that sustainability is important?

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I can be reached on LinkedIn and on Twitter @FollowBarnaby