Any successful company, somewhere along the way, has developed a critical business relationship. Whether you strike a deal with your supplier for better terms on payment, bulk payments, and exclusivity or you provide your customers perks, lay-away, and weekly specials—the relationship helps you become more successful. What happens if you disrupt the business relationship by seeking another supplier based upon local or less toxic materials? Your customers may be requesting more information about where the product is made, how it was shipped, and what your carbon footprint is. For many businesses, this could spell disaster because any disruption of the business relationships means higher cost (and little or no profits).

Therefore, for any company thinking about improving their carbon footprint or implementing green initiatives across their enterprise, serious consideration needs to be made to ensure the bottom line does not interfere with the triple bottom-line to the degree that nobody wins. Below are three steps you can consider for realigning your business relationships:

1. Choose your green project according the value of your key stakeholders: The buyers. Understanding your customers is the first lesson in business and it continues to be the lesson learned for sustainability projects. Don’t fall into the trap of choosing projects that may look good to customers without providing them real value. A landscaping company may choose to offer a non-toxic fertilizer alternative at twice the price rather than switching their trucks to bio-diesel. It may look good to have an bio-diesel fleet, but the real value is in eliminating toxic chemicals from customers’ lawns.
2. Choose your new supplier according to their ability to follow through. Compare your supply chain with all of the participants with the current business relationships and carefully research alternatives that have authentic results and can provide adequate supply and service. Too often the new green businesses have difficulty scaling up when suddenly demand increases before they are ready to grow. A restaurant may want to source local eggs that are from free-range chickens but the price and supply may fluctuate if the new supplier can’t scale their operation for greater volume.
3. Make your change to a new supplier incrementally to ensure customer value and supplier growth. Decide on the period of payback your enterprise needs to meet through a supplier change without too much disruption in quality or cost. Initially, it may be necessary to offer alternatives to customers to ease the greater majority to the alternative source of products into a slightly higher price. The greater benefits realized for environmental and social impact can then be more effectively communicated as you make the transition.

Understanding the importance of managing your sustainability plans is increasingly becoming a business imperative, and knowing how to effectively choose, implement, and sustain new green suppliers is becoming a competitive advantage. Within a short period of time, it’s possible to see new growth and new relationships emerge from one decision you make as a business leader. As a result, not only does your carbon footprint get reduced, you could also inspire a chain reaction throughout your product lifecycle, and inspire change in your competition as well. And that’s a good thing!