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Need Advice on Business

ThatWebGuy

TF Buzz
I started a Corporate Gifting Business 2 years back. I am facing difficulty in reaching out to new clients. Since I am in corporate gifting my customers are usually companies with employee count around 50 -100 minimum. I have tried cold emailing and direct messaging. Order flow has drastically reduced this year. What am I doing wrong or where am I lacking?

This reduced order is making me feel lost.

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated

Thank you
 
Tell us more about your business.

1. What kind of gifts do you offer -
Products with custom branding, assorted chocolate hampers, accessories kit?

2. What are your margins right now? How willing are you to cut into your margins, and by how much? This will give us a headroom to negotiate deals.

3. How's the corporate gifting industry performing in general? Are corporates reducing budget, or are they simply choosing a different provider than you?

4. How do your existing clients rate your products and services in the past 2 years?
 
I started a Corporate Gifting Business 2 years back. I am facing difficulty in reaching out to new clients. Since I am in corporate gifting my customers are usually companies with employee count around 50 -100 minimum. I have tried cold emailing and direct messaging. Order flow has drastically reduced this year. What am I doing wrong or where am I lacking?

This reduced order is making me feel lost.

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated

Thank you
You should elaborate the details @Batman has asked .

And Exact nature of your business or just showing pictures of your products will give us more clarity on your business only after that tfcians will be able to add their input.
 
You should elaborate the details @Batman has asked .

And Exact nature of your business or just showing pictures of your products will give us more clarity on your business only after that tfcians will be able to add their input.
Answer everything that has been asked and let us know your website.
Some more questions
1. To whom do you DM/send emails?
2.
Order flow has drastically reduced this year.
What is your first intuition on this?
3.
This reduced order is making me feel lost.
For how long have you been getting low orders, give us a view of your current MoM scale to previous MoM growth
 
1. What kind of gifts do you offer -
The products I offer are usually customized apparel like T-shirts, Shirts, hoodies, raincoats, caps with printing or embroidery, Coffee Mugs, Drinkwares, and diaries. Along with this, I supply uniforms to Industries and educational institutions. The apparel segment contributes almost 60% of the revenue.

2.What are your margins right now? How willing are you to cut into your margins, and by how much? This will give us a headroom to negotiate deals.
In apparel, it's around 12- 20% depending on the size of the order
In drinkware and stationary roughly 30 - 50%
Since we are a B2B business and work on bulk orders like a MOQ of 100 pcs in apparel and 50 pcs in drinkware and stationery. These are Gross margins but can let go 2-5 depending on segments and order qty.
3. How's the corporate gifting industry performing in general? Are corporates reducing budget, or are they simply choosing a different provider than you?
In recent years this industry has become very saturated. Many new entrants have entered into this industry. Those who had the network earlier are doing well. Post Covid companies have reduced their budget, especially the small and medium ones. The big companies are difficult to reach as they have their existing vendors. I haven't figured out a way to reach them directly. I supply companies like LinkedIn, Tech Mahindra etc but through a third-party vendor. Since I started this business I have retained 90% of my clients and they seem to be happy with my services. The ones I lost are purely based on pricing as they wanted something at a price that they paid 4-5 years back and they were not ready to increase their budget and I didn't want to offer them a inferior quality product. They are still in touch even do frequent inquiries some orders get converted some don't.

4. How do your existing clients rate your products and services in the past 2 years?
As stated earlier, I have retained 90% of my existing clients and they are quite happy with my services. I usually lose clients on budget issues.

5. To whom do you DM/send emails?
Usually HR's, Managers, and Sometimes even the founders, co-founders, and directors. Most read the message and don't respond. Need a suggestion on this like whom should I approach and whom I do not.

6. For how long have you been getting low orders, give us a view of your current MoM scale to previous MoM growth
Orders have been since March of this year. In January and February, we did better than expected. March - June orders have been reduced by almost 50% if you compare on a QonQ basis. Old client's orders are steady and I know which company orders in which month but in the last 3 months we have not been able to get a single new client. I am not able to figure out what is wrong on my part.

Thank you for asking me these questions. If there is any other information you need to ask please do so.
I am looking forward to your suggestions for approaching and acquiring new clients. What kind of advertising techniques should I approach?
What am I doing wrong here?
Also, a suggestion on pricing strategy would be helpful.
 
Thank you for sharing. I have read your answers.

Prima facie, the budget issue is real. I have been part of public listed corporates where budget shouldn't have been an issue for employee perks, but it is. We used to get Wildcraft bags and Nike/Adidas jackets etc. (And the latest iPhone Pro in the annual competition each year). But it got changed from Wildcraft -> Local manufacturer, and iPhone Pro -> 10/20k vouchers.
Budget cuts are real. Corporates don't want to gift low quality items. But can't find a way to escape that, and you may have to work around that.

