138 – Your Stress Free Holiday Business Gifting Plan

You're listening to gift biz on rapt episode 138,

all of a sudden it's like,

Oh my gosh,

what about the holiday gifts that I need to be sending

out? Hey,

this is John Lee Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,

and you're listening to gift to biz unwrapped.

And now it's time to light it up.

Well, hello,

and thank you for joining me on the show today.

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but for now,

let's get onto the show today.

We're going to talk about,

About holiday gifting for your business,

from a different angle.

Normally, when you think about the holiday season,

the focus is on what promotions am I going to do?

What networking events am I going to attend?

How am I going to attract people into my business to

buy my products and services as holiday gifts?

So this time we're going to switch it up because there's

a whole nother side of this that we need to consider.

And that is what are you doing as a business owner

in terms of giving holiday gifts.

This podcast is part of a mini two part series on

the holidays.

If you will,

the prior podcast talked about holiday promotions and what you should

be doing with holiday promotions and how to enhance and get

the most mileage out of whatever you're doing,

not just for this year,

but to make yourself even better for the following year.

If you haven't caught that episode yet,

it's number one 37.

So the one right before this one,

and I encourage you to jump over and take a listen

to that one.

But again,

today, we're talking about holiday gifting for your business in terms

of the holiday gifts that you should be sending.

I think the best way to start off with this is

why should you be doing it in the first place?

And honestly,

we need to turn the mirror to ourself it's for same

reason why we're telling our corporate accounts that they should be

doing a gifting program,

or we're telling customers that are coming into our shop.

They're shopping for gifts for similar reasons.

And the reasons really are to show the importance of various

people in our life.

And clearly in our business,

we have many of them and we're going to be talking

about them in a minute.

And during the holiday,

it's really important and valuable to recognize those people who are

special to you,

people who have provided services for your business,

which would be employees and also vendors,

and then also the all-important and obvious customers where you are

getting revenue into your business so that you're going to be

able to stay open.

The problem often becomes,

we think of it at the last moment,

because as I was mentioning at the top of the show,

we're usually thinking about how are we gonna attract people into

buy our things,

but there's a certain way and a certain really easy system

that allows you to plan how you're going to be doing

gifting. And it's important because if you don't think of this

till the end,

when you're in the middle of a stressful holiday season and

all of a sudden it's like,

Oh my gosh,

what about the holiday gifts that I need to be sending

out? If you think of it,

then you're rushing through.

You're clearly going to spend more money.

You're probably not going to get the best gifts that you

could get in terms of the impact and the symbolism that

you would want.

And it's just going to be one big mess.

There's no plan.

It'll all be done on the spring.

The moment you won't get the right gifts and you're definitely

gonna spend more money.

So yeah,

Much better to think about it beforehand and to actually have

a plan.

So I've put together for you four steps of a holiday

gifting plan that I've used.

I'm going to say for the last,

wow, 10,

12 years ever since I started my gift basket business way

back when,

and it made things so much easier because I first didn't

forget anybody.

I knew exactly how much I was going to be spending

and where it was going to go and just tracked everything.

So let me share with you this plan.

I did make a worksheet that accompanies this podcast so that

you don't have to create anything from a blank piece of

paper. You'll be able to just follow along and fill in

the blanks in terms of what you need to be doing

versus creating a system similar to mine.

So to grab that freebie,

you'll go to gift biz on rap.com

forward slash one,

three eight,

and you can automatically get that worksheet,

but let's get started now with the plan.

Step number one,

the very first thing to do is to set a budget.

How much can you afford to spend or want to spend

on holiday gifts in total?

This is your overriding Budget.

Now, before I got behind the mic,

I jumped Onto Google real fast to see if there was

any type of a guideline of how much people spend,

like what percentage of overall sales would you suggest for holiday

gifts? And honestly,

I didn't find anything that I felt was really representative for

us here.

So going back to,

should it be a certain percentage of revenue coming in?

Should it be a certain dollar amount?

