Finding the perfect corporate gift for your clients have never been easier with all the possible choices available online. However, choosing the right business gift can be far more time consuming and challenging than most people expect. Before you start purchasing, you should carefully consider whether anything you give might offend the recipient. We've seen more than our share of unfortunate gift giving gaffes over the years -- many of which could have been avoided with some extra consideration. Without further ado, here's our list of potential mistakes to watch out for:
Getting too personal -
Building close personal relationships with clients is all fine and dandy. There's nothing wrong with getting to know your clients personal preferences better -- it can help your business and certainly can't hurt when you're deciding on a corporate gift.
However, there's personal and then there's personal. Gifts of a more intimate nature, such as lingerie and perfume are almost never appropriate, although this kind of thing can be mitigated by gender differences. While it's generally acceptable for women to give their female clients spa kits and lotions, men should not be so familiar.
Ignoring religious and lifestyle issues -
Finding a neutral gift may be harder than you think. When dealing with religious considerations, many people only remember to take the winter holidays into account. However, avoiding religious gaffes go beyond issues like remembering not to give Christmas ornaments to non-Christians and so on. There are often other considerations you may miss such as dietary restrictions.
For example, when giving gift baskets, one should never send alcohol or tobacco to an account in Salt Lake City. For Jews and Muslims, non-kosher and non-halal foods should be avoided and so on.
Dietary restrictions must also be taken into consideration for secular lifestyle choices (vegetarians, vegans, etc.). Until you know your there'll be no conflicts, you should hold off on giving those frozen steaks (don't laugh, it's happened) or any other animal derived items (leathers, furs, etc.).
Not researching cultural differences -
Business relationships have increasingly gone global, exposing many companies to more cultures than they might have dealt with in the past. Many cultures have their own gift giving customs and expectations. Not researching these customs can lead to a serious faux pas. For example, in many Asian countries, using white wrapping paper is frowned upon as it symbolizes death.
Forgetting to check their corporate gift policies -
Ok, so you've finally narrowed down your choices to something you believe will not be offensive to your client. Before you start celebrating, did you remember to check whether they have a standard policy for accepting gifts?
Some companies have firm guidelines on what their employees can receive as gifts. The best corporate gift idea in the world will not earn you any points with a client if they are forced to return it. Keeping within company gifting guidelines is important -- doubly so if your company is the process of bidding on a contract from that company.
Fortunately, avoiding most of these gaffes can be pretty simple. Rather than worry about whether a gift is appropriate, why not just call up the client and ask? While it might remove an element of surprise in gift giving that first time, it'll certainly make gift giving much easier in the future.
