GAVIN COULL explains how a new approach to sales has put the environment and engineering centre stage
Heavy engineering and the environment might not sound like an obvious ecological partnership, but SKF, market-leaders in machine bearings which keep the wheels of industry running, are working with customers to employ green solutions with positive results for both the environment and SKF’s bottom line. SKF are proud of their advances in providing cleaner industrial components and continue to develop products which are more efficient, longer lasting, repairable and ultimately, recyclable. This in turn helps customers who are trying to reach their own goals for sustainability and growth.
This quest for sustainable solutions has been driven, in part, by UK and Ireland aftermarket sales manager, Gavin Coull MSc, a founding fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals who has won a significant award for his work in this area. As Gavin writes below, his master’s thesis on business-to-business selling helped him to implement sustainability as a key value proposition bringing with it a win-win outcome for his customers in UK heavy industries, and for his employer SKF.
Every day we make choices that affect the environment and the world we live in. Faced with the threat of climate change, we need to move away from a take-make-waste economy because our future will be determined by our actions today.
When the United Nations Environment programme issued its call to action saying everyone can be a changemaker,1 I would not have believed I could make any impact or contribution towards such an initiative. But I reviewed ideas that SKF could introduce which might make a difference.
As part of my MSc studies, I investigated how transformation in many areas of business-to-business sales could drive sustainable change in a traditional engineering environment.
The value of corporate social responsibility is more important than ever for companies, their strategies, day-to-day decision-making and operations. Increasingly, clients and consumers are focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR), and sustainable development goals are now integral to the way many companies do business.
Over the past 30 years or so, external frameworks and concepts around sustainability have evolved to make the challenges of sustainability more understandable and actionable for business, governments and society. This evolution has been central to my research, and I wanted to see how our sales practices could make sustainability a key value proposition.
Sustainable development is a mega-trend in society and business, but it presents many challenges within a sales profession and practice that can be dominated by financial goals of revenue and profit margins.
At SKF, sustainability is increasingly important to how we operate and supports our mission to ‘re-imagine rotation for a better tomorrow’. This is achieved by creating intelligent and cleaner solutions for people and the planet. This inspiring principle and the tools and business models within SKF enable us to make an impact and quantify the results of our sustainable solutions for our customers. This purpose is all part of SKF achieving a net-zero target by 2050. It has been benchmarked against science-based targets to help us drive ambitious climate action and reduce emissions.
From our research, a model was developed to help us quantify authentic CO2 savings from many areas of our business that apply circular business models to minimise waste and remanufacture products rather than replace them with new ones.2 This might include a range of items like bearings, wind-turbine main shafts and lubrication systems. Our monitoring of machines, using hi-tech digital systems, also extends the life of equipment significantly.
The impact of what we were doing became clear when these business values were converted into CO2 savings and aligned to customer sustainability goals. For instance, our clients can reduce their carbon footprint, save money and often time if we restore their bearings rather than sell them new ones.
To highlight the advantages, we were able to quantify that one of our railway customers using SKF remanufactured bearings reduced their annual CO2 impact by 936 tonnes, the equivalent of 2.7 million passengers travelling 100 kilometers on a train. This kind of data enables clients to make buying decisions based on performance and return on investment, but it also shows the impact on their own sustainable development goals and the environment.
Through business planning and working with our clients we have been able to introduce sustainability initiatives that are commercially viable whilst also advancing environmental protection.
Today, credible organisations want to do business with sales professionals who can put a value on the sustainability impact or benefits of their services and solutions. It is now up to us, within the sales profession, to play a leading role in this transformation and show how this can offer an authentic competitive advantage which can also be the changemaker, set out by the United Nations for a better tomorrow.
Gavin’s work on sustainability and sales won a Peter Critten Award from Consalia, who are modernising the sales profession through sales education. Gavin’s entry was voted Outstanding by the judges.
- www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/our-everyday-choices-matter
- https://cdn.skfmediahub.skf.com/api/public/0945b78938ccbb56/pdf_preview_medium/0945b78938ccbb56_pdf_preview_medium.pdf#cid-588628
- www.skf.com/sustainability
GAVIN COULL MSc has more than 20 years’ international experience in business development and project management with major manufacturers. He is the UK and Ireland aftermarket sales manager with SKF, the world’s largest bearing manufacturer based in Sweden which has a 17,000-strong distribution network across 129 countries. Gavin is known for increasing performance through transformational leadership and strategic planning, focused on the environment and sustainable selling.