Cajun, Creole or transplant, Louisianans revere food as a powerful staple that unites family, strengthens friendships and forms new bonds. We serve our best because we understand that life’s most basic necessity is also one of life’s greatest pleasures. Cane River Pecan Company specializes in helping people express their gratitude through personal and corporate gifting, but a number of other Louisiana-based companies do as well. Order a ready-made box or basket, or choose from several purveyors to craft a custom creation. Whether you’re local to Louisiana or a business based abroad, gifts rich in culture and taste are appreciated across the board.
Author: Jady Regard
Corporate Gift-Giving on Professional Holidays
While we think professional holidays deserve full recognition (translation: a full day of recreation or vacation), in reality, they’re usually limited to simple observances. Fortunately, that makes an unexpected thank you from the boss that much sweeter. If you’d like to reward the people who make your business successful, we’re ready to help!
Continue reading Corporate Gift-Giving on Professional Holidays
Assessing the Success of Your Gifting Strategy
Intangible Assessment?
Profitability comes down to assessing the return on investment (ROI) of every business metric, and corporate gift giving is no exception. In fact, as entrepreneurs and corporations alike focus on making less count for more, client gifts – and the anticipated resulting client retention – increasingly undergo piercing scrutiny. While ROI is often seemingly intangible, the four conventional standards for recognition of revenue still apply:
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Collection probability.
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Completed delivery.
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Evidence of an arrangement.
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Determined price.
Loosely translated, these four provide a lens to clarify the relationships you have with clients, suppliers, employees, banks and even shareholders – and the worth of strengthening or maintaining them through gifts.
Continue reading Assessing the Success of Your Gifting Strategy
9 Ways To Stand Out in Holiday Corporate Gifting
From Halloween on, the two remaining months are a mad dash to the year’s finish line for both individuals and businesses. Third-quarter reports are in, shifting the focus to fourth-quarter earnings, the year’s bottom line, inventories, taxes and plans for the new year. Meanwhile, a holiday extravaganza of parties, outings, mixers and gifts goes full bore. Amid it all is the seemingly unavoidable dilemma of corporate gifting. Business can be tough, but gifting in business settings doesn’t have to be.
Making the List
Some companies admit to spending hours agonizing over what to give and who to include while others hope the holidays slide by, attracting as little notice as possible. Nevertheless, the holiday bustle will swirl, with tokens of appreciation acknowledging entrepreneurial partnerships, client loyalty and jobs well done. As the gifts fly, how to stand out becomes the name of the game. Partners, clients, vendors and employees are all giving and taking. Piles of boxes and bags appear in lobby reception areas and crowd corporate credenzas. Does anyone even remember who gave what? If you do it right, they will – and they will appreciate it, too.
Continue reading 9 Ways To Stand Out in Holiday Corporate Gifting
Giving Thanks to Vendors
Large or small, no business venture is an island. A host of other companies supplies goods, machinery, services, advice and expertise that allow you to serve your customers and grow your business. No matter the industry — whether you specialize in power and energy, telecommunications, precious metals, biotechnology or wedding planning — you operate within a complicated networking interplay of skilled individuals, providers and suppliers several levels deep. Business consultants and CEOs all agree: Businesses literally live and die by their vendors. Contemplate your ability to prosper without them, and the picture turns quite grim.
Business-Vendor, Vendor-Business — Perspectives
A number of studies have attempted to quantify the value of vendors to a business. While statistics for customer satisfaction, retention and impact are easily calculated based on repeat purchases and customer surveys, the business-vendor relationship is far more complex. Vendors operate as part of your business, but they aren’t employees. You are their client, but you’re a large-scale client, most likely one of many others. If your vendors are experienced, specialized and top-of-the-line in their field, it is likely that their services are in high demand, and they may even have to turn work away. Before you think that you can simply replace them, consider the true value of a top-notch supplier or service provider. In a trillion-dollar arena of million-dollar specialization, you may not be able to afford losing them. Continue reading Giving Thanks to Vendors
Southern Mindfulness – Gifting as a Part of Southern Culture
Everything’s a little slower in the South, but it isn’t due to the heat, and it isn’t laziness, either. What it is is a kind of mindfulness, an awareness of the proper Southern way things should be done and the importance of the manners instilled by family and community. It isn’t something reserved for special occasions. Southern Mindfulness is a daily ritual equally intrinsic to family, community and business. It’s a way of being.
Those ma’ams and sirs are genuine — as essential to a Southerner as sunshine and sweet tea. Hospitality and grace under fire are keynotes of the Southern experience, and the expression of respect even a simple gift conveys speaks volumes about the giver. In the South, the gift is often food, and food is far more than sustenance: It’s the language of the South.
Foundations of Tradition, Family and Community
Forget today’s bustling, high-rise metropolitan cities, like banking giant Charlotte, N.C., jazz capital New Orleans, La., or capital city and industrial-technological hub Baton Rouge. At the turn of the twentieth century, life in the South was a rural existence of long months of unrelenting heat, roving sickness and fever, endless agricultural labor and often loneliness and isolation. Harsh conditions meant large tracts of land were necessary to support farms and plantations. Those acreages to the horizon, however, also made visiting family and friends a social event anticipated for weeks – sometimes, all year. Family meant community, and community was family. Continue reading Southern Mindfulness – Gifting as a Part of Southern Culture
Corporate Gifting for Community Banks
Community Banks Community-Based
Despite the growth of megabanks, community banks still provide 60 percent of all loans made to small businesses. Your customers count on you to provide full services and keep costs low. You take pride in helping your community thrive, and your clients rest assured that the financial decision makers are locally vested individuals who appreciate what they’re trying to achieve. Within a national bank, a customer may go unnoticed in the $100-billion pool of assets, but at a community bank, every client counts. Corporate gift giving is a perfect way to show them they do.
