As you move into high gear for the upcoming holidays you may be feeling excitement or anxiety. You may even feel a little scared.

By now you may have gotten so many orders that you wonder if you’ll be able to get them all done in time. Or you may not have gotten any orders and are having that sinking feeling that you’ll be left with cases of gingerbread cookies or cheese shaped like snowmen.

Along with the potential for profits, there is also great potential for stress. Take these ten steps to ensure you emerge from the holiday gift basket season

1. If you don’t have the orders you had hoped for, get busy. Call your old customers, visit the business offices in your community, contact friends and relations who work in corporate environments. Contact the services you use: cleaners, beauty shop, fitness center, church, and so on. Some companies wait until the last minute to decide on their gifts for the holidays.

2. If you’re still buying inventory, order holiday-specific products very sparingly so you don’t get stuck with them in the new year. Then use your green items first for Christmas gift baskets. The red items, if left over, can be used for Valentine gift baskets.

3. Be prepared to refer potential clients to other businesses rather than taking on orders outside of your niche or that exceed more work than you can handle. For last minute out-of-town orders consider referring clients to a designer in the delivery area.

4. Use as many local or nearby sources as possible. Paying high shipping fees to rush an order, or biting your nails while you hope that a shipment arrives in time all add to your anxiety.

5. Take care of your body. Eat sensible foods. Start with breakfast and don’t skip meals. Your body must be strong to withstand the hours and added pressure.

6. Take care of your mind. Avoid getting over-tired. Stop to take a break, a nap or a walk when you begin to feel tired.

7. Enlist the help of your family for decorating your home and doing the family holiday preparation and cooking.

8.  Say “no” to clients who make unreasonable requests and family who make outlandish demands on your time and energy.

9. Make time to laugh, watch a movie and any other stress-relieving activity that will enable you to return to your work rejuvenated.

10. Set a time to end your season and close your business. Even if your business is home based, once you’ve closed your business for the season, stop taking calls and let them go to voice mail.

Make time to be with your friends and family during the holidays. Don’t slip into letting your business rob you of energy and time. This way you’ll be able to prevent undue stress and really enjoy your profits.

When designers think of holiday gift baskets, they usually think of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. But there are 5 good reasons you should promote Thanksgiving gift baskets.

1. Thanksgiving is a nonreligious holiday.

While the other major fall holidays are have religious connections, Thanksgiving does not. Americans think of Thanksgiving primarily as an American holiday, but the truth is that wherever cultures have farmed and gathered crops, they have celebrated the harvest. It is a time to show appreciation for the bounty of the year, to pause from work, and enjoy time with family and friends.

For these reasons, you can assure your clients that Thanksgiving gift baskets won’t offend or clash with religious beliefs. Whether given as business or personal gifts, Thanksgiving gift baskets are welcomed by all.

2. In the USA Thanksgiving occurs the same time every year, the fourth Thursday in November.

Even though the actual date of it changes, Thanksgiving occurs at a consistent time each year. This enables gift-givers and designers to plan ahead for creation and shipping.

3. A wide variety of themes can be given as Thanksgiving gift baskets.

For businesses, your Thanksgiving gift basket can be a snack basket with fall themed products or a sports theme if you know the recipient is an avid football fan.

For personal gifts, your Thanksgiving gift basket can be full of after-dinner treats for the family, a collection of board and card games or a pamper basket for the hostess to enjoy the days following the holiday.

4. Thanksgiving gift baskets are very affordable to create.

Just by using fall-colored packaging and ribbon, you can design dazzling baskets without heavily investing in holiday specific ribbon or packaging. Not one item in your design has to say “Happy Thanksgiving.” You can express this on the gift card instead.

5. The Thanksgiving gift basket will stand out from the other holiday gift baskets.

One Christmas season I delivered a gift basket to an office during the second week of December. Fifteen gift baskets had already been received by this company and were lined up on a long counter. It was tough for any one gift basket to stand out or make an impact on the recipient in this sea of competing designs.

When your clients send a Thanksgiving gift basket, however, it’s likely to be the only one or one of very few. Thus, they will capture the attention and appreciation of the recipient well before the onslaught of the Christmas and other December holiday gift baskets.

As your clients begin placing holiday orders, encourage them to order for Thanksgiving instead of waiting for the more crowded December holidays. They will appreciate getting a jump on the other gift-givers, and you’ll enjoy getting profits into your business sooner.

