Blog · Attention
Attracting client attention with Networking
The scarce currency of these years isn't money: it's people's attention. And the consequence for anyone working today is as uncomfortable as it is true — it's extremely easy to be forgotten, and it happens without anyone deciding to do it.
Published 11 November 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
The thesis
Trust, not exposure
The challenge for anyone working today is standing out. The common reflex is to increase exposure: post more, be seen more, buy more visibility.
It works for as long as you pay for it. What keeps people tied to you, and what keeps working once you stop pushing, is something else: trust. In an age when anyone can claim to be anyone, building it takes longer than it used to — and it's worth more than it used to.
Why it gets forgotten
Because exposure is bought and measured today, trust is built and shows up a year from now.
Of the two, the one that ends up in the quarterly plan is always the first. And that's why almost everyone has plenty of visibility and few people who would actually pick up the phone.
In practice
Four ways to stay present, from worst to best
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Email
The easiest and the least effective: too many arrive and almost all of them are offers. If you send one, make it carry something useful and write it for a person, not for a list.
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Phone
Not every day, obviously. But five minutes every couple of months, if the call is personal and not intrusive, are worth more than fifty emails.
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Social media
Being present where people look helps you not disappear. But it does little good if there isn't already a relationship underneath: it maintains a relationship, it doesn't create one.
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Face to face
It remains the best, by a wide margin. Seeking out occasions to meet tells a person they matter, and none of the other three tools says it the same way.
One word at a time
"Stay present" — in how many minds, exactly?
It's the question missing from the 2021 article, and it's the one that makes the advice actionable instead of just virtuous.
The ceiling
A person maintains stable relationships with roughly a hundred and fifty people — Dunbar's number. Staying present in five hundred minds isn't an ambitious goal: it's arithmetically impossible, and trying produces five hundred shallow relationships.
So what do you do
You choose. And for the rest, you stop relying on your own memory: in the discipline, the map of who knows whom is declared — the Relational Footprint — and the useful introduction is calculated by the system, instead of depending on you remembering the right person at the right moment.
The result is a match, and whoever makes it possible is a Connector: when they do, they put their own reputation on the line (Sixth law). And that's why whoever receives it doesn't forget them.
You can't stay in everyone's mind. You can be the one who introduced the right person.
The first step
Where does your company stand, in one number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the relational capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration. Your browser calculates the score and shows it immediately, along with the dimensions where you're losing the most points.
Then the extended report arrives by email, and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the AIRA-DX© Stoic Analysis makes sense for your company. It's free and limited to twelve a week, so it isn't owed to whoever does the check-up: it's decided together.
Prefer to just talk about it? The number is 0549 888808.