Ready or not, the holiday season is right around the corner.  If you want to stay ahead of the game, you might want to start thinking about what thoughtful presents you will give to your clients and business associates.

To save you time and take the guesswork out of holiday gift giving, the team here at imPress has come up with a list of possibilities for you.  We’ll call it our “Top Five ImPressive Holiday Gifts” list.  (See what we did there?)

5. A membership to a Jelly of the Month Club.  As Cousin Eddie has noted, it’s one gift that keeps on givin’.

4. Anything inflatable.

3. A homemade Christmas music mix CD.  Don’t hold back on the Yanni or Kenny G.

2. A Zamboni.

And, the absolute best, most totally tubular holiday gift is…

1. A gift basket!

Gift baskets are awesome presents for the holiday season, or actually, for any time.  They top our list for a number of reasons.

A Gift for a Crowd

Many gifts are pretty difficult to share.  Something like a Zamboni, for instance, might be a thrill for its direct recipient, but only one person can enjoy it at a time.  However, when you give a gift basket to one of your business contacts, that one gift basket can be shared by his whole company.  We’ve all experienced the joy in an employee break room when someone has brought in a yummy treat to share.  When you send a gift basket, you are setting yourself up to be the superhero who surprised everyone with a bunch of goodies.

The Possibilities Are Endless

Gift baskets are also a perfect choice because they allow for limitless options.  You can incorporate all different types of gifts within the basket so that you can appeal to the tastes of a diverse group.  You can mix and match to include anything from coffee to candles to gourmet pasta.

Name-drop Yourself

Another plus – gift baskets allow you to sneak some marketing into your present.  Gift baskets can include carefully selected promotional items and be tied up with a ribbon imprinted with your company’s name.  You might as well take credit for your thoughtfulness, right?

So as the holiday season rolls around, consider honoring each of your loyal clients with a gift basket.  (And for the record…you should probably disregard gift possibilities #2 through #5…unless you have very interesting clients.)