Does Reducing Our Carbon Footprint Mean Less Meetings?

05 March 2010, 17:37 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

We are currently putting together our Christmas catalogue and like to meet our prospective new suppliers before we do business with them

This is normal for many of you – and I employ five sales people who do the same for us (i.e. drive round the country visiting existing and prospective customers).

One of these potential new suppliers said that it didn’t want to come to Henley-on-Thames for a meeting as the company is trying to reduce its carbon footprint. I haven’t heard that one before! Whilst its aims are admirable, it didn’t provoke a great desire in me to do business with the company.

I then started to question myself and think how much of our travelling around the UK is necessary? The trouble is that business essentially works because of relationships. You might have the greatest products in the world, but unless you build connections with customers, suppliers and other third parties, you won’t make your millions!

This particular company has products that we will probably only use as part of our Christmas catalogue, so as a one-off we will probably go ahead without a meeting. But for the bulk of our business it would be impossible to take on a new company without a face-to-face meeting. Our supplier relationships are all about partnerships and I don’t think this is possible without a face-to-face meeting. Do correct me if I am wrong!

But, there are ways of reducing our business miles: we don’t use enough of the technologies that are now available to us – e.g. video conferencing. We are just introducing a weekly ‘conference call’ for our sales team of six, which will reduce the frequency of physical sales meetings in our office. However, there really is no substitute for meeting and eating together.

I’m off to Mexico now for a trade show – oooops!

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