With the holidays fast approaching you will be asked to make in-person presentations at the offices of potential clients. There are ten steps to giving successful presentations that help ensure that you walk away with the order.

1 Ask questions before you go and use those answers to plan. Be sure you know the budget, occasion and preferences so you can design baskets accordingly.

2. Dress professionally. That first impression will either put your clients at ease or make them uneasy about trusting their gift-giving to you.

3. Take only one to three baskets in the price range requested. Some business owners believe that should take their top-of-the-line showcase baskets in the hope of driving up the sale. But if a client has told you her budget, why step outside of it?

4. Shoot photos of your designs and print them along with descriptions to distribute to the committee.

5. Take charge of the meeting by giving a very brief, but formal introduction to yourself and company background. This is important even if you have personal friends and acquaintances on the committee.

6. Then do your Vanna White thing. Hold each basket up individually, explaining what’s inside and how each item can be used.

7. When you finish showing the baskets, ask for the order. Ask how many they will be needing, the delivery date and contact person for receiving baskets.

8. Get the order prepaid before you begin ordering inventory and creating designs. Have a form ready for them to sign agreeing to the order as discussed, giving their credit card information and the signature of the decision maker. This way your order is prepaid before you leave the office.

If you must make changes to the agreement before they sign, do so as soon as you return to your office. Then fax the agreement back to them for credit card info and signature.

9. If they want the order shipped, request that they provide an emailed or faxed list of addresses. This will help avoid spelling and other errors.Thank them for their time and leave with your order.

10. Don’t leave baskets behind unless the client buys them. Potential clients who love your work but don’t want to pay your price will often try to recreate the design or ask an employee to copy it. You can’t stop them from copying it, but there’s no need in making it easier for them.

The holiday season can be an exciting and profitable time for your business. Your success depends on how well you conduct and conclude during your presentation.

Like any other business product or service, gift baskets must be marketed. Those who promote their businesses do well, and those who don’t will be disappointed.

Three ways to make your gift basket business profitable.

1. Set up a way to capture the names and emails of visitors to your site.

You’ve no doubt been on many websites where a box floats into the page asking you to sign up for a free item.

You can do this by offering a free newsletter, free reports, tips or other item they may value. This list is very valuable. If you don’t capture this contact information, you may have lost the chance to sell to these potential customers forever.

But if you are emailing them announcements, special sales information, gift-giving tips and so on, they are more likely to return or call to buy a gift basket.

2. Sell more to your current customers

Once you’ve landed customers, stay in frequent touch with them. Encourage them to expand their purchases by adding a balloon or other added value for which you can charge an additional fee.

Your current customers are valuable because they’ve already shown faith in your company and product. One example of a company that does this well is Vistaprint. You probably know them for their free business card offer.

Each time I take Vistaprint up on an offer for free postcards, a free t-shirt, or other imprinted product, I must go through several pages of offers to upgrade my order or add additional products. I don’t mind going through these because I’m getting the product free.

How do they make money, you wonder? Well, they don’t offer everything free. And, you must pay to use your own image if you don’t want to use their stock images.

Each time I receive a shipment from them, there’s another little sales booklet offering more free items with the special access code to purchase from their website. They are smart marketers and know that waving the offer of free products in front of me works. Besides, once I receive the products and see the quality of their products I’m much more inclined to buy at regular price.

3. Hustle

The owner of a balloon supply store once shared with me that folks keep calling his store asking if they sell gift baskets. He had to keep turning them away. He said to me, “You gift basket designers aren’t doing your marketing.”

Unfortunately he was right. During the 18 years I’ve been consulting and speaking to gift basket business owners, I’m amazed at how many do very little to go after business. Putting an ad in the paper and putting up a website is not marketing.

To make your business profitable you must

• take advantage of every networking opportunity possible to ask for orders
• follow up on every person you meet at Chamber and network meetings
• keep up with trends such as putting updates on Twitter and Facebook to keep news about your business in the public’s mind
• modify your business to draw in more business. This may mean partnering with another company, raising your prices (some of you aren’t charging enough and people think you must offer an inferior product,)  or changing your designs and offering to meet trends and current demands.

I recently heard a story about a sandwich shop that was in a busy shopping center. During the summer, people kept coming in the store all day long asking, “Do you sell ice cream?”"No,” the owner announced to each person. Finally, he got so annoyed that he put a sign in the window: WE DON’T SELL ICE CREAM.

What would have been a smarter thing for the store owner to have done since there was obviously a demand for ice cream?

Are you meeting current demands of customers, or are you turning away money?