Thursday, September 24, 2009

Gift baskets

A friend of mine, who happens to be another stager. Some of you may know her. Jacqueline Forde had a brilliant idea that she shared with me a few months ago. That brilliant idea is to add the service of house warming & thank you gift baskets along with our staging services.
You see, real estate agents are very busy people who deal with very stressed clients on a daily basis, so anything that we can do to make their lives easier also helps us build our businesses!.
Agents want to make a good impression on their clients and word of mouth means a lot in their business, so if they have clients that are impressed with their service they will tell others and that agent will get busy.
An agent that is already offering staging to their clients is obviously interested in making that all important good impression. Enter the gift basket! Good agents always have a gift for their clients after a sale so why not get it from us!
The more details we can take care of, the more the agent will depend on us.
So how do I do this? Well, there are many cheesy gift baskets out there and every one has "been there, done that" at one time or another, and they are readily available. Discerning agents will want to impress with something a bit better than that.
I signed up to sell Everyday Style (signed under Jacqueline actually). For those of you who don't know Everyday Style, well it is one of those home party companies. They offer beautiful home decor and entertaining items. I don't do home parties but I do get a great discount and often free stuff. I create unique and beautiful gift baskets using Everyday Style products.
My favorite gift basket to make is using a dip chiller with one of the dip mixes. I put them in a basket or tin or any other non tacky container, cello wrap it and tie a bamboo dip spoon into the ribbon. It looks great and is very affordable to for any agent. Of course the ideas are limitless and I have many other baskets to choose from.
This, like staging is not like work to me. It allows me another creative outlet and make money at the same time!
If any of you are interested in Everyday Style let me know.
I'll have more ideas on this topic from time to time and welcome any questions.



6 comments:

  1. I love this...you rOcK, Andrea...Thanks for the shout out!!

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  2. great thinking! I was a Realtor for 29 years and was always looking for something cool to give my clients, in the spring, I would wind up a small hose as the basket and use gloves, trowel, seeds etc inside, My clients loved my baskets. I would love to look into Everyday Style. Your the bomb Andrea. Great minds, even greater women.

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  3. C.J. see! You could make those again and offer them to your Realtors. it's a really great idea, i may use it myself after the long cold winter. Thanks!
    Thanks Jacqueline, I'm really happy to see you here & I can't wait to follow your blog.

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  4. Wonderful idea Andrea and with the talent in this group I imagine the baskets are gonna look awesome!

    I have "staged" both family and friends homes in the past before one knew what "staging" was and how popular it would become. I paint murals (can see some of them in my FB profile) and in some of those homes I painted one wall...some as simple as a grapevine up above kitchen cabinets doubled with wine on the counter and a couple of glasses or one could be as detailed as an Italian countryside painted through a faux window. The realtors fell in love with this and my thought is perhaps I could offer this service as a bonus or possibly at a discount to the buyer. What do you all think? Too much?

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  5. Janet, try it out, could be a great source of additional income. But eventually you will be too busy staging to paint murals.

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  6. Another gift idea for realtors to give to their client after the sale is a gift of our redesign service. After we help their client sell their house by our staging work, they move in to a new house, and it's a perfect time to have a redesigner (a.k.a us again) to go in and help them set up their new house.

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