Webinars to Help You Sell Food Gift Programs

Maple Ridge Farms is once again offering webinars to help you prepare for the upcoming holiday season.  These free webinars are a great way to learn new strategies for selling food gifts for the holidays! All webinars are offered live at 11:00 CDT. In short 30 minute sessions you will learn a wealth of information on how to profit from the estimated five billion dollar food gift industry. If you can’t attend, you can always catch an “on demand” version at your convenience .     

The first webinar of the season, “Food Gifts 101” will be offered on August 7th. According to Counselor Magazine and American Express, food gifts are the #1 business gift for the holidays. In this webinar you will discover why businesses purchase food gifts, why marketing food gift programs means increased business for you, why your clients would prefer to buy from you, your position in the marketplace, and the best ways to present food gift programs to your clients.

On August 12th learn which businesses are the “11 Best Prospects for Food Gift Programs.” Last year, distributors sold Maple Ridge Farms food gift programs to approximately 10,000 different businesses.  We reviewed all the orders received over the last 12 months and sorted the buyers into 11 industry types.  After attending this webinar you will know:

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  What types of businesses are the best prospects for food gift programs




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  What types of gifts are popular with different businesses




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  Why businesses purchase food gifts




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  Who you should contact within these companies




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  Why companies would prefer to buy from you, rather than retail or  mail-order competitors




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  How to overcome challenges in selling food gift programs

On August 14th we offer “How to Compete with Direct-Sellers like Harry & David, Hickory Farms, and Mrs. Fields”. Approximately 90% of business food gifts are purchased from mail-order companies, retail stores, and internet merchants instead of from distributors.  These large, direct-selling merchants easily sell over $100 million in "business gifts" annually.  In this short online webinar we will show you three techniques that make it almost impossible for those giant food gift companies to compete with you!

Attend the webinar on August 19th entitled “How to Compete with Big-Box Retailers like Costco, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart and you will learn how to respond if a client says that they can buy it cheaper at Costco or Kmart.  We will show you how to overcome that objection and write the order!

On August 21st discover 6 actions you can take to write more food gift business and increase your 4th quarter sales this year! Attend the webinar entitled “6 Sure-Fire Tips for Writing More Food Gift Business”.

“5 Questions to Shorten your Food Gift Sales Process” will be held on August 26th. By asking your clients these 5 simple questions, you can streamline your sales process and have them giving you their food gift order in no time.

Last, but not least, is our webinar entitled “9 Simple Facts” offered on August 31st. We recently hired a market research firm to interview business gift buyers and determine what factors were most important to them when selecting a source for their holiday food gift program.  In this webinar, we will share the results of this research and how you can use it to write more food gift business.

Mark your calendars and make time to check out our webinars – you’ll be glad you did!  You can view the current schedule and sign up for the live webinars in the Distributors Only section of our website under the Education tab.  (Please contact our Customer Service team if you need the passphrase to access this.)  Check back often; we’ll be adding more webinars in the near future. Can’t make a webinar? No problem, you can view it On-demand, also located in the Distributors Only section of our website under the Education Tab.

“I loved the webinars! They were so helpful when I started out. I wasn’t sure what to do at first and they were so full of information and led me in the right direction…very informative!”

 Pamela B., Ft. Meyers, Florida.

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