Your V20
Feel free to Skip, if you've no desire to read on the 'green' debate ...
Let me state from the start, as non-controversially as possible, I consider myself a bit of a Greenie.
Not of the loony, cult zealotry, cave dwelling Marxist kind.
But from what I'd suggest is the nuanced bulge of those in the middle ground.
Ones who think that there is probably something damaging in a couple o' hundred years of relentless pumping carbon dioxide into our air, the feckless pursuit of now eight billion souls alive at the same time, and - to quote a guiding mantra of Huxley's Brave New World - the universal consumption driver 'ending is better than mending'.
Likewise, I feel that the majority to which I might align, absolutely think in the mould of 'wizards' over 'prophets'. That we shall invent, develop and adapt to overcome.
Indeed, 'There Is No Planet B'.
Yet there's little sense in following flawed political dogma that promotes the scams of ESG, Net Zero or being told to live in woodland wigwams eating worms and happy to own nothing by those who fly 'round the world in private jets.
Now I realise you may not agree. After all, why come to a blog on solution selling to read to such ungermane opinion? I get that.
Yet a heartfelt opinion nonetheless. Perfectly content for it to be set out. Let's accept too, that such things can evolve over time. Just like how your Sales (& Buying) views can follow the Overton Window.
Lucky I'm not on the twitter, hey.
Anyway, the reason for this preface, is that as I write, COP27 - topline sponsor; Coca-cola - is in train. Egypt playing host to the global jamboree. Primarily aiming to prevent humankind activity causing the fatal rise in our world's temperature of 1.5°C.
The headline emerging is the absurd, outrageous demand for reparations. Huge unfathomable sums to be unjustifiably gifted by the developed to the rest.
Now, I realise this is a separate topic again. But this effort is simply misplaced.
For my part, you cannot reward with such sums countries whose corrupt regimes have stolen (are stealing) the billions they've already been donated down the years and continue to receive.
Let's not forget that England was colonised back in the day too. Those rampaging Romans, Vikings and Normans are not fiction. Yet we worked hard as a nation to claw our way back, out and rise beyond. Under our own steam. Other countries ought take note and try it.
Then too, why is the world so ungrateful anyway? We created modernity. Our gift to the world, the industrial revolution, improved life spans, uplifted almost everyone out of poverty and spread common law with enterprise. How come it is completely lost on them that without us, they'd still be living under the shackling rapacious whims of a brutal tribal overlord? Without a mobile phone or a model of aspiration. And we don't ask for royalties.
If you still with me here - and I haven't even spoken of the elephant, or should that be giant panda, in the room that is China - it's about time I offered up a useful piece of framing from these grabbing hands.
They've coalesced into a group. Calling themselves the Vulnerable Twenty. Written, rather neatly, as the V20.
It is our fault that the Maldives will become little more than a reef. But not our virtue that much larger huge swathes of the Sahel are seeing land reclaimed from Saharan desert now able to provide desperately welcome sustenance.
They've got their own website, natch. On which I discover they actually number 58 countries as members. Another cunning angle.
They account for 18¾% of the global population. Which if you like vulgar fractions, is three-sixteenths. 3:16 as a ratio.
Which is where my sales feelers perk.
Do your target prospects feel like they too are in a vulnerable minority?
One being waved away. Whose continued ignoring of might have destructive consequences for the rest sooner than they think? The dismissal of whom could help bring the whole thing crumbling down?
What's their ratio?
It could be that they're one of several satellite branches. A cinderella department. Or a number of people in the office suffering being thwarted by an issue as yet unacknowledged by others up- or down-stream.
Then are they a V20?
Or whatever number fits.
And crucially, can it become a cause that they rally behind, to which others feel obliged to join?
Would helping them assemble their equivalent be of any value to you?
Footnote :: see also a slide idea as sparked via this event.