When you are trying to show that you are pleased by your employees’ performance or by your customers’ loyalty, there is no better way than to present them with a well thought out gift that conveys exactly how much that person or business means to you and to your company. That is why cheap corporate gifts are the bane of businesses everywhere, and can seriously drag you down much further and much faster than simply doing nothing at all.
Do not think that just because you gave someone a gift, they will automatically appreciate it. Thanking one of your top customers by sending them one of your leftover promotional products like a mug with your company logo on it, for example, will do much more harm than good, and you should consider just writing a quick thank you note if that is all the effort that you plan on putting into your corporate gifts.
Your employees will be equally unimpressed with a corporate gift that shows so little regard for their actual needs, feelings, or value to you and your company. If they are truly worth thanking for the effort that they have been putting in on your behalf, then they are worth thanking with a nice gift or at least a sincere letter instead of a cheap product that they will not use and do not want, or that will fall apart on them in days.
Thanking your top customers and employees with cheap corporate gifts is like telling them that you know what their actual worth is (you got them a gift, after all), but you could not be bothered to expend the time or energy to actually give them something worthy of their own value to your company and to you yourself, as well.
Giving out gifts to employees is a great way to build loyalty and ensure that they will be more than happy to continue working for you through the good times and the bad. They can be given out for company anniversaries, for the completion of a difficult project, or when the employee is promoted. Corporate gifts can be given to employees who are getting married or having a new baby, and can add a bit of personal interest to their work lives, making them feel even more connected to the company. But this is only true when the corporate gifts are actually worthy of the employees and their big events. Giving a cheap gift is akin to telling them that they are next to worthless to you.
The same goes for giving corporate gifts to important clients, and care must be taken not to offend your biggest clients with cheap gifts that convey a message that you did not intend to convey. When it comes to corporate gifts, a good rule of thumb is to choose things that you yourself would not mind receiving as a mark of gratitude from someone with whom you do business, and giving something like that.
Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK's leading online corporate gifts and business gifts company based in the north of England. Established in 2001, he has taken the UK gift market by storm by the application of modern business thinking and the latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details visit www.ideasbynet.com
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