From Business Cards to Business Relationships

When saying hello to a casual contact, offer your first and last name again. This will eliminate the name-game pressure.

you find yourself in a group situation and your contact has not introduced you, he may have forgotten someone in the group's name (maybe yours). Simply extend your hand to others and introduce yourself to add comfort to a potentially uncomfortable moment.

Give your first and last name up front to make it easier for people to put you into context and introduce you to their contacts. Often it's the inclusion of the last name that will trigger an association that can lead to a conversation or discovery of a mutual friend.

You could simply say “I'm trying to remember where we first met” or “Forgive me, my brain's obviously not working up to snuff.

What did we talk about? Who were they? What do they do? What did I like about them? How did we connect? Who introduced us? I don't spend hours obsessing over everyone I meet, but just a moment of conscious awareness after a conversation seems to pay dividends in the long run to winning the name game

Do not take offense when someone forgets your name. Memory recall isn't always the sharpest and people have a lot on their minds. It's arrogant to think that remembering your name is a top priority on a contact's to-do list, particularly when you've only met a few times.

It takes six to eight times of meeting someone casually before a person “gets” who you are and vice versa. Have you ever been sitting in a committee meeting and after several months of being on the same committee with someone, you look across the table, have that moment of clarity, and say to yourself, “Oh yeah, hey, I know that person”?

When we meet a new contact, as we have thousands of times in the past, our brain doesn't have a reason to keep the name front and center until we decide this person is important in our lives.

It's no wonder. To an individual, his or her name is very personal and hearing it spoken is like music to his or her ears. It can make a person feel important—or unimportant—when it's his or her name that's been remembered—or forgotten

if you listen to the name and hear it correctly, it's easy to forget because it has no context in your life. Without anchoring it to anything that is meaningful, your brain won't register the name as important information worth remembering.