80% of building and maintaining relationships is staying in touch (“pinging”).
- New people need to see or hear your name in at least 3 modes of communication: Email, phone call, and face-to-face, before you are easy to recall.
- After that, you need to call or email at least once a month.
- To make them a friend, you need at least two face-to-face’s out of the office.
- Maintaining a secondary relationship involved 2-3 pings a year.
Keith makes dozens of calls a day. And is constantly sending emails. The goal is repetition, and to find a way to keep doing it without stressing oneself out.
Read the chapter for ideas on managing how often to contact someone, etc.
Whatever you do, don’t send messages that are not relevant, timely, useful or entertaining to the recipient.
He recommends birthdays over Christmas.