6/10 – Great concepts in the book to help separate you from the pack and be known as a great gift giver.  The book is short and compact and offers stories about the authors experience in gifting and how it’s improved his business. The framework of the book is a bit repetitive but offers good insights.

Part I – The Power of Giving

• The Gift is a symbol of the relationship – Gift giving and those “little touches” commemorate not just certain events, but people, places, and things that are important to us.  In essence, they become the symbols of the value you place on the relationship.
• Reciprocity – gifting should be more than a tit for tat transaction.  Need to apply radical generosity where you’re constantly reaching out to the key contacts and use a playbook that no one else is doing to separate yourself from the pack.  
  • If you a gift after a referral, it makes it transactional.  Plus, it’ll place a value on the business that was provided ($100K client and rewarded with a $100 gift card doesn’t equate).
• Think about Return on Relationships (ROR) – you get so much more by investing in your relationships than what you put in!

Part II – The Relationship Roadmap

• Who to Give to?
  • Who has helped you get to where you are today?
  • Who will help you get to where you want to go tomorrow?
  • Balance out the current value and lifetime value.
• Happy employees have happy families – ensuring that you take care of your employees with first class / Ritz Carlton gifts and their families (spouses, children, etc.)
• Ensure to take care of their inner circle – significant others, kids, assistants, pets, etc.!
  • Make them heroes to their kids.

Part III – Gifting Guidelines

• Personalization: turns an ordinary gift into an extraordinary one.
  • When you make a gift all about you, it’s not a gift.  Gifts are meant to be about the recipient.  Personalize the gift.  Put their name or their spouses on the item.
• Best in Class:  Always ask yourself: “What can we buy that’s best in class that is within our budget?” 
  • “What’s the most I can do?”
• Unique: Your gifts should not be something that you can find in stores (look for locally sourced items).
  • A great gift is inconvenient/difficult for someone to obtain.  Old school things are the best gifts. 
  • Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing!  Don’t do digital.  Go handwritten.   Handwritten notes on very nice paper can be effective as a gift card or token gift.
  • Stay away from nuts, chocolate, food/fruit baskets, gift cards from Amazon/Starbucks, etc.
• Practical:  Don’t gift junk – gift something they can use and enjoy frequently – even more so when it’s an item that they wouldn’t ordinarily buy for themselves.
  • Avoid gifting artifacts (things that people would grab if their house is on fire). Trinkets/tokens that are likely cheap and would be trashed later.
• Visible: Pick something that will be used frequently and find the most exquisite one of its kind that you can afford to gift.
• Lasting:  Find something that will make a lasting impression and woven into their every day life
  • Don’t provide experiences (sporting events or dinners) that are only going to last a few hours or days.  Think about something that will be memorialized or used frequently.
  • Gifts that will be used in social settings are the best bet – things for the kitchen.
• Universal: Pick a safe bet that’s good for any relationship. 
  • Examples – leather laptop bag,s toiletry bags, golfers accessories, portfolio, over the ear headphones, tumblers, or custom fitted clothes.
• Planned Randomness: ensure you know when you’ll gift people in a 12 month period.  Need to plan to gift for 3+ years.
• Continuity: does yougift build up upon itself (leather portfolio, then journal, etc.
  • Check in with your contacts (text, call, email, mail, etc.) frequently. 
• Often: give as much as you can afford; best to give on fewer occasions but with more extraordinary gifts.  Rule of thumb – send one gift every other month or quarterly.
• When to send?   Be unexpected – Avoid Thanksgiving and Christmas and ABC (Anniversary, Birthday, and Christmas).
  • Everyone gifts during these times and makes the gifts transactional and more importantly, you’re blending in with everyone else.
  • Timing is important – you want to surprise and delight your recipients!
  • Use Planned Randomness – Valentines day, Memorial Day, 4^th of July, and Labor Day. 

BONUS – Worst Gifts to Give to People

1. Imported Trinkets – No one wants cheap stuff from China cluttering up their home or office. If you want to be “green” don’t give things that will end up in the landfill in a few weeks.
2. Branded Merchandise – The gift should be all about the recipient, not about the brand and giver. If you put your logo on it, it is a promotional item and marketing tool, not a gift. Don’t deface and devalue a great gift with your brand.
3. Easily Accessible – If you can go to your local Walmart and Amazon to purchase a product, it is not likely to make someone feel VIP and special. Choose items that are best in class and are a bit rare.
4. Gift Cards – Nothing says, “I didn’t care about you enough to put thought and effort into getting you an actual gift” quite like a gift card.
5. Apple – Tech is always hot and Apple is a common choice but that is part of the problem. It is overdone. Everyone does it which makes it lack uniqueness. Plus it has a limited shelf life in many cases as the new version comes out every 4-6 months.
6. Food – When you factor in taste preferences, special dietary concerns, and food allergies, consumables are not the most effective gift selections. Plus food has a high Cost Per Impression (CPI). You get one impression as it is gone in hours or at the most days.
7. Alcohol – Much like food, alcohol is also a risky gift. People have a wide variety of preferences in alcohol, and some people don’t drink at all or are recovering alcoholics.
8. Plants – Similar to food in that you get a few days or weeks of impressions out of them at best and you don’t know someone’s style and decorating preference in many cases so the investment is often wasted.
9. Apparel – There are rare times when apparel works well but is typically over gifted. It is often done with average quality with the same polo, jacket, or hat being given over and over again. And it is usually branded with a logo which means it is likely to get donated to Goodwill and is a wasted investment.
10. Money – Yes it is important and needed by all of us but at a certain level it becomes a horrible motivator and an even worse way to appreciate people over the long term. All the research on the planet has pointed to the fact that people want to feel acknowledged and genuinely appreciated by their company and in general by those around them. Money does not solve that need or problem.