Our names are one of the most important things to us. They are even more important to us than our birthdays.
When someone remembers your name, it feeds your ego. You feel important and valued.
Most people, however, make no effort to remember names.
It’s particularly embarrassing when someone remembers your name and you can’t recall their name. It’s more than just embarrassing, however. It impairs your ability to build a lasting relationship with new people you meet, if you can’t remember their names.
And since relationships are the currency of the wealthy, it’s important to make a habit of remembering the names of potential Power Relationships you might run into.
One of the main culprits behind forgetting someone’s name has to do with the frequency of contact. The less frequent the contact, the more likely you will forget someone’s name.
What can you do?
One trick I found very effective in my Rich Habits research is the Grouping Strategy.
With the Grouping Strategy, you categorize each one of your relationships by group.
For example, if you play tennis, you may meet many individuals from various tennis leagues. You may not see these people regularly and because of this you may forget their names. So you group these infrequent tennis contacts into your Tennis Group category. Almost every contact management system allows you to categorize each of your contacts and some even allow you to link the database to your cell phone. Even better is attaching a picture to the name of the contact.
Prior to getting together with your Tennis Group group, you simply whip out your cell phone and review all those listed under the Tennis Group Category.
Here are the steps for creating your own specific groups:
Step #1: Write down the name of a new introduction immediately after the introduction. I keep a small pad and pen with me at all times just for this purpose.
Step #2: Associate their face with someone you know or some outstanding feature and write this association down in your pad. For example, “looks like Chris Rock”.
Step #3: Create group categories for all of your contacts and then assign each contact to a group category. Keep it simple. Not too many groups.
Step #4: Refer to your grouping category just prior to a function for one of your “Groups”.
This memory trick works great. People are amazed by my memory and I often receive compliments. I usually respond saying I always remember the names of people I like and who are important to me.
Their chest swells along with their egos. In other words, you will trigger positive emotions within that person.
More importantly, they never likely forget your name ever again because emotional memories are the strongest type of memories we have.
“Cheats” like this(in a good way) are very helpful, particularly later in life when the memory really starts to fade. When I’ve managed large groups I create a cheat sheet with birthdays, family issues, even favorite sports teams. For example, iff I’m going to see that Steelers fan I can have something to say about how they are doing.
This tip was an excellent one that I intend to put to use as soon as I am able. Thanks for sharing.
“Relationships are the currency of the wealthy,” I absolutely love this! It is dripping with truth. Thanks Tom
One quick super easy I use is to add a word like “Tennis” to the persons contact in your phone. On your way to Tennis, just look up tennis in your contacts, it will list them all. I do the same with “Mum” and “Dad” for all the school Mums and Dads I meet, I usually add their childs name too, so search childs name or mum and find their mum or all mums 🙂