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The importance of a product champion

September 23, 20113:35 pm

After a week on the road last week, this week turned out to a very interesting business week. It was interesting in that sense, as it helped me realize once more how important it is to have product champion(s) whenever you are looking to sell a product or service.

In this post I would like to go into further detail differentiating between the “general business angle” and “Sustainability / CSR angle”. The reason for this differentiation is simple: I sell an actual product with one business (PMM) and a consulting service (PB Consulting) with the other.

The general business angle

In my case am I trying to sell a specialty product that you need to see and use to fully understand. This week was an eye-opener for me as it showed me how much one person can influence the acceptance of your product with a large potential customer group. He turned into my product champion for this customer group and I will make sure I will provide him with all the support he needs from now on. These product champions are invaluable for every business as they are with more than gold in my view, in the short and long term. This is the classic example of a product champion in my view.

The Sustainability / CSR angle

A product champion, when taking the Sustainability / CSR angle, is quite different in many respects. Let me explain. The essence of the Sustainability / CSR consulting is that you provide someone or a business Sustainability / CSR specific advice. You as the expert provide advice based on your experience at previous jobs and assignments.

A product champion in this case then is someone that not only understands what you trying to say but (most importantly) someone that proactively challenges your point of view and experience. This might sound strange, but it in my view also makes a lot of sense when you look at what your ultimate goal: To change the way your client is doing business.

So have you tried to identify your Sustainability / CSR product champion already? He/she will be the key to growing your own consulting business in the short and long term. If you have not done this so far, why wait? Especially since your product champion might be the single most important person you need, to change the way they see their role in the business sector, how they conduct their business and what their next Sustainability / CSR actions will be.

My commitment to Sustainability / CSR: Version 2011

September 8, 20115:11 pm

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If you are regular follower of my blog you will have noticed that I have changed the direction of my professional career somewhat in 2011. I moved from exclusively working with topics of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into a more general business-type role next to my old role. Within in the new business my main purpose is to make a profit and far less how to make the world a better place using Sustainability / CSR as a business model. This is the reality.

The main reason for this move all centered around my responsibility towards my family and making sure that they are provided for as mentioned in previous posts over the past months.

The point of this post:

So far the experience this year working in this new role has been quite a positive one I must admit. And this is surprising for me as well. I am a businessman by trade and that was my only experience before getting into the Sustainability / CSR business (if you discount flipping burgers at a famous fast food chain).

So where does this leave me with my commitment to Sustainability / CSR you might ask?

It is stronger than ever. This new found interest in business is, in some ways, extremely helpful. It helps me rediscover the main purpose of why I got into CSR / Sustainability in the first place.

For me Sustainability / CSR is an underlying view of how to conduct business in a responsible way. This is what I realized over the past months. The basics of making business remain the same. Each business needs to earn enough money to make ends meet. You need to know your product, your competitors, your own business (revenues, costs & rights), and (most importantly) your customer. These are the tools of your trade in my view.

But we also have a choice. The choice is to use these basic tools of your trade as responsible as possible in order to influence business best practice. I am doing my bit best I can, so what are you waiting for?

A Structured Stakeholder Engagement Approach: Starting Out

July 30, 20117:34 am

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A structured approach to stakeholder engagement is an essential element of CSR / Sustainability best practice within an organization. We all know that. But starting out is not always as easy as it seems in my experience.

Here are three practical first steps which I identified as critical over the past years working in the industry when starting out with stakeholder engagement.

Before you start anything involving stakeholder engagement, identify your key stakeholder groups first. When you know these groups you are well on your way. Here is a link to some information on how to conduct a stakeholder analysis.

Once you know your stakeholder groups, go and visit/contact employees from within your organization whom you think will know more about your individual stakeholder groups. Your aim should be to gather as much information on who is talking to which stakeholder group. This can be quite time consuming the larger your organization is, but everyone needs to start somewhere and building these personal relationships within your organization is invaluable. I am sure you will be amazed how much you will learn and benefit from this exercise. In the short and long term.