I will get back to you with a detailed response early next week.
 
Thank you for sharing. I have read your answers.

Prima facie, the budget issue is real. I have been part of public listed corporates where budget shouldn't have been an issue for employee perks, but it is. We used to get Wildcraft bags and Nike/Adidas jackets etc. (And the latest iPhone Pro in the annual competition each year). But it got changed from Wildcraft -> Local manufacturer, and iPhone Pro -> 10/20k vouchers.
Budget cuts are real. Corporates don't want to gift low quality items. But can't find a way to escape that, and you may have to work around that.

I will get back to you with a detailed response early next week.
Thank you. Will be eagerly waiting for your response.
 
I can give a few suggestions based on my experience and I am sure Batman is pro in this game as he sounds.
Usually HR's, Managers, and Sometimes even the founders, co-founders, and directors. Most read the message and don't respond. Need a suggestion on this like whom should I approach and whom I do not.
Apart from them please send a cold email to the Indirect Procurement teams on LinkedIn or via mail with your offerings and base quotation so that they can compare them with the existing vendor's quotation.
On unique value proposition:
Create various segments like Combo boxes for Interns/New Joinee, Farewell gifts, Hackathons, Ready made gift hampers for various occasions so that one wouldn't put much effort into making these decisions + with this combo you can give better pricing to SKUs.
 
I can give a few suggestions based on my experience and I am sure Batman is pro in this game as he sounds.

Apart from them please send a cold email to the Indirect Procurement teams on LinkedIn or via mail with your offerings and base quotation so that they can compare them with the existing vendor's quotation.
On unique value proposition:
Create various segments like Combo boxes for Interns/New Joinee, Farewell gifts, Hackathons, Ready made gift hampers for various occasions so that one wouldn't put much effort into making these decisions + with this combo you can give better pricing to SKUs.
I have one very naive question is there any way to get the mail IDs of the procurement team?
 
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Below is based on my experience and I am not an expert.

I think mncs or well funded start ups will be the major target audience. For these org, I doubt procurement team has a lot of say in these decisions as is not a standard product which you can evaluate based on price. The office head or department head should be your target.

What kind of marketing do you do? Do you send samples to prospective clients? If you do, what’s the conversion rate?
 
Thank you. Will be eagerly waiting for your response.
Hey. I'm back home, but I will need some more time to get answers for you. For context, I am speaking with friends in corporate to get a better understanding. They can confirm that budget cuts have been everywhere.
 
I started a Corporate Gifting Business 2 years back. I am facing difficulty in reaching out to new clients. Since I am in corporate gifting my customers are usually companies with employee count around 50 -100 minimum. I have tried cold emailing and direct messaging. Order flow has drastically reduced this year. What am I doing wrong or where am I lacking?

This reduced order is making me feel lost.

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated

Thank you
I would make 4 suggestions for the time being basis the inputs and info provided by you for your business:

1. If you are solely into B2B then do some working around for B2C offerings as well. No doubt overheads might shoot up but it shall be compensated with higher mark ups and more viability (to be read as more word of mouth). The most inexpensive way to go about it is to start with Instagram and then later jump in to dedicated D2C website this vertical scales.

2. With respect to getting contact details of procurement team you can get your business listed on Indiamart, TradeIndia, JustDial, etc. Especially Indiamart as the reach you’ll get to approach SME’s (even big corporates at times) procurement team is unparalleled. Contact details mentioned there are generally that of decision makers. No doubt blank enquiry flow is more but it’s still a good avenue.

3. Apart from DM’s and online cold calls do you make direct cold calling visits as well? As cliche as it might sound it’s still one of the best modes IMHO. People have a tendency to do business with people with whom they have met or have known (psychological trust factor). You can start with simply targeting one or two nearest metropolis and focusing on them starting with Big Corporates and then narrowing to SME’s (frequency and duration of visits can be worked around basis your available time from operations, alternatively somebody from your team can spearhead this if you can’t spare time)

4. Become a member of a local (preferably regional) chamber of commerce and diligently attend their meetings, convocations, seminars, etc. This is probably the option with the most ROI since Industry Stalwarts both local and regional regularly come in these events. These events also act on a parallel basis as a networking event and their membership charges are nominal as well. Alternatively private networking groups such as BNI also works wonders for some business types when it comes for new business development and visibility.
 
Do you have a website? If yes can you share.. Also look at participating in shows and mela both corporate kids like seminars and Festivals. there are companies which do catch a eye.
 
Do you have a website? If yes can you share.. Also look at participating in shows and mela both corporate kids like seminars and Festivals. there are companies which do catch a eye.
Yes I have a website. Currently it's undergoing redevelopment. Will share once it's ready.
Thank you for your response.
 
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