How Often Should You Stay in Touch With Professional Contacts?

01Not every relationship needs the same cadence#

The people I speak with regularly because we work together, advise each other or are actively building something obviously do not need artificial reminders, while an old colleague I respect may remain an important relationship even if we speak twice a year.

A mentor may deserve a thoughtful update after I have acted on their advice, an investor may need to hear from a founder when an important milestone changes, a former client may become relevant when either of us moves companies, and a person I met briefly at an event may need one good follow-up soon after the conversation before the context disappears completely.

Treating every one of those relationships as “contact every ninety days” removes precisely the judgment that makes relationships human.

02I think about three layers instead#

For the relationships that are active and important right now, I would allow the work, conversations and shared priorities to create the cadence naturally, while still making sure that small promises and agreed follow-ups do not disappear under the pressure of everyday work.

For strategic relationships that matter but do not require regular interaction, I would rather reach out a few times a year with genuine context than send monthly messages with nothing to say, particularly when there is a useful article, a shared industry change, a career milestone, an event or something from our previous conversation that creates a reason to speak again.

For dormant relationships where months or years have passed, I would not automatically assume the relationship is lost, because some of the easiest conversations I have restarted were with people where the history was strong enough that the gap in time did not erase it.

The goal is not to make sure everyone hears from you regularly; the goal is to make sure the people who matter do not hear from you only when you need something.

03Calendar time matters, but event time matters more#

There are two kinds of timing in relationships that I think are useful to separate, because calendar time tells us how long it has been since we spoke while event time tells us what has happened since we spoke.

A six-month gap with nothing important changing may not matter very much, while two weeks can matter enormously if the person has changed jobs, their company has raised funding, they published something important, you promised an introduction, a role opened at their company, both of you are attending the same event or something changed in your own career that makes the relationship newly relevant.

This is also why automated reminders often feel unsatisfying, because “It has been 90 days” tells me when to reach out but gives me very little help with the much more important question of why this person should want to hear from me today.

04What should you say when you have no reason to reach out?#

I sometimes think we create unnecessary pressure around this question because professional relationships do not require constant production of value, and people who genuinely know each other are allowed to simply ask how the other person is doing.

The problem is usually not saying hello without an agenda, because the problem is appearing after three years with “hello” followed immediately by a request for a referral, customer introduction or favor.

When there is no immediate need, a simple conversation is often exactly what protects a relationship from becoming transactional later.

05The follow-up should match what happened before#

If someone gave you advice, tell them what happened after you used it, because people rarely hear how their advice affected another person’s decisions and that follow-up is far more memorable than another thank-you message.

If someone introduced you to another person, tell them what happened after the introduction, because closing that loop demonstrates that you respected the trust they placed in you.

If a former colleague mentioned a difficult transition, an upcoming launch or a new responsibility, remember enough of that conversation to ask about it later, because remembering people’s stories is a surprisingly powerful form of professional respect.

This is one of the reasons we built Timeline and Notes into Virre, because I did not want the system simply to tell someone that 120 days had passed; I wanted the history of the relationship to remain available so the next conversation could continue from the previous one rather than starting from zero again.

06A practical rhythm that does not feel like CRM maintenance#

Instead of assigning a recurring reminder to everyone you know, I would spend fifteen or twenty minutes once a week reviewing the people connected to your most important goals and looking for changes, unfinished promises, conversations that deserve continuation and relationships that have become unnecessarily quiet.

That small review creates a much more natural rhythm because the question becomes “Is there someone I have a real reason to contact this week?” rather than “Which names have reached their follow-up date?”

Virre’s My Actions and relationship signals are built around this idea, because the purpose of technology should not be to turn people into tasks but to stop important context and timing from disappearing when work becomes busy.

A relationship should not feel automated simply because technology helped you remember it.

If I had to give one rule, it would therefore be less satisfying than “every ninety days” but much more useful, because I would say that you should stay close enough that an important relationship never becomes awkward solely because too much unintentional time has passed, while giving every conversation enough reason and space to remain real.

The calendar can remind us that time has passed, but context should decide what we do about it.

Start with Virre and discover who matters, why they matter, and when to reach out.