Building Green in a Black and White World: A Guide to Selling the Homes Your Customers Want

by David Johnston, 2000. Home Builder Press, Washington, D.C. Paperback, 175 pages, $45

Over the past several years, green building has been gaining more momentum in the commercial and institutional sectors than among home builders. This book may be instrumental in changing that balance. David Johnston knows green building, and he knows how to speak to home builders.

Building Green delves directly into an all-too-often overlooked aspect of green building: how to

sell environmental features.

EBN readers will likely benefit more from the sales and marketing advice in the second half of the book than from the introduction to green building in the first half. For mainstream builders, however, the chapter entitled “What is Green Building?” does a great job of laying out the key principles. The following chapter, “How to Enter the Market,” aims to make this approach accessible to any smart home builder. Here Johnston offers several “green option packages” that a builder could adopt. These packages are a sensible approach, though we were disappointed that Johnston doesn’t advocate reliable mechanical ventilation in all green homes—instead, he proposes heat recovery ventilation for the more advanced packages.

The real strength of

Building Green is Chapter 4, “Creating a Green Company,” where the book benefits from Johnston’s years of experience as a business consultant. He points out that management must lead the way by example, as well as by decree. He provides vivid examples of how one missing link in the chain can undermine the effort to adopt a green building agenda—which explains why full buy-in is essential, not only within the company but also from associates, including subcontractors, suppliers, and real-estate agents. The final two chapters of

Building Green use proven examples to illustrate innovative sales and marketing strategies. These chapters emphasize the importance of selling the benefits that customers value, rather than the green products or technologies themselves.

There is a fine line between selling green homes in conventional subdivisions and greenwashing conventional homes with a few green gestures. While some proposed technologies and marketing approaches may seem opportunistic, the shift in corporate culture that Johnston describes requires both commitment and sincerity. With that message at the core of the book, Johnston has done a huge service by making green building both accessible and attractive to mainstream builders.