Customer Retention Equals Profitability
A Forbes article for entrepreneurs stresses that businesses should never underestimate the value of client retention:
- A mere 5-percent increase in customer retention can expand a company’s profitability by at least 25 percent, often more.
- A full 80 percent of a company’s future revenue will come from just 20 percent of its existing customers.
The article highlighted that companies often find customer additions exciting but that “ignoring customer attrition could eventually spell their downfall.” High costs associated with customer acquisition mean that the early years of a business relationship are significantly less profitable than later ones, when established trust earns greater sales volumes. The optimal trick is to acquire new clients while keeping current clients happy.
Customer Satisfaction Versus Client Retention
Surprisingly, customer satisfaction does not automatically equal client retention, especially within business-to-business relationships:
- Repeated studies demonstrate that even though customer satisfaction percentages may rank in the 80s and even 90s, businesses retain less than half of those clients.
- The key determinant for customer retention was the customers’ position within their business hierarchy. When clients were decision makers, customer retention was much more likely.
Your bankers know those vital people making decisions. Your community bank has a much better chance than a megabank or many other giant businesses of earning customer loyalty and maintaining long-term relationships that will prove profitable for all parties for years – hopefully decades – to come. Continue reading Corporate Gifting for Community Banks
The Art of Corporate Gifting – Meaningful, Ethical Tokens of Appreciation
Different Sectors,
Different Rules
Showing heartfelt appreciation to people who deserve thanks is vital to a company’s continued success. It can also be a bit like walking on nutshells. You want to build professional bridges with employees, clients and colleagues, especially around holidays or other milestone occasions. Regardless of industry or sector, however, rules and etiquette have become the watchwords of the day, part of a balancing act between ethical behavior and compliance with the law. Legal, ethical corporate gift giving hinges on:
- Federal, state, and local laws.
- Professional industry association guidelines.
- Individual company policies.
Most industries have either laws controlling gifting in the workplace or guidelines and accompanying company policies to ensure gifting remains ethical. In general, a gift must be a gift, and modest is best.
What Is a Gift?
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines define a gift as “the transfer of property (including money), or the use of or income from property without expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return.” In simpler terms, the giver must truly be giving a gift – sans strings, future influence or control. The higher the value of the gift, the greater the perceived expectation will be of owing something in return.
Gift Taxes and Value Continue reading The Art of Corporate Gifting – Meaningful, Ethical Tokens of Appreciation
The Timing and Importance of Employee Gifting
Creating a Happier Workforce
You can run any type of business in the world, but if you don’t have happy, productive and talented employees, success is a tough nut to crack. After all, your employees do the hard work of running your business on a day-to-day basis. If they’re not happy, it will show in your bottom line. One of the simplest ways to encourage greater employee engagement and loyalty is to show your workforce that you care through employee gifting. Gifts don’t have to be expensive or high tech to help employees feel more invested in your company. Even the gesture of a small token can boost morale.
Reap Considerable Benefits from Employee Gifting
Gifting is the practice of giving presents or mementos to employees who deserve to be recognized for their accomplishments, on special occasions or just because. Many businesses also engage in gifting around the holidays in an effort to thank their workforce for another year of success. Not all business leaders believe in the idea of employee gifting, but those who do can notice great results from the practice. Giving employees gifts has been found to have a wide range of benefits. Some of the most compelling include:
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Greater employee satisfaction and fewer overall employee complaints
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Increased individual productivity
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Better teamwork among employees
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Better customer relations
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Reductions in employee turnover
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Fewer stress-related illnesses among employees
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Reductions in workplace accidents
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Reduced absenteeism
Choosing the Right Times & Occasions for Gifting Continue reading The Timing and Importance of Employee Gifting
The Importance of Corporate Gifting Frequency
The art of sales is like dating; you will have the same feelings of anticipation and hope that the evening will be successful. As with dating, the process of making a sale doesn’t end with just one meeting. You must continue to nurture the relationship by making subsequent appointments and communicating by telephone. In dating, you expend this effort to cement a romantic relationship with another person. With sales, you are strengthening a business relationship. One thing that can help you with both is a periodic gift.
Gifts for New Clients
When you are dating, you will learn that everyone you meet is not a match for you. This also occurs in the business world, and it is the reason that new and old companies alike must continue their marketing efforts so that they can bring in new customers. Gift giving helps people accomplish this goal very well. It is also an excellent way of breaking the ice in the beginning. For example, it’s highly advantageous to have corporate gifts for your guests when you are hosting a promotional event in the community. You could even hold a raffle and give away more thoughtful client gifts. Like a dating partner, these clients will remember you and your brand long after the event is over. Continue reading The Importance of Corporate Gifting Frequency