When I have people referring paying clients to me, I reward each one of them a gift card for their referral. Unless I know of a specific “desire”, I will typically give that person r family a Visa or MasterCard gift card (not to be confused with a credit card!!). For many of you this Christmas has you wanting to give that special gift. The only problem is – you have no idea on earth what that special gift is or could be. In desperation or to avoid desperation – you buy them a gift card.
Unfortunately, it may not be what they wanted. You know, grandma really does not shop at Abercrombie and Fitch and has not in years. What is she going to do with that card? Honestly, my mother does not go to Best Buy or Fry’s often (if ever) and a gift card there would be wasted. Believe it or not, but many out there do not use iTunes and do not desire a gift card. (See the statistics at the bottom of this article)
Do you know what still works when you do not know what to buy for that special one? CASH! That’s right, cash works just about everywhere. In fact, I can not think of a place that will not use cash.
As I think about it, I can not remember anyone ever complaining about the cash gift they received. Maybe you have, but cash typically crosses generational, gender, and ________ (whatever, you fill in the blank) lines.
Just like I encourage in your monthly spending – USE CASH! It is really magic.
Christmas is just a few days away. I hope you are ticking to your plan!
Here are a few gift card statistics from a recent Fortune Magazine article (12/6/2010):
- Merchant Issued Gift Cards (total value estimate): $73 billion
- Sales of gift cards from supermarket and drugstore kiosks: 10% or $7.3 million
- Percentage retailers earn form kiosk sales of gift cards: 74%-81%
- **72% of consumers spend more than the card’s value – 56% more on average!
- You can sell your unwanted/unneeded gift card for about 80% of the card’s value!
