Jul

29

Gift Basket Design Techniques that Increase Sales

Filed Under Baskets, Containers, Enhancements | Comments Off

What catches your eye when searching for home decor or landscaping products?

There’s something about the shape, color, and overall attractiveness that makes you select specific items. That’s the same principle that convinces customers to say yes to your gift baskets.

When asking for feedback on the reasons why a customer chose a particular gift, the person won’t always pinpoint your design elements, but their buying patterns will give you lots of insight on what makes them buy. Here are three factors that may be high on their preference list.

1. Think Tall. Height is a motivating criteria. I noticed this not only with my clients but also when judging gift baskets at conferences years ago where other designer judges gave high marks to tall designs.

Your baskets or container gifts qualify to be wide when the required size is large. Outside of that, build up, not out. That’s a strategy that seems to be consistent in our industry.

Read more about this in the article, Tall Baskets Add Height and Sales Value.

2. Color KaChing. Let food and fashion alert you to each season’s popular color choices. This is one tip I remember hearing from the president of The Color Association of the United States. For me, she was right.

The more I stayed aware of seasonal colors and applied them to my gift baskets through shred, tissue, and bows, the more my sales increased. Look at your inventory, check the holiday color palette, and match them together.

3. Name Fame. Themes are a big attraction with individuals and corporations, and both want a name associated with each design.

Your baskets may start with names such as Welcome to the World or A Star is Born for newborns. As you expand your designs, news articles and personal conversations will help to broaden your design name options. Remember that people resonate with theme names, so make sure each of your gift baskets has one.

The answer in this article to the question, Why Name a Gift Basket? sheds more light on this topic.

What other elements of gift basket design convince your customers to buy?

Jul

22

Your Corporate Gift Basket Profit Plan

Filed Under Corporate Selling, Planning, Sales-Increasing Strategies | Comments Off

July and August are months when corporations make their decisions about how they’ll profit, what they’ll pay employees, and into which departments monies will be distributed in the upcoming year.

This is a wise time for you to make commitments about your business as well for end-of-year sales and your 2011 action plan.

  • Start by reviewing last year’s sales and deciding to increase that amount by a certain percentage such as 15 or 25 percent.
  • Then begin deciding how you’ll contact new and current customers to capture their early holiday orders.
  • Finally, write on paper your big goals for the new year and objectives that will secure those plans.

What I share above is how I developed plans for my business many years ago. My percentage increase plan was 20 percent, and that was exceeded by gaining accounts from my bank’s manager and insurance agent.

Postcards were my big contact plan along with sales that came from a newspaper feature story about my business. Television appearances were my big goals for the next year, a feat I once thought was not achievable but transformed my business for the better.

The GiftBasketBusiness.com blog post, Four Ways to Woo Corporate Clients, shares insights that were inspired by designers’ questions about getting corporate sales.

Your success story will be different than mine, and most of all you will accomplish more and increase sales quicker because of the low and no-cost promotional opportunities available to you today.

Plan to succeed, or don’t plan at all. You’ll receive whichever reward fits into the category of your choosing.