Expert gifting, what does that mean exactly?
Let’s start with a story to help explain our theory behind expert gifting. This is a true story BTW.
A young lady graduated from college the first among her cousins and even all her aunts and uncles. Her grandmother not only did not attend her graduation she did not send a gift at the time either.
Several months after her graduation one of her cousins got married. At the wedding the grandmother walked up to the young lady and said, “oh, I want to tell you how proud I am of you and then handed her a wadded up twenty dollar bill. She did not even think to put the twenty in a card.
The point of the story is not about the disrespectful way she gifted to her but the fact that she could have taken the same twenty and created a gift box full of items the young lady enjoyed and tucked a hand written note inside the box expressing how proud she was of her and had it delivered to graduation by a family member who did attend vs a brief interaction and shoving the gift into her hand at her cousin's wedding.
This story is a bit extreme and hopefully most of you would never dream about gifting in this way. What it is about is how you can change the response of the receiver by intentionally making their gift one that expresses appreciation and surprise.
Expected vs Unexpected Gifts
We can also talk about Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. One can most likely expect to receive flowers or chocolates for Valentine’s Day and then plants or some kind of jewelry for Mother’s Day.
Here’s the thing with flowers, they are hard not to appreciate unless you have an allergy to them or for some odd reason just don’t like them. I would argue that they are most appreciated when they aren’t expected.
Here’s where the expert gifting comes in. Do something different. Something unexpected!
Send them flowers in September, I bet they wouldn’t be expecting that.
The same principle applies to gift giving. When the recipient isn’t expecting a gift from you, this is especially true around non-holiday times. It holds a lot more weight than when it is expected. As we all know, expectation can often lead to disappointment, therefore it’s important to remember that the element of surprise is essential to good gifting practices.
This is equally -if not especially- true in business relationships. Whether its employees, clients or colleagues everyone is sure to appreciate a gift they weren’t expecting in the first place.
Gifting a powerful tool for Corporations
Corporate gifting can be a powerful tool to strengthen corporate ties and personal connections among clients, customers and team members.
As we mentioned earlier, receiving a gift is a powerful experience that can’t be overlooked. Sending an unexpected gift to a long time client, a new client or thank you for referrals may be very beneficial in terms of ROI and satisfaction resulting in strengthened loyalty with your company.
Expressing appreciation to an unexpected individual with a gift, especially a gift that is well-personalized may reassure clients that their business is appreciated and encourage them to continue their service and possibly refer your services to other companies.
Marketing Tool
Yes, sending gifts to your clients is a marketing tool for your company but it’s also more than that. It further nurtures your clients “after” the sale or in some instances “before” the sale. Sending a gift before the sale helps you stand out against your competition.
At a marketing standpoint sending clients gifts is a good way to improve your ROI.
Team Building
What about team building? Sending an employee/team member a gift can improve their engagement, loyalty, and commitment.
Again, building relationships through gift giving is a meaningful method to express gratitude to your clients, employees/team members and suppliers. Remember corporate gifting in any of these categories is a tool to use to create the bond between you and your clients and employees/team members.
Of course there are some of you who are more gracious than the rest of us and a gift of any kind is equally appreciated. If this is you leave us a comment and tell us you appreciated this gift of good information. Until next time my gift