The T in CAPITAL. Give each group of people a fallback rhythm, then react to events, so prioritized relationships never quietly fade.
The idea
The question I get asked most on webinars: how often should I follow up? Bad news first: there is no correct cadence, and I squirmed about that answer for years. Good news: almost nobody around you follows up at all, so you have plenty of room to operate. Because mindshare decays, the job of the T is to set a periodic fallback so nobody you've prioritized slips through, and then layer timely reasons on top of it.
How to do it
Know your triggers. A cadence you set, an event (theirs or yours), or intelligence: a system or third party that picks the person for you, like predictive analytics in your industry or a feed of press mentions.
Set cadence per group. Start every group at 90 days. Go more often for important people or anyone actively buying; go less often for big, low-priority groups.
Run the math. People times touches per year is the work you just signed up for. Then set it a notch less often.
Watch for events. Life changes, hard times, news about their company, a holiday you pick, an article, or the moment they pop into your head.
Say thank you. It closes the loop, and it counts as a touch.
Example
The Quick Win from the book: pick the 100 people who matter most and get a quarterly reminder on each. That's about one extra conversation a day. Compare it with waiting for a Dante, the long-forgotten party guest who calls out of the blue to list his house. Opportunities almost never arrive that way.
Watch out for
Agonizing over each person's ideal interval. The cadence you pick matters far less than actually reaching out.
Relying only on events. Without a cadence underneath, the quiet people fall off the map.
The CAPITAL Strategy: Seven linked steps for building relationship capital: C (Consistent execution), A (Aggregate), P (Prioritize), I (Investigate), T (Timely engagement), A (Add value), L (Leverage).
The 90-Day Baseline: Set cadence once per group: start everyone at every 90 days, then dial each group up or down by priority.
The Capacity Formula: People times touches per year is the minimum number of outreaches you just signed up for. Do the math before committing.
Event-Driven Outreach: Use moments in their life, from new jobs and kids' milestones to illness and loss, as reasons to reach out between your regular check-ins.
Self-Driven Reasons to Reach Out: Create your own reasons to reach out: a holiday nobody else uses, an article that made you think of them, or simply that they came to mind.