Corporate Premiums & Incentives – the golf shirts, mugs, pens and other premiums you use to reward staff and encourage customer loyalty – are often thought to be “expendable” during tough times. Over the next year organizations may reduce or eliminate promotional product budgets.
Smart companies don’t stop buying premiums and incentives – they realize that keeping customers and staff happy is even more important. Recent studies indicate “stability” is an employee’s number one priority. Show your organizational stability by continuing to recognize and reward employees. In tough economic times you must stay in touch with loyal customers and encourage new business. You may not be able to grow your sales, but you can add new customers and keep the existing ones happy.
But how do you accomplish this if budgets are being reduced? Smart companies don’t stop buying premiums and incentives, the buy smarter. Over the coming weeks I will offer 4 Smart Buying Tips and explain how to utilize them. Here is a teaser with Tip #1. The rest will follow shortly.
Smart Buying Tip #1: Just in Time Inventory. While the automotive industry is not the gold standard for business success right now, they did adopt a great sourcing strategy in the late 1990s: Just in Time Inventory. They decided that to build a car you didn’t need to have warehouses full of engines, wheels and dashboards. You could order those things on an as-needed basis to meet your daily factory requirements.
If you are currently warehousing a lot of pre-produced premiums and incentives (golf shirts with your logo; mugs; pens) you should be asking yourself why? Most of the brands and manufacturers of those items offer just in time inventory. You will have to commit to a minimum order (a reasonable 36 or 72 pieces) but the inventory sits in their facility not yours. And, if you shop really smartly, you can find many brands and products that do offer single unit ordering.