A new Gartner, Inc. survey1 found that 87% of business leaders expect to increase organization investment in sustainability over the next two years. As packaging professionals, we can help customers reach their sustainability goals while continuing to meet day-to-day business needs.
As companies prioritize sustainability, its importance grows across organization departments – all of which have different day-to-day business needs to consider.
Understand your audience
Understanding customers’ unique motivations and needs will help guide impactful conversations. What are their goals? How do they measure success? What keeps them up at night?
You will find that these answers vary depending on a person’s role within the organization. To be efficient with customers’ limited time, tailor your conversations to what is important to them.
Tailor your message
Let’s use landfill waste reduction as an example of a company’s sustainability goal. Although not always top of mind, reducing damage rates through protective packaging can significantly reduce landfill waste. The examples below show how the impact of lowering damage rates differs across organizational roles.
Operational Motivation: Maximize Efficiency – Operations professionals are tasked with making the best use of resources to operate efficiently and effectively. Sustainable solutions are most valuable to operations when tied to process improvements – increasing throughput, decreasing downtime, and optimizing floor space.
If damage occurs during the shipping or production process, the damaged goods must be received as a return, evaluated and either replaced or repaired and then reshipped. The added processing and shipping time slows down the operation, reducing productivity and output, which is often a key performance indicator (KPI) for operations managers.
Each operation has distinct packaging needs, and the best solutions are designed for specific applications. Pregis IQ (Innovation Headquarters) packaging engineers work with customers to assess high damage rates, among other challenges. They can create the optimal solution through testing and validation to reduce product damages and minimize environmental impact while improving operational efficiencies – like speed and throughput.
more at: https://www.pregis.com/knowledge-hub/selling-sustainable-solutions-by-buyer-motivation/