Overall? My best advice for you is to put down a

number that you feel comfortable with,

that isn't going to stretch you too far.

You know how the numbers fall within your business.

So put down something that is going to work for you

and that you feel good about.

All right,

so now you've got a dollar value set.

This is the overall total amount that you're going to spend

for the holidays.

And I'm going to lay down some tough love here.

You cannot exceed that amount no matter what you do.

That's the reason to have a plan.

So you're not overspending.

And there are lots of things that you can do that

don't have to cost money,

but will be on this worksheet because you want to again,

recognize everybody in your life who has helped contribute to the

starting and growing of your business.

All right.

So number one,

you've got that budget number set.

Step number two is to create three different lists.

And all you're doing right here is your identifying.

All of the people that you want to give gifts to

the first list is your employees.

This will include people who aren't necessarily,

even in your Office space.

Maybe you have a virtual assistant,

possibly You've outsourced some services such as your social media or

your accounting,

or you have someone who does your taxes.

All of those types of people you want to put down

here, they're on your team and they are part of your

business. It is Oh,

so important that you recognize them and show them how much

you appreciate their participation and dedication to their work.

The second list is vendors.

So these are people,

obviously who you have been purchasing product or supplies from.

And also people that you've been purchasing services from.

Think about how you're getting your delivery done.

Maybe you want to include your mail carrier,

your ups or federal express person.

Also think throughout the year,

has there been somebody who really helped you out in a

point of need,

maybe you needed a rush package sent out or something extra

special, put a little star by their name because you want

to make sure to remember,

to mention that you recognize and appreciate the help that they

gave you for that certain event.

So that's the second list.

So we've got an,

a list for employees.

We've got a list for vendors,

and now we're going to move on to a list for

customers. Now you may be saying,

Oh my gosh,

that one going to be so hard.

I have so,

so, so many customers,

how am I ever going to recognize our list?

All of them,

don't worry.

I've got you covered.

I have approached this in a couple of different ways with

my past businesses.

And one of the things that I found really helps with

this Is if you put customers Into tears,

for example,

if you have a lot of customers,

if you don't,

if you're still smaller and you're growing and you have,

I don't know,

10, 20 customers,

that's real easy.

You can just list all their names.

If you're into the hundreds or thousands of customers,

then this tearing idea really helps.

Let me share with you the way I did it.

My first tier was by revenue.

Let's face it,

Even though all customers are important and valuable,

the ones that bring you in the most revenue,

you do want to recognize they're special.

They are holding your business together,

or have possibly gotten you to a new revenue level within

your business.

So you want to look at them and say,

thank you to them through a holiday gift.

You can capture this information.

If you haven't been already through whatever accounting program you're using.

I happen to use QuickBooks and identify who the top,

let's say,

10 clients are for you by revenue.

So that would be put on your tier one list.

Tier two is kind of an intermediary list.

If you will,

they may be up and coming customers of yours.

They may be customers who have done some special things for

you throughout the year.

There may be different reasons.

This is kind of a miscellaneous category of people that you

still want to identify individually,

or it could be another tier of revenue,

any way you want to work.

This of course is fine.

And then the third tier would be all your other customers,

because I kind of feel like no matter who their customers

are, they should be getting some type of recognition from you.

And this could be the tier where you're not spending as

much money,

but you're still able to identify and safe.

Thank you.

And I'll talk about this in a second.

So to wrap up my step two,

you're creating these three lists,

employees, vendors,

and customers,

and then the customers are broken down into tiers.

If you see that that's appropriate for your business,

step number three now is to plan out your gifts.

So you've got all The people you've now know that Quantity

pretty much in terms of how many people there are.

And the reason I say it that way is that tier

three I was talking about could be a couple hundred people

or maybe thousands of people,

right? But you still want to identify that they're somebody that

you want to pay attention to.

Now you start breaking out.

What am I getting these people?

What are the gifts going to be?

And you can approach this in a couple of ways.

One way to first start breaking up the dollars into all

of the different names and all of the different lists.

