Unemployed and Starting a Gift Basket Business
Penny asks:
“I’ve just lost my job and want to start a gift basket business. I have a mortgage to pay and children to feed. Tell me how to get up and running quickly.”
No matter how much a business wants to push their fee-based books and materials on you, it would be cruel of that business owner, including me, to encourage you to start a business in your present circumstances.
The decision to make and sell gift baskets is best done when you have access to monies not set aside for food, clothing, and shelter, especially where the well being of families is concerned.
This business requires products, equipment, and training to ensure that your gift baskets sell steadily and at the highest possible profit.
Starting your business now will be frustrating and unwise. Investment money, concentration, and persistence are required to succeed. You’ll find more information about the traits of highly-successful gift basket designers in the frequently-asked questions section of GiftBasketBusiness.com.
When you’re truly ready, financially and otherwise, the gift basket industry will be here for you.
Can I Get Customers Through a Mailing List?
Samantha asks:
“I bought a mailing list of corporate names and addresses, and I sent all of them a letter and my business card to order my gift baskets. It cost me a lot of money, and none of them ordered. I don’t know what to do now.”
I’ve spoken with other designers who, over the years, have had the same negative results. It happens for one main reason: people who don’t know you and don’t have any connection to you treat your mail like junk and feel no obligation to buy.
I thought about using this same route to build my business back in 1990, but the cost to rent a mailing list was too much for my budget, so I started treating the people in business that I know as if they were already customers.
These people have been mentioned in the past in my newsletters and on the Gift Basket Business blog: my doctor, insurance agent, accountant, bank manager, dog’s veterinarian, and others who already knew me. Getting them to buy was easier than asking strangers to become buyers.
I developed a group of letters, which are available here, to contact them, and through those letters, business grew steadily.
This is one of the major growth areas that stop many of us from succeeding and why designers in the Golden Basket Club get full doses of training in this area and watch their sales increase every month.
Use my example as one to create your own dynamic business.
