"Any day now, the goodies of Christmas will start arriving on Toni Steedman's desk.
Coffee mugs. T-shirts. Baskets of fruit and cookies. And maybe, like a few years ago, a 3-foot-tall bird cage stuffed with food that was sent by a potential customer in Florida.
""It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen,"" said Steedman, co-owner of Steedman Wilson, a marketing, advertising and public relations firm in Charlotte. ""We had the hardest time getting rid of it.""
It's that jolly time of year again when companies look back on the business they got, or wished they'd gotten, and send holiday thank-yous.
Small-business owners will spend more than $4 billion this year wishing a happy holiday to clients, vendors and employees, according to American Express Small Business' 1999 Gift Buying Survey.
Said Mary Oliver, an American Express vice president: ""Well-planned holiday gift giving can be more effective than a full-blown advertising plan."" Why? ""It's all about creating loyalty.""
If a study by marketing professor Richard Beltramini is correct, gift giving can significantly boost sales. Beltramini, of Wayne State University, sent the customers of an international industrial marketer three types of gifts: a thank-you note, a note plus a $20 gift and a note plus a $40 gift.
He found that after six months, the $40 gift generated a 615 percent increase in sales. The $20 gift spurred a 49 percent rise, and the thank-you note created a 43 percent rise.
American Express' Oliver agreed. In its small-business study, 56 percent said their sales increased because they sent holiday gifts.
But send goodies at your own risk. The champagne meant to flatter may instead offend and kill business chances entirely. Whatever you choose as a gift might seem too cheap, too tacky, too obnoxious, too you-fill-in-the-blank compared with the lineup of goodies on the recipient's desk.
What's a gift giver to do? We searched the business world and found these answers:
Most important, say corporate gift experts, know your limits and the limits of your clients.
Mary Oliver recalls the day the TV set arrived. It came for a co-worker before Oliver joined American Express, and it raised eyebrows in the office.
The person was actually embarrassed because the other people wondered whether the relationship was inappropriate, she said. The set went back, along with the good intentions that had come with it.
Many companies have corporate policies for what employees can and can't accept. Duke Energy, for instance, limits gifts worth more than $200. Bank of America has no written policy, but says its employees should use their best judgment.
""We frown on big gifts,"" said Steve Pernotto, a senior vice president at Belk Inc., which puts a $50 cap on gifts and requires all employees who make purchasing decisions to sign a contract that they'll abide by the gift-giving policy. ""We don't want to get our people sideways with the vendors,"" he said.
Pernotto recalls a time, before gift limits became standard practice, when one vendor tried to get Belk merchandise buyers to take a trip to the Bahamas just to attend a two-hour seminar. The same vendor later sent Pernotto a $20,000 check as a rebate on merchandise purchases. The check went back, and ""we stopped doing business with him.""
American Express found that companies with less than $10 million in annual sales or fewer than 100 employees set aside an average of $1,800 for holiday gifts for vendors, clients and customers.
Gifts that stand out - in a positive way - go the furthest, experts say.
In years past, employees at Sherre DeMao's SLD Unlimited Marketing/PR in Charlotte spent weeks baking nut bread and building goodie baskets for loyal clients. This year, now that her client base has reached about 30, she's searching for less labor-intensive ideas. One possibility: buying gift certificates from each of her customers and sprinkling them out to the others.
""I started the nut bread idea because I love to bake,"" DeMao said. ""And then, once you start doing that, it's hard to stop because it's so personal.""
Other inexpensive gifts with personal touches include writing holiday greetings in crayon on black bottles of Freixenet Cordon Negro champagne (about $8 a bottle), enough bagels and cream cheese to feed a department or big bins of popcorn (though you risk its going stale). Marshall Air Systems, a Charlotte-based maker of stainless steel appliances and ventilation systems for commercial kitchens, handmakes holiday ornaments from leftover metal.
However, advises DeMao, ""if you're going to give really distinctive gifts, make sure you think it through."" No cigars to nonsmokers. No steakhouse gift certificates for vegetarians and no chocolates for people on diets. ""Go the fruit route instead.""
What if you don't have a limited budget but want to avoid the fruit baskets or desk clocks of Christmases past? Try a charitable donation.
Charlotte-based accounting firm Dellinger & Deese will donate the money it might have spent on a holiday party for clients to relief efforts for Hurricane Floyd. It will mention the contribution on holiday cards. ""This year, it seemed more prudent to give to the relief effort,"" said Denise Altman, a partner at the firm.
Dellinger & Deese typically doesn't give gifts, she said. ""We've talked about it, but it's tough to know what's appropriate. Plus most of our clients have what they need.""
But perhaps the most important consideration of all is not appearing cheap, said Vincent Alonzo, editor in chief of Incentive Magazine, which writes about corporate gift giving and employee incentives.
""A cheap radio that companies give to people who order a magazine subscription is fine with the subscription,"" he said. ""But if you do tens of thousands of dollars of business with a company, and it sends you that cheap radio, that can leave a bad impression.""
His advice: Know the recipient. ""Get as much info as you can about the person so you don't step on any toes.""
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