Yesterday was Friday, November 27th. 

I attended my high school class reunion last night. About 70 of us celebrated the fact that we graduated from Bristol Central High School 40 years ago. This was the first class reunion that I attended and I found myself wondering what I'd missed over the 40 years.

I also received an email from http://www.geni.com/ to remind me that my cousin Susan turned 51 and that Fayth, my first cousin once removed (another cousin's daughter) turned 35 on the 27th. I don't remember the last time that I saw Susan and I don't believe that I've ever met Fayth.

The lesson for me is that I didn't do anything to maintain these relationships. I or they got busy. I or they got distracted. I or they got focused. I moved 90 miles away. They moved further away or they didn't move at all. There were some classmates at the reunion that obviously had stayed in touch. Many (but not all) of them live in Bristol, so they 'bump into each other' periodically. I appreciate the effort that the reunion committee put into getting us together and my hope is that it won't be another 40 years before I have a substantive conversation with a classmate. As a matter of fact, I'm hoping that I can reconnect with several family members as well as classmates over the next year.

So, here's the point for this blog's regular readers. Does this happen to your customers? Do you lose touch with them? Do you become less important to them or they to you? In 1969, I didn't have an email address, blog, Facebook page and keeping in touch was a lot of (paper) work. Finding someone usually depended on the phone book or word of mouth and frankly, thinking about a relationship once every 5, 10 or 40 years wasn't enough to maintain it. Close relationships need to be maintained daily or weekly. Some relationships need monthly or quarterly maintenance. Do you delete entries in your CRM system? Do your account managers ever stop maintaining your customers and prospects? Should they?

To my classmates and family: I intend to reach out to you, but if you want to make it easier, friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, send me an email or call me at x223.