I'm forever telling clients that the people most likely to hire them are the ones who either hired them before or the ones who came close to hiring them but didn't quite pull the trigger.

Pretty much no one ever disagrees with me when I say this.

“We know, we know” they all answer.

But when I ask how much time they put into marketing to those people vs marketing to strangers, the numbers tell a different story.

The truth is, we tend to take our ex-clients and “almost hired me”s a bit for granted.

We assume that because 3 years ago we did some great work for them that they'll think of us first when they have new needs in an area we can help with. Or we assume that the people who eventually decided not to hire us last year (even though we came close) will never ever hire us.

The end result is the same in both cases: we don't do enough to communicate with and nurture our relationships with the very people who are the most predisposed to hire us.

And so we gradually lose touch with them until they're pretty much strangers again.

All it takes is an email or a call. A message on social media. Ideally, send them something they'd find useful or interesting.

15 minutes a day is all you really need to re-establish contact with one person that day. That's about 20 of your very best potential clients being nurtured every month.

Yet so few of us do it.

That's actually great news because it means your competitors probably aren't doing it.

So if you can just instill a little discipline in your life to make sure that every day you're keeping in touch with ex-clients and “almost hired me”s you'll really stand out.