Develop and effectively act on a sustainable business mindset to maximize value from your sustainable business efforts, wherever you are on your sustainability journey.

1. Reduce Your Risk
Beat Your Competition
Increase Your Valuation
Success through sustainability

2. The Benefits of a SUSTAINABILITY MINDSET:
• Remain a trusted and valuable supply-chain partner. ”You watch – this will be the most
powerful, popular uprising that
• Accelerate your rate-of-return on corporate sustainability. corporate America
ever saw.”
• Reduce costs through efficiency gains.
• Put some distance between you and your competition. Jeffrey Swartz, CEO
Timberland
• Attract and retain the best & brightest employees. ”Sustainability continues to make
Walmart a better company; by
• Increase the value of intangible assets like brand image reducing waste, lowering costs,
and collaborative networks. driving innovation, Increasing
productivity and helping us fulfill
our mission of saving
our customers money
A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MINDSET can have a dramatic so they can live better
net-positive impact on your organization’s performance. lives.”
Mike Duke, CEO
Walmart
Success through sustainability

3. What is PROBE for Sustainable Business?
• PSB is a corporate sustainability self-assessment tool
designed to run in less than a month – start to finish.
• The Natural Step is a co-developer of PSB. Since 1989, PROBE for Sustainable Business was
their simple approach to organizational sustainability has developed in collaboration
between these two
informed Walmart, IKEA, Nike and many other corporate organizations.
leaders.
• PROBE for Sustainable Business (PSB) allows organizations like
Development partners
yours to harness sustainability, drive profitability, and include these organizations.
accelerate rate-of-return and product development cycles.
• PSB is the 7th tool in the PROBE suite. Since January 2010,
fifty PSB facilitations have been run in 7 countries. Many
thousands of mid-sized organizations across forty-one
countries have run PROBE’s other assessments since 1995.
• PSB is the key to accelerating your rate-of-return on
corporate sustainability.
“PROBE” is an acronym for “Promoting Business Excellence”
PROBE is a trademark of Comparison International

4. Our 4-Step Process: PROBE for Sustainable Business
Week 2
Week 1 Week 3
The team leader Team learns basics
A cross-functional begins compiling of corporate We facilitate a half-
team of five to eight quantitative data: sustainability & day session and use
individuals are procurement, receives qualitative both quantitative
selected within usage, disposal, assessment forms and qualitative data
your organization. etc... to complete. to produce an initial
scorecard.
Just The Facts:
square footage,
employee count,
kWh consumption,
You’ll invite staff etc...
from Accounting,
Design, Sales, and Senior Mgmt forms
Operations to join are also distributed.
Week 4
the team.
Within 10 days you receive a concise,
actionable Executive Report - we’ll review
that with senior management.

5. A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MINDSET:
• Provides you with a rational basis for strategic prioritization “We really appreciated the structured
and rigorous assessment that PROBE
around sustainability. provided. It helped us ‘hold up a mirror'
to our own performance and progress
• Connects your people and their knowledge with the sole and deepened our awareness of the
intent of improving your performance. complex interplay between
the economic, social and
• Identifies risks & exposures, and shine a light on blind spots environmental
in your operations. effects of our
business.”
• Clarifies the return-on-investment in your own sustainable
John Twigg, Group Planning Director
business best practices. Manchester Airports Group (UK)
• Propels your business into the 21st century. “The opportunity, experience, and team
building were absolutely priceless. The
[PROBE] assessment was right on target
Ready to get going? about where our strengths and
Run a self-assessment, using weaknesses are at this
point in time.”
PROBE for Sustainable Business
Janet S. Griffey, President/CEO
RLCB
Success through sustainability

6. One Client’s SUSTAINABILITY WIN
Here’s how a southern California business used a series of Businesses
small wins to boost their profitability: with a sustainability mindset
consistently out-perform
1. First they implemented an energy efficiency program, saving their more conventional
$3,500 per year. competition…
2. They invested the savings into an employee-wellness program.
…Middle-market pressure for
Fewer sick days and reduced insurance premium resulted. sustainable business best
3. The combined savings were re-invested in a switch from single-
practices is rapidly
accelerating...
use bottled water to filtered tap water.
4. 18 months later they’re saving four ways: energy costs, sick …Sustainability is
days, insurance premium, and drinking water. They’re also
the next corporate mega-trend.
reducing plastic bottle use, creating an authentic, marketable
business story. A Sustainable Business Mindset regularly
produces double- and triple-wins like this one. Whether you’re just getting
starting, or are already getting
How did they get started? better…
By running a sustainability self-assessment.
…Don’t get left behind.
Success through sustainability

7. To evaluate PROBE for Sustainable Business
and our other business tools for yourself,
call Jeff Hayes at 323.549.9787
After you’ve run the assessment, then what?...
After running your first PROBE for Sustainable Business assessment, you’re
primed to maximize both the rate and size of your returns. Maintain your
momentum with The Vector Group’s:
• Workshops & Continuing Education.
• Gap Analysis & Strategic Planning.
• CONDUCTOR - our proprietary execution model.
“The Vector Group shows their clients how to convert the waste and risk associated with old-school
business practices into leading edge competitive advantage. These guys are business performance
experts AND sustainability experts - in today’s increasingly competitive business environment,
performance and sustainability are joined at the hip. If you want sustainability to be the best
investment your company ever makes, don’t wait and wonder - call them and get started today.”
-Jeff Kleid, President, Elite Risk Services