Last Christmas, Blabbermouth Communications was still getting up and running, and so the thought of giving my clients gifts wasn't a possibility. Flash forward one year to present day and things are a bit different. The business is established, albeit a little slow right now, but I still don't feel that I have the money to spend on gifts.
I plan to hand-writing greeting cards and sending them out this week to all of the clients I worked with this year and ones I hope to work with in 2011. I think that's the least an agency can do this time of year to let their clients know they are thinking about them and to also stay in front of them.
But I have to wonder if clients are expecting gifts from their agencies. So many agencies give holiday presents to their clients that it's kind of become a tradition. Some give actual wrapped gifts while others may take them out for a fancy dinner.
During the decade I spent in the agency business, I only worked for small agencies of 5-10 employees, but my bosses always made sure to give our clients presents at the holidays. Most of the gifts were tailored to the client and the point of contact's personal interests in order to be as relevant as possible. But my bosses were also spending upwards of $1,000 on these gifts, which I certainly can't afford to do.
So what do you think? Do clients expect some type of gift from their agencies at the holidays? And if, as an agency, you don't give your client a gift, do you expect that the client will think less of you, or will understand that times are tight?
For my fellow freelancers: Do you give your clients gifts? If so, what is your spending limit? Or does the amount you spend on a particular client's gift correlate to how large of a client they are and how much they business they bring you?
When I worked in an office it was very nice to get the gifts, we received baskets of food, never go wrong with food. Then all of a sudden it stopped a few years ago. Couple things happened. Economy went to pot and the company developed policies against receiving gifts. The point is that we never changed our practices about the client BUT we talked about it every year and it was missed.
ReplyDeleteLast year I too did nothing. But this year came up with the idea to send holiday photo cards to my past customers. I made those 4X8 picture cards with a photo from the shoot I did for them and now they have a photo that they can trim and it would be a 4X5. And it reminds them of me.
Look to give something meaningful rather than expensive. I gave up on expensive gifts a few years ago. I only give meaningful things now, (except the wife and kids, theirs are still expensive).