5 valuable tips on picking gifts for your business partners

Business gifts, their meaning and potential

The business gift market is growing

Current statistics about the business gift market show that by 2027 the field will be worth 326 billion dollars, growing at a CAGR of 13.2%. The market includes a wide range of products—from chocolate, experiences, to jewellery, personalised gifts, and merchandise—for executives, employees, business partners, and clients. If you’re a stickler for numbers and statistics, you can read them here or here. The strong growth is a testament to how much significance businesses ascribe to gifting.

Significance of business gifts, rational approach

Businesses are aware of the value of strong, lasting, happy relationships. The idea behind business gifts is to show appreciation to employees, clients, colleagues, partners, and customers; to promote and strengthen business and other relationships and trust; and to improve one’s reputation and visibility. In today’s competitive world of business, the value of trust and strong partnerships is all the more important as a tool to achieve one’s goals. Giving a gift to one’s business partner is a deliberate attempt to become closer, an act of human and business rationality.

Common opportunities for giving business gifts 

The corpo and stat speak lists the most common opportunities and reasons for giving business gifts as follows: relationship management, celebrations, engagement and employee retention, job commencement, employee rewards and appreciation, conferences, fairs, and exhibitions, customer satisfaction, potential customer generation, client onboarding, holidays, sales promotion, research and brand promotion.

Practical benefits of business gifts

Although it’s well known how important business gifts are, perhaps it would be useful if we summarised their specific benefits:

• Strengthening the brand’s identity. If a business takes its image into account when choosing business gifts, it might very well end up strengthening it.

• Increasing trust, loyalty, and engagement. Business gifts strengthen trust, resulting in a greater sense of loyalty, and the greater sense of loyalty results in more engaged cooperation. 

• Forming and strengthening relationships. Gifts for business partners strengthen your emotional connection, invoking reciprocity and good will.

• Celebrating achievements, milestones, and business anniversaries. Giving gifts is a way to celebrate milestones and anniversaries and make them more memorable. These can include starting a project, hitting its milestones, successfully completing it, founding or any other business anniversary, important anniversaries of the founders, annual end-of-the-year thank-you gifts, etc.

• Improving the business’ reputation and recognition. A great gift can stick in your partners’ mind and help improve your business’ reputation. It can also make sure your partners will think of your business when an important opportunity presents itself. 

• Compensating for the personal absence of foreign partners. Cooperating across continents is quite common in the modern world. Sending your foreign partner a gift can at least partially compensate for this lack of personal presence.

• Humanising the business. A good, personal gift fosters relationships that are much more personal (extending beyond business structures). It’s people that make or break a business, and the human aspect is vital to any successful entrepreneurship. 

1. The gift’s appeal and the idea behind it

If your gift is to make an impression, you have to set yourself apart from the people and businesses that came before you. It may be a unique product or interesting idea that catches your eye. Draw inspiration from stories, history, and culture. You can also rely on the story behind the product brand or what made you choose the gift and why.

2. Familiarisation and personal approach

In a 2006 interview for the New York Times in 2006, Eugene H. Fram, a marketing professor at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, said: "Customers are more likely to remember unique gifts, especially those which show them you’re familiar with what they do and care about.”

First, get to know your partner - what their habits and interests are, what environment and culture they live in. And then take a look at what the market offers. It’s always better to pick a gift which takes into account the personal preferences of the person you’re giving it to. The more time and attention you devote to the gift, the more valuable the final result will be.

3. Price and quality crafted gifts

There are no rules regarding the right price of your gifts. Once you find your ideal gift, you can decide whether or not you want to pay for it. There are many luxury gifts to be bought on a limited or big budget. Crafted gifts are a good way to combine exclusivity and value. Luxury objects made by master craftsmen can be quite pricy, but they’re also exclusive, durable, and offer a good price-to-quality ratio.

4. Business ethics and foreign partners

When picking a gift, you should adhere to business ethics in order not to damage the relationship with your partner. Consider the person you’re giving the gift to, their character, and the depth of your relationship. If you don’t really know them all that well, choose more general gifts; on the other hand, if you know them rather well, you can pick a more personal gift.

This holds especially true in case of foreign partners. It’s a good idea to get to know their culture and customs and adjust your gift accordingly, or even to draw inspiration from the country’s history and tradition when picking the gift in the first place. For example, a client once commissioned a gift for their distinguished business partner - a special bespoke bouquet of flowers which were culturally meaningful in the partner’s country. Pay special attention to the rules of gift giving in Asian countries - Japan, India, or China. A future article will delve into the traditions of these countries.

5. Grace, elegance, and timelessness

When picking a gift for your business partners, grace and elegance beat ostentatiousness every single time. And timelessness outmatches any fashion trend.

There are many interesting things to consider when giving business gifts and gifts for high-value business partners. We’ll come back to this topic in the future.