The Connect Effects is a straightforward book by Michael Dulworth about how to improve your networking skills, He bring the Networking Quotient (NQ) into the picture and defines it by four elements
Quantity: Size matters – you never know when an important connection will lead to a positive outcome.
Relationships: Networking is not a one way street – you have to give back to the realationship in some meaningful way and there has to be a real exchange og value.
Diversity in your network: learn new things, discover new opportunities, …
Quality of the connection: is the other person a strong networker, knowledge, a nice, … quantity is important but quality
If you want to have success you need a good IQ, EQ and NQ (is that a good way to define success?).
The four elements is a quit good way of measuring were you need to improve to get a better NQ. Currently I got a pretty big quantity of connections with a medium good diversity (could be better). My main focus now is to build quality relationsships with people in my network – thats the hard and time consuming part of the four elements but luckily is also the fun part.
The book sells for £10.55 at www.amazon.co.uk – thats a pretty good bargain for a book that gets you in the right direction if you are serious about networking.
Porcupine X is run by 
Question is… how do you manage it. Where linkedin and Facebook fall short of managing the QUALITY of your network.
Check out http://www.dexapp.com – it helps you focus on both quantity and quality.
Will check out the book.
Thanks!
Hi Scott, The dexapp got the right philosophy on how a CRM should be build today but my current beta account is almost only able to present “Proxy Error” and “We’re sorry, but something went wrong”… hope the next release will be a more usable beta because it could be a real killer app.