Integrating sustainability into commercial strategy  

Written by: Sytze Dijkstra, Global Head of Client Strategies | Last updated: 09.09.2026

One of the main shifts in corporate sustainability in 2026 is away from compliance and towards commercial relevance. B2B companies are increasingly looking to their customers’ expectations and requests to guide their focus. Sustainability teams, in turn, are expected to show how their work supports the business. That is easy to say, but harder to do. 

At our Sustainability Seats roundtable in Amsterdam on 3 September, we moved beyond the abstract idea of showing the business value of sustainability’ to a more practical question: how can sustainability professionals work with customers, sales colleagues and others across the business to create impact through the company’s core activities? 

Three themes for sustainability specialists 

Therese Noorlander opened the discussion by sharing her experience of working alongside sales teams and joining customer conversations as a sustainability impact specialist. Three themes emerged as the conversation unfolded. 

• Sustainability expert as business partners
  A good starting point is for sustainability professionals to position themselves as partners to the commercial organisation. This begins with listening, and recognising that they have as much to learn about sales as their colleagues may have to learn about sustainability and impact. It means respecting sales colleagues’ experience and customer relationships and understanding the targets and incentives that shape their work. We also explored how incentives can support sustainability, for example through targets for sales of more sustainable product ranges. 
• Value for the customer
  Second, a strong commercial sustainability proposition focuses on the value it creates for the customer: lower costs, reduced risk or better performance. Customers lean forward when that value is made specific to their situation and supported by numbers, ideally alongside real examples of what the product has delivered for a similar company. Often, the word ‘sustainability’ does not even enter the conversation.
  This requires knowing the customer: listening and doing the homework, not only on the organisation but also on the individual, their role and their priorities. A plant operator may care most about costs and uptime; a procurement professional may want confidence that supply-chain due diligence requirements are being met. 
• Suppliers and customers
  Third, progress often depends on suppliers and customers. Many participants identified weak customer demand for sustainable products as the main factor holding progress back. We discussed how companies can educate their customers and turn these dependencies into opportunities to collaborate on shared sustainability challenges. 

We began with the question of how to bring sustainability into real commercial conversations. The discussion suggested that the challenge is not simply to ‘sell sustainability’. It starts with earning the trust of sales colleagues. From there, sustainability professionals need to identify where sustainability creates value for a particular customer, judge when to follow or lead that customer, and build the evidence to make the proposition credible. That is how sustainability moves from a separate agenda to an integral element of the business strategy. And how sustainability teams move from dependency to collaboration.

Understanding the greatest business value of sustainability

For sustainability to become commercially relevant, it needs to connect clearly with the wider business strategy and the priorities of customers. At Simply Sustainable, this is a key part of our Targets & Strategy work: helping organisations identify where sustainability can create the greatest business value, translate ambitions into practical priorities, and embed them across commercial teams and decision-making. If you’re looking to make sustainability a more integral part of how your business grows and creates value, get in touch with our team.