Aug

12

How to Plan Now for Christmas Gift Basket Orders

Filed Under Corporate Baskets, Sales-Increasing Strategies | Leave a Comment

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.

Jul

22

Your Corporate Gift Basket Profit Plan

Filed Under Corporate Selling, Planning, Sales-Increasing Strategies | Leave a Comment

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.

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