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It's Been a While
I recently got back to writing this blog. For a full year, the page sat here, quiet.
My excuse? Life. I hate that it’s taken so long but it did. And now I’m back.
Here is the thing about coming back after a long silence. The longer you stay away, the heavier the first sentence gets. It starts to feel like it has to explain everything. So you wait for the right moment, the right angle, the right excuse. And the silence gets a little longer.
I know this feeling from the blog. I know it much better from clients.
Every one of us has a few of those accounts. The client you were close with two years ago. The one who used to call you before anyone else. Nothing went wrong. Nobody complained. The work kept going, the invoices got paid, and somewhere along the way, you just stopped showing up as a person. Now it has been eight months since you talked about anything other than a renewal date, and reaching out feels awkward.
So we do one of two things. We say nothing. Or we send the email.
You know the email. "Just checking in." "Wanted to circle back." "It's been a while, would love to touch base." I have sent that email. More than once. This year, too.
Look at what that email actually does. It makes the silence the subject. It asks for their time. And it gives them nothing to feel. That is not a reconnection. That is a reminder to unsubscribe.
In my work I call this emotional drift. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't show up in the metrics right away. The relationship doesn't break. It just slowly moves back toward ordinary, until one day the account is "fine" and you realize fine is all it is. And here's the paradox: the better the relationship was, the more exposed it is to this. Because once trust is established, we relax. We assume it will stay. We stop doing the very things that built it.
The good news is that drift can be reversed. And reversing it is easier than you think.
In 2022, a team of researchers led by Peggy Liu at the University of Pittsburgh ran a series of experiments with more than 5,900 people, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They had people reach out to someone they hadn't been in touch with for a while, just a short note, sometimes a small gift, and then asked both sides how much it was appreciated. Across every experiment, the person reaching out significantly underestimated how much the other person valued it. And the gap was biggest when the message was a surprise, not part of a regular routine.
Read that again. The surprise we worry about, the "why is he reaching out now?", is exactly the thing that makes it land.
Business research points the same way. Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter and Keith Murnighan asked more than two hundred executives to go back to contacts they had not spoken with in at least three years and ask for input on a real work project. The value of those dormant relationships compared favorably with the executives' current ones, and reconnecting with people they used to be close with delivered every benefit the researchers measured, including trust and shared perspective. The relationship wasn't gone. It was waiting.
“You don't sustain relationships through intensity. You sustain them through consistency.”
Alon Zaibert
Consistency is the goal. But when consistency has already slipped, and it slips for all of us, the next best thing is a reconnection that feels like you, not like a template.
Here is what that looks like.
Spend one line on the silence. Not a paragraph.
"It's been too long" is enough. Don't explain, don't over-apologize. The longer you spend on why you disappeared, the more the message becomes about you.
Lead with THEM.
This is where the Get Personal pillar does the heavy lifting. What do you remember about this person? The daughter who was starting college. The marathon they were training for. The project they were nervous about. If you remember it, use it. That is an emotional anchor, and it tells them you were thinking of them, not of their contract.
Ask for nothing on the first touch.
No "would love 15 minutes." No deck attached. Send the article that made you think of them, congratulate them on the news you saw, ask how the thing they cared about turned out. Let the first message be a gift, not an invoice. The meeting comes later, and it comes easier.
The other day I texted someone from my network after not communicating for about 5 months. I mentioned that I will be at the city where he lives and asked for a restaurant recommendation. He replied within a few minutes with a couple of restaurants. Then, a minute later, another text: “by the way, good to hear from you”. To which I responded with “yeah, it’s been a minute and I’m really glad you responded. Good to hear from you as well”. 10 minutes later, and a thumbs up emoji to my last text and yet another one comes through: “I may have an opportunity for you. Sending an email intro”.
Not all of these outreaches will be like that. But if you don’t reach out, you will never know right?
So here is my ask for the next two weeks. Pull up your client list and find every relationship that matters where the last real conversation was more than ninety days ago. Not the last invoice. The last conversation. Pick three. Next to each name, write one thing you remember about them as a person. If you can't think of one, that tells you something too.
Then send three messages this week. One line on the silence, the rest about them, and nothing asked in return. If you use the Emotional Relevance Meter, score each relationship before you send and again thirty days later. I think you'll be surprised by how quickly a quiet account starts talking again.
As for me, I'm back. Every couple of weeks, like the name of this blog promised.
They're not waiting for your explanation. They're waiting to hear from you.
Tags: Client Retention · Client relationships · Client Engagement · Being relevant · emotional connections
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