A somewhat bold statement, and it is only my opinion. We will all have seen Christmas cards and gifts, for sale in the shops for about 6 weeks by now. At Solar Solve we are starting to bring into play our Christmas procedures to ensure everything runs smoothly as we approach the holiday season and work through it.
It’s not that difficult having done it for the last 40 years or so. We are well-practiced in what needs to be done. Things have changed though, some of them for the better. I can remember back in the day, selecting our top 5 or top 10 best customers and going out on a shopping expedition to buy some quite expensive and some less expensive ‘Thank You’ gifts, for our contact person at each customers’ office. Whilst they were a genuine token of appreciation on our part, I suppose the gifts could have been construed as bribes, with some observers considering them to be the ‘thin edge of the wedge’.
Thankfully, that is all behind us now and a nice Christmas card is our modern day gesture of appreciation. They eliminate all doubt (about what or what not to buy) and we don’t need to spend a lot of time or money on hunting for gifts anymore.
Personally I always thought that both the giving and receiving of expensive business gifts was embarrassing and very unfair on employees who didn’t receive them. The ending of the practice was a great achievement resulting from the anti-corruption campaigns imposed by many governments globally, over the last couple of decades, in tandem with political correctness.
Like us, I think most businesses did it to fall in line with what was, then, common practice and generally found it to be all rather confusing apart from a few, who did resent it initially. A decade or more later and very few organisations will be spending time sourcing Christmas gifts for customers, I imagine. Or am I wrong? Is Solar Solve living and trading in an environment of naivety?
At the beginning of December we will be posting out our usual couple of hundred Christmas cards, all with a hand written greeting and signed by every employee, including the 3 Directors.
The whole team at Solar Solve appreciates every one of our customers and think that the Christmas and New Year Holiday time is a great opportunity to let them know – personally – with a real Christmas card, sent by Royal Mail – the old way.
Thankfully not everything has changed and we are not alone in this. We receive lots of cards from our stakeholders the same way and they are always greatly appreciated.