Create a group of so called “stakeholder experts” from inside your organization. Arrange to meet on a regular basis from that time on to help you gather the important stakeholder updates from within the business. I always felt that gathering this stakeholder information from inside the organization before engaging the actual stakeholder group made me understand these groups so much better.

This is all for now. I prefer shorter blog posts as you will know by now. That is why the next blog post on stakeholder engagement will continue with the next steps on how to properly start with a structured stakeholder engagement approach.

Picture Credit: Robert Higgins

CSR / Sustainability & Business Integration – Extending my topics range

July 28, 20114:37 pm

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The past months brought a lot of change in my life as you will have read from some of my older posts. But one element of life has pretty much stayed the same. This blog. The possibility to write and have an audience is something I am very grateful for and which I enjoy so very much. Over the years, this blog evolved from my personal website to a respected source of CSR / Sustainability commentary and Social Media resources. This will not change. Quite the opposite.

The plan is to extend the range of topics I blog about in order for this blog to once again reflect what I do in my life on a professional level. This has always been the purpose of this blog and I felt that it was a little “out of sync” over the past months with what I do professionally these days.

Future posts will not always be on CSR / Sustainability and Social Media but will also include more about what I do on a more general business level. I am sure you will find these posts helpful as I am more convinced then ever that CSR / Sustainability topics are and need to be more of an integral part of business these days. And I want to do my bit to promote this integration with writing about my experiences and learnings.

These are the areas I will now write more about next to CSR / Sustainability and Social Media:

Business Advice
Leadership
Business Processes
Various other aspects of business life

Thank you everyone for the support you have given me so far and I am sure that the new topics will also be as useful for you as the CSR / Sustainability and Social Media topics are.

The Beauty of Networking – The 21st Century Way

May 29, 20096:52 pm

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This week has been a good week. And I wanted to finish it off with a quick recap and some reflections on how much and how little business networking has changed in my opinion.

The week in review:

The new version of the SustainabilityForum.com is nearly ready. A few more tweaks and we are ready to go next week (Fingers crossed).
Business is going well too. So far I cannot feel the economic downturn. But I think I can consider myself lucky and I am grateful for that.
I was able to purchase the domain Fairtrader.org this week. Who knows…that might be another project down the line. A really nice name. Short and memorable.

21st Century Business Networking
This week has also been a fantastic business networking week. I was able to connect with so many great new people. And that made me think. How many people would I have been able to connect with this week and the last few months without the use of some of the modern online business networking tools.

The answer is pretty clear…..not a lot. Especially not from all across the world.

I then remembered that I recently talked to my father about this and how amazed he was about these networking tools.

He said that he is and always has been relying on three business main ways to expand his business network:

Attending and organizing conferences and workshops
Being a member of a business club or other clubs in interest areas such as sport, art, etc.
Cold calling possible business partners and customers to arrange one to one meetings.

Our new networking activities that have drastically changed the way we now network enhance these three business networking activities in my opinion. I categorize them in three areas:

Social Media: Tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. help us to connect to like minded people easier then ever before without having meet in person.
Online Business Meetups: Websites such as Meetup.com etc. now make it incredibly easy to find meetings and get-togehters with like minded people in your local, regional and national community.
The evolution of modern communications: Modern communication tools such as Skype and the normality of telephone international flat rates make it so much easier and convenient to reach out to people all across the globe.

Again, the beauty of these new tools is that they all enhance and increase your networking possibilities in a way that my father only dreamed about 20 years ago. And I think this is only the beginning. We will see great new developments in these areas ove the next 10 years.

But I also believe these old and new ways of networking have one outcome in common: To really build a proper and long lasting business relationship we always have to meet in person as business is still and will always be conducted between individuals that know and trust each other.

Modern business networking technology will not change this basic law no matter what. And this is a good thing.

Picture Credit: luc legay