An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Gift Giving
Why You Should Model Your Start-up After Holidays
So I have to be honest with you here.
If there is one company on the planet that I would want to work for above any other (other than, you know, my own company) it is probably Frog Design.
I mean, these guys are just fucking awesome. Seriously. The stuff they do is totally bad-ass. I love it. I love everything about it.
If you’ve never seen the movie Objectified, I would strongly recommend watching it. It’s all about the design and manufacture of objects, and Frog Design is one of the leading firms in the world in this area.
Anyways, I was scouring their website one day when I came across this article on their blog:
A Designer’s Guide to Gift Giving
It is a beautifully written article about how to give gifts like a designer. I thought it was insightful, touching, and useful.
But naturally, that’s not enough for me — I thought, how can I re-purpose this for my own life?
And I realized that any successful company is really just following this guide: it is “gift giving” to its customers — for money.
But the principles still apply.
So here’s An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Gift Giving:
Fill an Unknown Need
The author of the original article makes a point that you don’t want the interchange to feel transactional — you want it to feel like you are giving your customers the gift of something they didn’t know they had before.
“Identifying an unknown need requires curiosity and empathy — just like design research.”
If you want to fill an unknown need, you need to study your customers. You need to find out what makes them tick, what pisses them off, and where they spend their time. If you can truly understand them at their very core, filling an unknown need won’t seem like such a tall task.
“What do they value? Why? Look for patterns in the stuff they buy or own — what are they not getting for themselves? What will their experience be like once they have this gift? Can you imagine and feel how enriched their life will be once they have it?”
Find out what your customers want, and give it to them. Give it to them gracefully and with a smile. Make their lives feel enriched because you have graced them with this amazing product. Give them something they won’t be able to image their lives without.
Giving a gift like that is no small task.
This is the most difficult principle to fulfill, but entirely worth the effort. If you’re finding this one impossible, fear not, they get easier.
Give a High-Quality, Functional Gift
Giving your customers a high-quality, functional product is critical to your success as a business, and to your retention of them as customers. If you are trying to fill their unknown needs with something that isn’t high-quality and functional, chances are they won’t come back — they will find a similar product that is better.
Giving a high-quality gift that performs an important function is also incredibly powerful.
Understanding the power of giving your customers something they will love, cherish, and want to use everyday is an amazing thing. It is empowering, and requires great responsibility.
When you give someone something they proceed to use everyday, they will think of you each time. If you can fill this niche, your customers will be hooked for life.
Give a Beautiful, Unique Gift
Customers will want something that fills their needs and is highly functional, but if you want to take it to a whole other level, give them something that is beautiful, easy and fun to use, and is truly unique to them.
But its beauty isn’t merely its physical aesthetic: the more you write with a fountain pen, the more the nib that regulates the flow of ink conforms to your specific writing angle and pressure. The effect is that your pen becomes truly personalized.
As a pen becomes truly personalized with wear, so too can your product. Give your customers a product that turns from need-filling-highly-functional into Becky’s product, James’s product, Arthur’s product.
It’s important to take your customer into consideration with this however — if it is going to be Becky’s product, Becky needs to love it. Aesthetics, design, UX and UI are all critical to the success and retention of a product.
Be sure to acknowledge their preferences before imposing yours, or do some research to see whether other people objectively agree.
But at the end of the day, take some risks. It’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Don’t jump off the deep end here, but staying ultra conservative doesn’t “Wow!” people. You’re going for the big sell here, not business casual.
In any case, take risks. It’s better than being overly conservative.
Give a Gift That Does Good
Now you’re hitting the Holy Grail of products — something that fills an unknown need, something that is highly functional, something that is truly unique, and something that does good — there are few of these products, but when you see them, they grab you.
Give a gift that does good for the planet, good for the neighbourhood, good for the community, good for the body, good for the mind, good for the soul, or simply good in general.
TOMS or Ten Trees are great examples of this — they sell great products that give back. People are willing to jump on board a product that gives back even without the first 3 aspects — imagine if you can give your customers all 4.
The big point to drive home here is that both you and your customer should feel good for having purchased it.
If all else fails, give a gift that is socially responsible, sustainable, or creates social impact. At minimum, both you and your giftee should feel good about making that kind of contribution.
Tell a Meaningful Story
No great product lives in a vacuum — they are come with great stories. Think of Steve Jobs pitching the iPhone. Think of the first Windows computer. Think of the first AirBnB sale. All great stories.
When you pitch a product to a client, investor, board member, judge, mentor, or even your own mother, begin with a story. Set the stage. Give it some context.
A gift without a story is like a punch line without a joke. It’s absolutely essential that you say something about your gift. Provide context.
Weave a tale that combines your customer and their needs with your empathy for their pain. Incorporate the journey of development and progress you’ve gone through to create for them a need-filling, high quality, functional, personalized, good-for-the-world product. And finally, tell them why they should incorporate their story with your own.
Tell your “giftee” why you got it for them, how you found it, how it made you feel when you saw it. And tell them before they open it so there is anticipation. If you only fulfill one of these 5 principles, let it be this one.
Realize that the story is everything. People don’t buy a car for the gas mileage, engine power, interior decoration, cost, color or transportation efficiency — they buy it for the story.
Great products come with great stories.
So when you’re creating “gifts” for your customers, keep these five principles in mind: fill an unknown need, create a high-quality, functional product, one that can be personalized, one that does good, and let your product tell a story.
Huge thanks to Frog Design for letting me blatantly rip-off your article for my own selfish purposes. Also, for generally just being awesome.
