I teach the NAHB Certified Green Practitioner class, and it’s a wonderful gang of skeptics and beleaguered tough guys I’m faced with every time. These guys don’t sign up for the class until they’re ready and eager to learn, they want to build tighter, healthier, more durable and efficient homes. But they are convinced that the customer isn’t ready to pay for it. The bottom line is, they aren’t ready to sell it, and if they can’t get the contract signed at a price that supports the effort of stepping up to Certified Green building practices, this whole movement is dead in the water.

There are two themes at work here. First,绿色建筑不是升级，而是区别因子。在一定程度上，“绿色”只是我们在耐用的能源和室内空气质量的范围内（注重重点的建筑物）。如果您是一个认真的建筑商，那么您可能已经很接近建造绿色。因此，当建筑商刚刚开始获得绿色认证时，我鼓励他们不要尝试建造下一个房子绿色，然后才能发现最后一所房子的距离有多近。

我们需要停止在您不想与客户进行的讨论中跳舞。“我可以为您建造最糟糕的D-Minus类型，几乎没有合法的房屋（最低代码），否则我可以绿色，但绿色会更昂贵。”我们不会进行对话 - 除非您已经建立了一个比编码要好的回家，否则您不会阅读本文您和您的客户都要求它。

因此，当您经营通过在线计算器www.nahbgreen.org上建造的最后一所房子时，您会发现这一点，但是对于几罐低型涂料油漆，享用披萨午餐来获得所有交易共同审查计划之前，您的HVAC家伙和一些标有地毯的CRI的合法手册J计算，您可以证明，最后一所House Green and Energy Star仅用于成绩单的费用。在所有这些中，唯一要花费的是披萨，手册J和成绩单。

绿色不是upgrade— it’s the way quality builders build houses. We would no more offer our customers discounts for letting us build to the lowest standard allowable by law than we would charge extra for building a house good enough to let us sleep well at night. Green-building certification is simply a way to put a meaningful number on just how well-built a home really is under the granite countertops and the fancy trim details. It’s whatdifferentiates平庸的建筑商。

Back to the class. We had an experienced green builder there who was just banging his head against the wall. “I know,” he says, “but I talk to them about the HERS ratings and the blower door numbers and ERVs and low VOC everything we use, and their eyes just glaze right over.” This guy was so passionate and so frustrated. And I can relate; I’m a shelter nerd too — I think energy-recovery ventilators are just fascinating. My customers find this amusing, I think.

这家巨型国家建筑公司的区域营销总监的答案是该故事的第二个主题。“当他们感兴趣的是好处时，您正在尝试出售这些功能。”Customers don’t really care你做什么to make the house better than the one across the street; they care that you are conscientious enough to build them a home that uses less energy, is more comfortable, has cleaner indoor air, conserves water in times of drought, is more durable, and requires less maintenance on the weekends.

这就是“绿色”对他们的意义。当他们谈论他们在家庭聚会上的房子如何绿色时，它会给他们一种温暖而模糊的感觉，并且看起来它看起来会比用Smelly地毯在街对面的能量猪更好地拥有转售价值。但这是关于他们的家庭福利, not the methods you employed to achieve them, and it’s the same for the small custom builder, the small production builder, and the national giant.

So we’re not selling green features, we’re selling differentiation and benefits. As green builders, we don’t just say we’re conscientious about the details, weprove它通过通过能源明星和绿色建筑认证计划进行第三方测试。我们通过我们的绿色建筑系统和产品带来价值，这些绿色建筑系统和产品为生活在这所房屋中的家庭带来了可衡量的好处。

Green building is not anupgrade（从棕色到绿色）；就是什么differentiatesyour company from those who don’t care enough to build green. The customers don’t care about what you do to make their house green, they care about how living in a green house will benefit their family.