Let's go back to the example,

like if you'd set a budget of,

let's say $200,

so now you can start applying,

okay, half that budget is going to go to my employees,

for example,

or 25 employees,

25 vendors,

50 customers,

whatever it is,

you get the ideas you break out and allocate dollars to

your different lists.

And then you also allocate dollars within the list.

And this might sound a little confusing,

but remember I told you that I have a worksheet that

has already been created for you on this.

You'll see what I mean,

in terms of the dollar allocation,

this is the best way to make sure that you don't

go over budget because once you know how much you have

that you can spend for somebody,

then you can retrofit in gifts.

That make sense.

And honestly,

I got to tell you,

being recognized for the holiday and making that gesture outward of

holiday greeting is so much more important than how much you

spend on the gift.

So remember that if it's a difference between sending out a

gift at all,

or sending out just a small gift,

I would send out a small gift versus sending out nothing

examples of things that you can do.

I'm going to take it from the bottom.

So let's say in tier three,

that list,

that exists of hundreds of customers,

right? That may be just a very nice personal email greeting

through whatever email system that you're using,

constant contact,

a Weber,

whatever it is.

That's a great way to cover a large group of people,

but having done something for them,

for the holidays and no cost to you.

FYI, think about it.

If you don't Put it down on the list,

you might forget to do it.

So just a nice email would be a gift.

Okay? Then you can go up maybe for a certain tier.

You're going to give cards.

You're going to have cards printed from your business.

And you're going to send out a nice card.

That also is enough.

You're recognizing and showing that you've taken special thought For somebody.

So those May be some certain things that you do.

Again, that don't cost a lot.

I'll tell you something that we're doing right now over at

the ribbon print company.

And those of you who are customers of ours and are

ordering, you already have seen some of this happening.

But what I'll do is as I'm out at trade shows

throughout the year,

I'll find some product that I really like,

and I will purchase.

Normally they'll allow me to have it wholesale because I tell

them what I'm doing.

I'm including them in orders.

When people are placing orders through the holiday season,

we make a little nice message on printed ribbon and include

a product in there.

It's like a nice little treat.

It gives that business,

some extra visibility,

and it's another way of us thanking and hopefully delighting our

customers throughout the season.

This is another example of an idea for you,

especially if you are a wholesaler and you're in the consumable

business. So gift basket people,

you guys buy product for your stores that are consumables.

That's the type of idea,

something that you can do in terms of a gift.

And then you go up again to the higher priced people,

your employees,

and possibly vendors for vendors,

great gift cards,

my postal carrier and ups guy who I adore.

I'll give gift cards and then maybe a nice thing of

chocolate or something fun throughout the holiday season.

And also I have to say money,

money goes a long way.

Even if it can only be $20,

it adds up because you know,

a lot of other people will give money to,

but some money in a nice card.

Those are some,

just some different ideas of the types of gifts that you

can give.

And then obviously for employees,

anybody within your business bonuses are great.

And if you know them and you're close with them,

some type of a physical product as well,

you know,

that way better than I do based on who's in your

business. But you see what I mean in terms of allocating

the different dollar amounts and then what the gifts are going

to be.

And this helps so much too with direction when you're going

out and you're thinking,

Oh my gosh,

okay. For my right-hand person,

I need to get her something really special and I can

spend $75 or whatever the dollar amount is going to be.

Right. At least you've got some direction and you're not just

haphazardly finding something.

It's the last minute spending $300 when we really should have

only spent 75 and then come January,

you're in a whole heap of trouble and having to dig

out right in the beginning of the year.

Okay. And then finally,

step number four is tracking all of your action towards completing

your holiday gifting program.

Again, within that free download that I've already told you about,

there's a whole tracking form.

So you've got all your lists and then the tracking form

includes what your dollar allocation is,

what gift you're thinking of giving and what gift you've actually

given, how much you've spent.

And a little side note with your pricing.

Remember that should include shipping because shipping is alive cost to

you. If indeed you have to send the product out.

