Emotional Merchandise

Hello lovers of the blogosphere, I trust that in your quest for knowledge you feel slightly more informed now than you were when you woke up. Even if it's just that you now know what some stranger in Brazil fed her cat this morning - she felt the need to share and you, like the unsuspecting muppet that you are, chose to read all about it.

Something interesting happened in a meeting recently and I wanted to share it with all of you. When discussing promotional merchandise, the client in question had a wonderful slip of the tongue and referred to it as 'emotional merchandise' by mistake.

At first we laughed, but then it dawned on both of us that this really was a much more accurate description than we first thought. I mean think about it - when you give someone a gift at a trade show - even a.....and I'm going to use the P word here.....pen, that person will have an emotional response, and the chances are that it will be a positive one. After all, everyone loves a freebie, even if the only thing to happen afterwards is that they take it home, give it to their kids and then forget all about it.

AHAAAAAAA!!!!!!! So there's the opportunity you missed. See what if you could take that positive response and really capitalise on it? What does your gift do for you then?

There are a number of ways to do this. The first, and most obvious course of action is to NOT hand out some piece of crap to everyone who passes by. It cheapens your brand, stretches your budget and wastes your time, and if you're not sure how any of that happens, feel free to read some of the archives in this blog - frankly you should be doing that anyway, I am giving you gold here and I'm not even charging for it. You'd think by now I would have been offered some sort of book deal but I still live in hope. Incidentally, if you are a publisher looking for the musings of a salesman with a chip on his shoulder which spurns him into action, then I'm your man.

Back to the point. Think about who your customer is - what he or she thinks about, how they work, what drives them, how they relate to you. Build a profile of your ideal customer and you'll be amazed at how easy it is to come up with the right ideas, but we'll talk more about that in another episode.

One other way to build on that response is to offer a follow up gift, so if you did resort to giving them a pen, perhaps you could send them a pad, or a highlighter, or a pen pot. This way you get to reignite that little spark you created when you gave them that first gift.

Now obviously you don't want to go giving this out to everyone, but if you've planned things properly, you will have built up a database of those people with whom you would like to follow up, and it's not going to be those people that just grabbed a pen and ran!

Of course you could save money here by simply asking them how they're enjoying their gift when you call them. A little jog of the memory can go a long way into developing a relationship with a new customer.

But let's put strategy aside and talk about how you choose that all important gift in the first place. It's easier than you think. Obviously the first thing to do is put down all of those catalogues, pick up the phone and call me. Seriously - those books are not helping you at all, just bin them. Just put my phone number on a Post It Note, attach it to your monitor and free up some space on your shelves.

What you're looking for is YOUR emotional response. When you receive a sample or look at an image of a product that's been emailed to you, take a moment of personal reflection and think about how it made you feel. If you were excited by it, there's a very strong chance your potential customers will feel the same, and you should shortlist it immediately. If you simply said "Yeah, that's quite good" then chuck it - if you can't hand over a gift with genuine enthusiasm, then the recipient will take it with the same lacklustre response. The result? Apathy on both sides and no chance of a decent follow up conversation, so what was the point of that?

Remember, ultimately you need to be USING the gifts that you give in order to generate more business. Anything less than that is a giveaway - it's pointless and costly, and I'm here to make sure you avoid it.

Hope that's made you feel better - have a good week.