The Profitable Side of Gift Basket Donations
I’ve talked in the past about donations and how organizations will ask you to create gift baskets free of charge for their events.
There’s another, positive side of this coin.
Remind your customers that you create gift baskets for charitable events that are requested as part of an auction.
They have already purchased gift baskets from you for other occasions; why not for charity?
A good friend asked me to make a gift basket for her participation in a charitable function, which she promptly paid for through her PayPal account.
A photo of the basket is shown in this post.
When I delivered it to the organizer’s home, she (the organizer) informed me about other opportunities to pair with them and other organizations.
So, options are vast when making charity baskets for paying clients. Let customers know that this service is available which may lead to revenue from another stream that was once overlooked.
What Do you Do When Someone Copies Your Pictures?
Imagine — you are contacted through Email by a friend who asks you to look at another person’s Web site.
When you click the link, you blink at the screen in disbelief.
Gift baskets that you created from scratch and added to your Web site are displayed, but this is not your site.
What’s the next step? Do you:
The main focus is to take some type of action. When your mind settles down and you begin thinking logically, how will you proceed to protect your gift basket business?
Three Tips from a Successful Gift Basket Designer
When I visited San Francisco last month to speak at the Fancy Food Show, one of my gift basket clients invited me to visit her studio.
Her business has increased in recent months, and she agreed to let me share her three top ways to get business.
1. This designer is a member of the state’s visitors convention bureau. She said the yearly membership cost is high, but there are two things that work for her.
One is that the price convinces other gift basket designers not to join. Second, she makes every penny of the investment back and more through networking.
One meeting planner who brought a convention to town purchased $20,000 worth of gifts and baskets from the designer for attendees.
2. She pays a $100 finder’s fee, either in cash or in gift baskets, to clients who get her into “insider parties.” These are the events where high-powered businesspeople gather. They invite her, and she takes care of the rest. Her client roster and sales have increased.
3. She mails her marketing messages in colorful envelopes that have intriguing statements written on the outside, and no two are alike. This keeps an air of mystery in her campaigns, and clients and prospects open the envelopes right away to read each message.
Where do the intriguing statements come from? “Junk mailings,” she told me. “I change some of the words, and then I send out mailings every month.”
What’s your top tip for getting business in your town?
How Organized is the Space Where You Make Gift Baskets?
There was a time, specifically after Christmas or Valentine’s Day, when I’d enter my design studio, and instead of it appearing to be a welcoming environment, it resembled a toy factory explosion.
Stuff was everywhere, random drawers were open, and shred was nearly up to my ankles. How could I possibly feel enthused about designing in chaos?
If this is what your workspace looks like right now, commit to cleaning up before you do one thing, make one call, or take one picture.
If you have an order to fulfill, I won’t stop you from doing that. However, you may not be as enthusiastic during the process as you are when the environment is clean and orderly.
My energy is high during the morning hours. That’s when I feel as though I can take on the world designing gift baskets, packing them for shipping, and returning telephone calls to prospects who request bids for conference gift baskets.
No matter when you feel energized, dedicate 15-20 minutes of that time to organizing your workspace so you don’t waste energy searching for baskets, scissors, or inventory you’ve yet to unpack.
When your design space was a disaster zone, what were you unable to find, and what convinced you to organize your space so that it didn’t happen again?
How Do You Handle Issues that Postpone Deliveries?
My heart sank the first time I was contacted by a customer, upset because a gift basket wasn’t delivered according to her requirements.
At the time I hadn’t developed a system for this situation.
In fact, I didn’t consider that such a problem could occur.
Nothing I read in preparation to start a business mentioned it.
I, of course, apologized during our conversation. I then called the recipient and learned that he was out of the office on that day, which ended up being the reason why he didn’t get the basket.
It was now clear that this was a delayed receipt and not a delayed delivery. But what if weather or transportation stops your gift basket from reaching the intended destination? What’s your policy for satisfying an unhappy client?
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