How to pick the best business gifts

You’ve started thinking about it already. …Haven’t you?
 
Oh no! Just reading the headline of this article probably made you wince. Are we that deep into fourth quarter already?
 
Yep. We are.
 
Sure, we could’ve posted this article in December; heck, we could post it on Christmas Frikkin’ Eve, but we’d like broaden the utility of this piece beyond the last-millisecond/hair-on-fire set.
 
Making a list. Checking it twice.
 
Depending upon the size of your client roster, this step may be easy—or an exercise. Since “easy” is obvious (“I have five identically-huge clients!”), we’ll skip that scenario, and plunge right into the thornier issue of culling and (ugh) ranking.
 
We think you’ll agree that you can graph your clients along two different axes: 1) the amount of billing they give you, and 2) how much you simply enjoy working for them. And you know, without us telling you, that there is no direct correlation between 1) and 2). Indeed, if you have a pretty deep client roster, and you were asked to quickly rank the top five in terms of billing off the top of your head, you might not be able to do it. That’s because your emotional view of how you like to work with them will bias you.
 
What this means is, calculate the billing. If you’re an Excel whiz—or know someone who is—create a pivot table whereby you can easily rank clients by gross billing. The results may surprise you. Confession: They often surprise us. Looking at hard numbers like these, toward the end of the year, often elicits a spontaneous “I never realized they were that big!” or “I never realized they were that small!”
 
Now, raw billing isn’t your only gauge when it comes to business-gift budgeting. But you simply can’t overlook it. Factor it into your thinking in the steps that follow.
 
Who makes you look good?
 
So far we’ve simply been talking about clients. After all, they keep you fed. But don’t overlook those key vendors who make your life possible. You know who they are: the go-to graphic artists, photographers, SEO jockeys, web heads, printers, and other “knob-turners” who contribute to the deliverables you deliver.
 
Would you also rank them, in terms of how much you’ve spent on them this year? You certainly could. And making that “vendor pivot table” can be an eye-opener, even before your accountant starts generating 1099s. But we think the emotional/team-player angle here is the more important one. Heck, we dole out a lot on insurance each year. But that’s a faceless and thankless transaction. Who helped you out when that client tossed a fire in your lap? Who simply delivered, time and again, never complaining and never missing a deadline?
 
Rewarding loyalty feels great.
 
Who’s the “recipient”?
 
This can be one of the hardest questions to answer. Let’s say “Company A” is your client. Within Company A, there’s the Top Person. But Top Person may not be your key point-of-contact. And Key Point of Contact may well have a Lieutenant who is absolutely indispensible to you (and who may also—in part through your efforts--be moving, quickly, up the ranks to a position of more authority… or even a future lateral move to Company B). And then there are all those Other People In The Company with whom you’ve had tertiary contact: lots of good people you’d still love to recognize. But you can’t gift every one of them, individually. And what if you inadvertently left someone out? Yikes. Don’t wanna do that.
 
There are two ways to skin this proverbial cat—although the hybrid approach between them is often your best bet. The first option is to single out the Big Key Player and serve him or her with a really nice and personalized gift. Period. The second option is to choose some kind of big, shareable gift that you can give to The Entire Company, and then let them fight it out over who-gets-what. (We keep thinking of a lion taking down a zebra, surrounded by hyenas, and then vultures, and then rats, and then flies. But that’s not exactly in the holiday spirit, is it?)
 
So the “hybrid approach” noted above consists of 1) one or a few key gifts to key players, and 2) a big shareable gift for everyone else in the organization. That’s pretty do-able.
 
So what do you get them?
 
Interesting that we’re this deep into an article about “business gifts” without having discussed any of the gifts themselves! That’s because, as you’ve seen by now, there’s a lot of “upstream” consideration that goes into the process.
 
So let’s assume you’ve made your lists. Ranked them appropriately. Carved up key players and “shareable groups” within each.
 
What on earth do you get them?
 
Clearly, there are zillions of choices, but the two things to bear in mind are that a great business gift 1) reflects well on the recipient, and 2) reflects well on you. The words “thoughtful” and “appropriate” can’t be overstated here.
 
God bless the Internet. For those of you reading this who survived through The Days Of Paper Catalogs, you’ll appreciate how easy it is these days to search on arcane strings such as “Best gift CFO non-perishable” and revel in the results.
 
A few specifics
 
Your mileage may vary, but we’ve had dismal results with any kind of gift entrusted to one of the big floral-delivery brands. Especially in these days of just-in-time logistics, they simply can’t out-Amazon Amazon. We’re also not big on alcohol. Which may be wrong, because tons of other people are. But note that alcohol, as a gift, imposes some pretty strict limitations on delivery (must be signed for, by someone 21 or over), and “second-attempt” deliveries, at holiday time, can be iffy—or late.
 
Which leads to timing. Find out, in advance, which clients/recipients will be shutting down early for the holidays. You sure don’t want something delivered when no one’s there to get it.
 
Looking to brand your holiday gift, say, with your logo? Sure, that’s fine to do. And it will remind the recipient of you, and your business, every time they use the gift. But we prefer stuff like that for trade shows. Call us old-fashioned, but we regard the holidays as more sacrosanct than that. It’s not about selling. You’ve got the whole rest of the year to do that. It’s more about simply connecting to people on a personal level and thanking them for including you in their lives. That’s our take on it.
 
Which leads to our last topic: Giving them a gift that’s actually for someone else.
 
The first time this happened to us, many years ago, we were pleasantly stunned. Someone gave us a holiday gift: It was a simply card, which said “A donation has been made in your name to the American Cancer Society.” At the time, it was the best gift we’d ever gotten. It still may be. Seeing something like that really puts, say, a desk set to shame.
 
There are lots of places that let you do the same for people on your list. One of our favorites is Heifer International. They let you purchase farm animals for communities in need, all over the world. Just think of your client’s face when they read: “We bought you a goat.”
 
Happy Holidays. 

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