• Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffees are winning 100% annual revenue growth

• Green household cleaners have achieved 229% revenue growth since 2005

• In 2009 Organic Apparel/Home Textiles achieved 35% revenue growth.

Two key market segments driving this revenue growth are the Millennial Generation and their moms, Concerned Caregivers, that are searching for products that offers “on me, around me, in me” solutions. This “Awareness Customer” market segment has $10 billion of annual buying power!

There is a “Secret Green Sauce” to building business success with the Awareness Customer. The first key ingredient is price. Market research has documented that 85% of consumers will buy the more sustainable good or service versus the less sustainable alternative IF their prices are the same. The companies that are achieving explosive revenue growth have a pricing plan that is driving their product toward price parity with the less sustainable competing product. A great example is solar roof top market segment that has achieved approximately 50% price reductions over the last four years with the most successful companies deploying an ongoing efficiency plan for reducing costs down to electric utility price parity.

The second key ingredient is “Prove It, Conclusively” branding. Market research has conclusively documented that customers are confused on what to buy and who to buy from. This opens the door to revenue growth success for an early stage company that can win brand positioning as being genuinely sustainable in their business practices and their products’ or services’ authenticity. The classic example of success in this space is Clorox’s Green Works, the first green consumer product to reach $100 million annual revenues. Green Works aligns with SIX different third party affiliations to convey a “Prove It, Conclusively” credibility alignment their targeted customers.

The third ingredient is the ability to connect with the experimenting, learning and then buying decision-making process being used by Awareness Customers. The adoption of sustainability is a maturation process where consumers begin by buying lower cost and lower risk products like CFL lights or concentrated organic laundry detergent. Then these customers use their experiences to move into more expensive sustainable goods and services. This is a “Know it, Embrace it” marketing path that is enabled by the Awareness Customers’ use of social media. Apple and Timberland are two of a growing number of companies that are developing social networks around their products that draw-in via social networking a growing number of new customers.

From serving as Entrepreneur.com’s Green Business Coach I have developed an international network of companies that are developing best practices for growing green revenues. I have captured key profiles of these best practices in my book, The Secret Green Sauce, outlining how to price, brand and market into the Awareness Customer market segment to win double digit revenue growth results!

Bill Roth is the founder of Earth 2017 and author of The Secret Green Sauce that profiles best practices of actual companies growing green revenues.

This sparked the question, who are our Sustainable CEOs? The following were nominations submitted by Triple Pundit readers during the week of January 7-15, 2010 listed in order of their nominations. This list is impressive in its length and diversity of nominations. I posted with every name a link to their company’s webpage. Studying these leaders’ management practices and the “green” action items their companies are pursuing to grow profitability and revenues is an eye-opening window into the emerging sustainable global economy and why I now project $10 trillion of annual global sustainable revenues by 2017.

Doug Conan
Campbell’s Soup

Yvon Chouinard
Patagonia

Dan Hesse
Sprint

Mick Bremans
Ecover

Ray Anderson
Interface Carpet

BethAnn Lederer
Working Wonders

Lee Scott
WalMart

Jose Manuel Entrecanales
Acciona

Bill Bregman
Deltapaper Corporation

Jeff Hollender
Seventh Generation

Jeff Swartz
Timberland

Bill Ford
Ford Motor Company

Mark J. Woodward
Golf Course Superintendents Association of America

George Siemon
Organic Valley Company

Ed Lonergan
Johnson Diversey

Eric Schmidt
Google

Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan
New Belgium Brewery

Brian Walker
Herman Miller

Fuji Cho
Katsuaki Watanabe
ToyotaToyota

Steve Fambro
Paul Weber
Aptera Motors

Forrest North
Mission Motors

Dan DiMicco
Nucor CorporationNucor Corporation

William R. Johnson
H.J. Heinz Company

Jan Blittersdorf
NRG SystemsNRG

Steve Ells
Chipotle

John Mackey
Whole Foods

Irene Rosenfeld
Kraft Foods

Ross Taylor
Tenix

Gail Kelly
Westpac Bank

Indra Nooyi
Pepsico
Pepsico

Anita Roddick
CSR-Reporting

Sybil Goldfiner
comme il faut

Ofra Strauss
Strauss Group

Yehudit Bronicki
Ormat Industries

Maxine Fassberg
Intel Israel

Andy Ball
Webcor Builders

Shantanu Narayen
Adobe

Steve Roell
Johnson Controls

Why these ten? On average, they delivered a total shareholder return of 997%!