You can even use these tips and techniques whenever you are speaking or presenting -- at Toastmasters, delivering workshops -- or even eLearning activities.

1. Have a visual point at your booth -- like a power point show or a television with a video playing. Put together a workshop video, even if it isn't professional quality. People will usually not look at it more than three minutes before they feel conspicuous and will approach you.

2. Have a picture album with success stories and pictures. Especially great for independent professionals selling a intangible product. Pictures of workshop attendees having fun and doing various projects or eating together or a Christmas party in your office with your clients is very connecting and attractive. Please like to belong to things that they perceive as "successful."

3. Have a drawing for something that is valuable and attractive to them. Don't give away something laying around your office or something that has your ego attached, this very unattractive.

4. Candy bowl. One they have to reach deep. Don't fill it up, let it look like there isn't much left -- that is even more attractive. They want to reach in before it's all gone. They will take less too (chuckle)>

5. Hire a model with brains and a marketing background to assist you. Someone "very attractive."

How is gift-giving like doing market research? This isn’t a riddle! With gift-giving season rapidly approaching, let’s look at lessons we can apply from giving perfect gift to testing a new business idea or researching a niche.

Let’s say you’re considering taking leap from salary to solo, ready to test a business idea you’ve been nurturing for awhile. You’ve been advised repeatedly to do due diligence and subject your idea to strenuous market research before setting out. If you’re like many of us, you find assignment intimidating: too impersonal, too coldly analytical. This is where metaphor of gift-giving can help, suggesting a user-friendly approach to get you started. From there you can build on your momentum to go on to more cerebral aspects important in your decision, researching market trends and analyzing financial data.

First, a personal confession. I have a long-standing aversion to coffeetable books. It goes back to years of receiving them as gifts from my husband, in spite of subtle, and then not-so-subtle, expressions of disinterest. I finally brought a close to their annual appearances when I said to him, with something other than loving kindness in my voice, “Just because you like coffeetable books does not make them attractive gifts for me!”

What’s lesson here for market-testing a new business idea, or searching for a good niche? Think of your many skills, talents, and ideas as a reservoir of potential gifts, offerings you could contribute to world. And now think of person – “buyer” or prospective client – who would be receiving gift. Half of gift-giving is knowing what you want to give, and other half is assessing how gift will be received. Stand in shoes of receiver. Will gift provide value? Will it meet a need, solve a problem, enhance quality of life? And how durable will its value be? Will it end up in next year’s Goodwill box?