I starred 3 blog posts this week that I’ve re-read a couple of times already and wanted to share with you.

From Seth Godin – He refutes the cliche and states that “It DOES hurt to ask” because you then don’t get a chance to ask the right way.

From Geoffrey James – An example of what he considers an eternal rule of business, “Anyone who manipulates you with fear intends to screw you eventually.”

From Adrian Miller, author of “The Blatant Truth”, 10 Ways to Suck at Networking. I was at the New England Networkers event last night and am going to the Cambridge Business Development Group event tonight so a quick referesher on what NOT to do was timely.

I’m a big fan of reading Geoffrey James’ blog, Sales Machine.  He gets to be edgier and more controversial than his articles in Selling Power magazine.

He posted a great letter from one of his readers on the value of cold calling.  The real value in cold calling is disqualifying prospects, much like panning thru dirt to find diamonds.  I’ve posted on the value of cold calling in a previous Inquisix post.

The commenter’s conclusion on the value of cold calling?

Same as what I said; the benefit of cold calling is….referrals!

Are you reading Geoffrey James’ blog, “Sales Machine” yet? I was introduced to his blog by Joanne Black of “No More Cold Calling” fame and I’ve enjoyed reading it ever since. Unlike the frequency of the Inquisix blog posts, Geoffrey is posting almost every day and I find them all worth reading. I was recently looking at all the starred items on my blog reader and was surprised to see that I have stars next to 16 of his blog postings, which is the largest number of stars I have for another blog.

Some of the posts are advice on how to improve your selling. Here, here and here.

Others focus on dealing with difficult co-workers and bosses. Here.

Others are about my favorite topic of referral selling. Here, here and here.

He has a recent series of posts where readers email him with sticky issues and he offers advice ala Ann Landers. Here and here. The questioner may not like his answers but I always find something interesting in them.

Like this afternoon’s post. He reviews a company’s video elevator speech and offers a suggestion on how to improve it. First, I always like people who offer solutions when bringing me a problem. Second, the company he’s critiquing is in the business of developing other companies’ elevator pitch. How ironic! Geoffrey, will you help Inquisix with our pitch on being the best networking site for referral-based businesses?