Jan

20

Three Reasons Why Customers Want to Know About Your Valentine’s Day Gift Baskets

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How many more gift baskets will you sell to clients this Valentine’s Day than you achieved last year?

Tips on how to create great relationships now for big sales in February that also keep you connected with clients throughout the year is the focus of today’s newsletter.

Sign up for the Basket Biz newsletter at http://www.GiftBasketBusiness.com/newsletter.htm to stay on top of the latest trends in gift basket making and selling. It’s published every Thursday and written with a focus on your success.

Dec

23

How to Line Up New Year’s Basket Orders Now

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I didn’t realize the popularity of New Year’s gift baskets until 1995 when I showed them on the Food Network.

The audience of 23 million viewers were shown gifts arranged on a silver tray, packaged in an aluminized ice bucket, and included in an inverted top hat.

The 268 orders placed during the three days following the broadcast filled my bank account, depleted my inventory, and taught me a huge lesson: offer customers New Year’s gift baskets with the same persistence as I offer Christmas gift baskets.

In other words, if you let New Year’s Day baskets slip by, you’re missing a huge part of revenue and also doing your customers a huge disservice by not making them available.

Many customers will order New Year’s baskets for two reasons. They:

  • Didn’t have the budget for all the Christmas gift baskets they wanted.
  • Forgot to send some friends and family members a Christmas gift.

Your mission now is to begin promoting New Year’s baskets on your site, Facebook page, and through direct mail. Other marketing ideas are found in my special holiday gift to you, 20 Top Tips for Gift Basket Makers, which you can download through this link.

Aug

26

Three Ways to Increase Your Corporate Sales

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A winning plan to increase your gift baskets sales won’t fall from the sky. You must be committed to follow a solid, well-organized action plan that you either write yourself or get help to write from outside sources.

Joining a local gift basket group can be helpful, a topic that’s raised in this article about creating a mastermind group.

But what if you’re not a mastermind member or have a gift basket group near you? If that’s the case, here’s three ways to get your plan crafted for action.

1. Write down the results you want first, then work backwards to set the objectives.

2. Broaden your pool of potential clients. If one real estate firm is your customer, contact other industry participants.

3. Check your budget, making sure that you have enough money to start and follow up on every aspect of your plan.

Putting your plan on paper and creating action steps will increase your corporate gift basket sales quicker than simply wishing and hoping that your business turns around.

Learn More:

Want help in designing a gift basket sales plan?

Sign up for the upcoming teleseminar, Corporate Gift Baskets: How to Find Clients and Get Orders. The 15-minute preview call is Tuesday, August 31. Click here for details.

Aug

12

How to Plan Now for Christmas Gift Basket Orders

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Even if you’re the greatest designer in your region, customers will not line up at your door to buy gift baskets! There are simply too many competitors for them to choose from whether due to convenience or budget.

This means you must create a step-by-step campaign by computer or on paper to contact your customers every two or three weeks starting now to get attention and sales.

The need for such a campaign is necessary today as it was years ago.

A gift basket store owner I interviewed in 2001 gained most of her Christmas orders by sending customers a Year 2000 printout in early October showing who received past orders along with an easy way to order new gift baskets with delivery instructions on the same printout.

Yesterday, I delivered a customized snack bag to a bank teller, something I promised to create because of the teller’s impeccable service. The cellophane-wrapped gift included multiple snacks, bowls, and napkins for every employee’s enjoyment, including the branch manager who requested my services on the spot to create holidays gift baskets for her top clients.

Whether by mail or in person, the time is now to develop and launch your Christmas action plan to encourage customers to order holiday gift baskets.

You’ll find ‘Tis the Season to Start Selling and Pre-Holiday Q&A Part 1 and Part 2 helpful with this mission.

How will you proceed? Share your plans in the comment section below, or ask questions here to get your plan underway.

Aug

5

How Containers Can Get You a Big Account

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Back-to-school season reminds me of a lesson I’ll always remember, one that won me a college account to make 280 gifts for new and returning professors.

The lesson was basic – display educational gifts in containers, in place of or in addition to baskets, when showing administrators what you design.

The meeting to show the types of available gifts for professors was confirmed when I visited the college to speak with one of my former teachers who happens to also work at the school. She introduced me to her supervisor, and I mentioned my business and the types of companies I serve.

I could almost see the wheels spinning in the supervisor’s mind. She wanted to say something, so I stopped talking.

“You know, we were thinking of ordering some gifts to welcome teachers back to school. Do you make those types of gifts?,” quickly adding, “But we’re not necessarily looking for baskets.”

I mentioned some alternative containers and styling, and we scheduled a meeting for the next day.

Here’s what I showed her with items packed inside each.

  • Square, decorative box
  • Tote bag
  • Small trunk
  • Oval bucket
  • Tin pail

She selected four, and the contract specified that the number of gifts be evenly divided in the chosen containers (70 each).

Gift creation for back to school and other events often begins with a basket selection from your inventory, but there are times when a container will stand out and be approved faster because the customer knows that the recipient will appreciate displaying the container elsewhere in a home or office.

Chapter 10 in The Gift Basket Design Book shows many non-basket options, including instructions to design a trunk gift and tea cup.

What occasion can you recall where displaying a gift in a container, rather than a basket, generated a sale?

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