Making your members sustain-able: Go Green Early

By Ko de Ruyter, Debbie Keeling and David Cox, the Loyalty Doctors

We have said it before, and we do not hesitate to say it again, your program will have to play its part in making your company’s and your channel partners’ strategy more ‘sustain-able’. Measurable reductions in pollution, fair trade and the expected U-turn of the US on the Paris agreement have made a channel sustainability strategy pivotal.

Our prediction for 2021 is that you will need to get involved in defining and deploying sustainable business development goals. And guess what. Your channel partners are facing similar requests from their C-suite executives and will be looking to you for assistance.

So, both in terms of partner enablement and engagement, it is imperative that you both educate and motivate channel partners on end-of-life cycle programs, product-emission rates, packaging and transportation, green-selling pain points and, generically, enlighten them on the value propositions of environmental stewardship. It is important to create awareness and embed this in a strategic comms plan. We have some left-field advice for you.

One of America’s most iconic student bars situated on Purdue University’s Indiana Campus has carried the slogan ‘Go Ugly Early’ with pride for decades. Inspired by this ethos, our take on a sustain-able channel network pay-off is ‘Go Green Early’ (and watch your competitors do the same … as they are green with envy!).