When choosing holiday corporate gifts for your clients, vendors, and associates at other companies, there is some etiquette involved. You need to make sure your gifts are chosen with care to both show the recipient you appreciate and understand them.

For example, if you get food for your corporate holiday gift baskets, don’t get pork for a Jewish holiday, beef for a Hindus Holiday, or any kind of meat or animal products for vegetarians. Don’t get sports-themed corporate holiday gift baskets for people who don’t like sports, or other holiday corporate gifts like golf tools for non-golfers, tickets to events that the recipients aren’t interested in, or events that take place more than two hours away. Get holiday corporate gifts that are suitable, useful, and appropriate.

If you’re purchasing a gift basket, make sure the theme and sentiment is appropriate for the occasion. Some holidays observed by other countries and religions may not be suitable for giving or receiving holiday gifts. If you’re not sure, check online to see if gifts are acceptable, and if so, what kind.

When you get ready to give your gift, make sure the company doesn’t have a policy about accepting holiday gifts. Some companies, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations don’t allow their employees to receive holiday corporate gifts, let alone general “swag” given throughout the rest of the year. If you’re not sure, call someone from the human resources or marketing department before you send your gifts.

If you’re giving holiday corporate gifts to an individual, you should have already taken the time to get to know the person first. Try to find out what their hobbies and interests are, or what state they grew up in. Sometimes you can find this information on Facebook or the company website, sometimes you just need to get to know the person first. If you can’t find any of this information, try to make your holiday corporate gifts as generic as possible, so as to avoid any of the problems we discussed above.

If you’re sending any holiday corporate gifts to a company rather than a single person, try to get something that many people can enjoy, rather than one single person. Popcorn, mixed nuts, candy, and other bulk food items can make great holiday corporate gifts. But things like two tickets to a theatre performance for a company of 20 people might not go over so well.

You can order your holiday corporate gifts through a company located in the recipient’s home town and have it delivered, you can order them from a store in your own city, or even order your corporate gift basket online.

It’s also a good idea to start planning and ordering your holiday corporate gifts in the summer, when prices may be a little lower, rather than waiting until the late fall, when the rush is on, demand is high, and prices have gone up. Just do some basic research online with the various holiday corporate gifts companies and request some catalogs.

Rather than buying the same gift for everyone, put people in groups, VIPs, long-term customers, new customers, and wish list customers. (Or just make a list of who’s naughty, who’s nice, and who pays on time.) Assign a maximum dollar amount for each recipient in each group for budgetary purposes, start planning on the appropriate gifts (see the paragraph on not buying certain food items for specific groups), and check with the vendors for lead time, delivery time, and availability. Then just start sending.

When you’re all done, make sure you get a little something special for yourself. You earned it!

- The Ovate Software Team