Selling gift certificates to businesses in large quantities

[Perassolforem]

Hi all,

Soon will be the two year anniversary of opening my business. I figure this will be a good selling point to businesses in my area who want to purchase bulk gift certificates for their employees.

Soooo..... I was planning on offering my soon to be regular christmas special of buy 6 get one free. But... if they buy a larger amount for example... if they buy at least 25... they can get a 25% discount. If they buy 50 they get 30% off and if they buy 100 or more, they will save 40%. They would also have to purchase them by a certain date... say December 8th.

My regular rates by that time will be 30, 50, and 70. I would offer any certificate they want.

Also... when is the best time to start sending out letters to these companies? I was thinking mid to late October. Todd thought perhaps around Thanksgiving.

Because my mom is the one who answers the phone the majority of the time, I was thinking of having her be my "bulk gift certificate specialist." That way, when these people call to talk to someone, they will ask for her in particular.

Please, if you have experience in selling gift certs this way, please chime in!!

Thanks in advance,

Christine

 

[Sandy V]

christine, it sounds like a great idea.

i tried doing this last year in late october / early november. i sent out many packages and tried to make it easy on the companies.

with all of the packages i sent out, i got one response, and that company bought 4 certificates - not really the amount i was hoping for, but hey, it was 4 more than i had, right?

anyway, i'm interested to see your success with this project! my thought process was to send early enough that the HR dept or whomever could hear from me while they were planning their holiday budget. i'm assuming i hit them too early.

good luck!
amanda