So make sure to include that in your overall budget and

your costs.

And then there's a nice check sheet so that you can

see for each category in each person,

okay, I've purchased the gift.

It needs to have a card,

or does it need to have a card I've sent it

out. And so they are done that way at the very

end, when all is said and done,

you know,

that you've gotten everybody covered.

Now, the other nice thing about this type of a planner

is next year,

you don't have to go back and re remember who all

the people are that you need to be gifting.

You also can decide what's my budget too much was my

budget, too little heaven forbid you forgot somebody this year.

You can add them to the list right away so that

you don't forget them for the following year.

And all told this is such a stress reliever because let's

face it.

Our mind is on getting business,

getting customers,

filling orders,

creating products,

all of those things that make the holidays so stressful yet.

Really great.

When we look at our bank accounts in January,

we're not necessarily looking at the business gifting side and we

should be that's the business we're in.

So just by tracking this,

putting this down on paper,

it relieves your stress,

allows you to spend your energies on actually fulfilling those gifting

lists instead of figuring out what to do and doing it

haphazardly. So again,

to summarize for your holiday gifting plan for your business,

my suggestion is you follow my planner,

go ahead and download it.

Gift biz on wrap.com

forward slash one 38.

You're going to set yourself a budget,

create three lists of names.

So you have everybody written down that you're going to need

to send a gift,

to put a larger customer list into tiers.

And then step number three,

you're going to plan out the gifts with dollar allocations and

then also what you're thinking the gifts could be.

And then for tracking it all so that you have documentation

going into the following year of how much you've spent,

what you've done.

And it's much easier to make adjustments when you do this

same project next year,

if you're listening to this episode,

when it's going live,

we are smack in the middle of the holiday season.

So I'm sure you're already feeling the stress and the pressure

and the tension and the excitement and the buildup for the

holiday season.

Consider this my gift to you so that you've got everything

covered, both on the promotional end,

which was the prior episode.

And on the business gifting end,

you can get these tasks done,

but then also have some time for yourself to really enjoy

and take in all that this holiday season is supposed to

be within our industries.

It's so easy to let this season pass us by in

terms of the joy and the excitement and the beauty and

the giving and the friendship and the fun of parties and

all that the holiday supposed to be because we've got the

business to run and the products to get out and the

customers to serve.

And there's so much work to do.

So these two episodes are my little gift to you to

hopefully make that easier.

So you can look up from all the work that you're

having to do and take some time and grasp the beauty

and the warmth of the holiday too.

And that's not all,

I decided that since we were talking business gifting,

I really should include friends and family gifting as well.

So yet another download worksheet for you that you can get

at gift biz unwrapped forward slash one 38 capital P P

as in personal friends and family personal,

right? And this is a worksheet similar to what I've just

gone over with you on the business end,

but it captures more of the needs that you have when

you're doing personal gifts to friends and family.

It also includes such things as don't forget something special for

your hairdresser or the newspaper delivery person or any of the

other types of services you have possibly it's cleaning or food

prep and centrality budgets can so easily get out of hand.

There's also a space for things such as hostess gifts and

holiday cards and possibly new holiday decorations.

So again,

that's available to you a little different format,

but I know you'll be able to understand it.

And again,

you can use this and track this then from year to

year, I've actually used this for my family,

this exact worksheet for probably,

Oh, I don't know,

10 years now.

It's kind of fun to go back cause I can see

what Santa has brought the kids over the course of time,

how much I've spent on holiday gifts season over season,

et cetera,

for family budgeting purposes.

It's just wonderful for a wealth of different reasons.

Again, my gift to you,

if you didn't catch the links,

they will be over on the show notes page.

So happy holiday selling happy holiday gifting.

That's a wrap Today's show is sponsored by the ribbon print

company. Looking for a new income source for your gift business.

Customization is more popular now than ever grant your products with

your logo or print a happy birthday,

Jessica ribbon to add to a gift right at checkout,

it's all done right in your shop or cross studio in

seconds. Check out the ribbon print company.com

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