If you saw them at the end of the cereal aisle, would you run over to hug them, or hide behind the Frosted Flakes?
The idea
Until the grocery store test, I thought similar people deserved similar attention (past clients are past clients), or that the most "important" people should get the most. Consistency trumps both. When your CRM surfaces someone you genuinely want to talk to, you reach out and move on to the next name. When it surfaces someone you'd flee from, you'll do literally anything else, and probably skip the next person too. Decreasing friction is key.
How to do it
Look at a name in your contact list and picture them at the end of the cereal aisle, while you're deciding between "healthy" cereal and Chocolate Frosted Sugar Blasterz.
Do you drop the boxes and run over to hug them, or sprint out through the loading dock?
Huggers go in your inner circle and get your random "thinking of you" texts.
Hiders come off your proactive list, and they don't need a detailed dossier in your notes either.
Example
I recently grabbed coffee with someone I'd met at a conference two years earlier, a solid hug-in-the-aisle person. We talked shop, then somehow spent twenty minutes debating whether pineapple belongs on pizza. By the end he'd referred three potential clients my way, because people want to work with folks they actually like.
Watch out for
It measures the energy between you. It says nothing about status or what they can do for you.
A/B/C Spheres: Sort everyone into three tiers by gut feeling (love, like, don't know) and spend more time on A's than B's, and more on B's than C's.
Connection Over Value: Choose who to stay close to by who you genuinely like, not who seems important, because liking is what makes you actually reach out.
The $20 Test: Ask whether you'd say yes if they asked to borrow $20, then flip it: who would lend you $20?
The Energy Audit: Scroll last year's calendar, notice your gut reaction to each name, and sort people into energy givers, drainers and forgettables.