ESG and International Sales : how to marry them?

Covid-19, or rather the measures taken to try and prevent the virus from spreading, had a major impact on the global society. This is not likely to become the hot news of the day...

Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) and the growing number of measures taken to enforce the ESG focus in enterprise boardrooms and investment committees is another development with significant consequences for the economy and its business participants.

"Remote" has become the default, "business travel" the exception.

Last Tuesday, the Flemish business newspaper De Tijd, assigned a complete page to the news about the collapse of the business travel industry with the legendary Belgian company "Carlson Wagonlit Travel" (the operator of a.o. The Orient Express) as a sad illustration of the trend. 

We can applaud or regret this evolution....it is unlikely to turn around on the short term.

Despite all this, nobody will deny the importance of real-life face-to-face personal meetings, as much in a business as in a private context. The more complex the B2B relationships and the more complex the interactions between the enterprises, the more important it is to physically meet. No Metaverse will ever change that.

How can we possibly marry these 2 contradicting truths : 1. "traveling carries a heavy environmental burden" and 2. "Face-to-face meetings are a must" ?

Here is the answer and the good news:

A quick search on Linkedin "freelance sales" gives 798,000 results.

Almost 800,000 freelance sales professionals across the globe made and make a living of building and nurturing client relationships, selling products and services. These people, each with their network, knowledge and expertise,  can be your local ears, eyes, mouth and brains anywhere on the globe.

The European Sales Network has been set up to bring this community of sales professionals together and to create a framework for collaboration between enterprises and local sales experts with a common goal : The simple marriage between customer proximity and  a better (business) world.

This is a kind invitation to join the group and support the initiative by sharing the invitation with your network!

Much more there is to follow! Stay tuned!