I have a confession. I’m terrible at remembering names. I suspect if people didn’t call me by it on a daily basis, I would forget my own name. Yet it is important to remember names, not to mention that it impresses people whom you’ve only met once when you know their name when you see them again months later. And in this business we meet people at networking and other events all the time.
Here are a couple of tricks I’ve learned over the years to remember names.
1. When introduced to a new person, repeat their name out loud – “Nice to meet you, John.” That act of saying their name helps commit their name to memory, at least to short term memory. When you part ways do it again – “It was a pleasure speaking with you, John.”
2. If they hand you a business card, take a moment to study the card and identify something unique about it – the color, the font, there’s a photo in the background or on the back, it’s an unusual shape, paper weight, whatever, and think of something about the person you’ve met. Then tell yourself something that connects the two. For example “John’s wearing brown shoes and has a brown business card” or whatever connection you choose to make. Making these little connections helps commit things to memory.
3. As soon as you can, add the person’s contact information to your address book and use the notes field to make a note about them that will help you remember who they are. For example “Met at XYZ, talked about ABC.”
4. Followup with an email within 24 hours of meeting. It can be a short email “Hi John, it was a pleasure meeting you and talking about XYZ lat night.” This email reinforces the above, which helps you remember them.
In my experience, that’s enough to either remember the person’s name, or at the very least remember enough so that when you see them again you can quickly look them up and find them in your contacts even without remembering their name.
Here’s an actual example of these tips from my own experience. I was at a Film Independent members night event, where I met about 20 new people. One was a young director, and after using the above tricks, when I got home a couple of hours later I copied his information from his card to my address book. Here’s the note I made for him “Met at Film Independent members night – recently married, has a film about being engaged.”
I went to his site, and watched his short film. Then I emailed him:
Hi _______,
It was a pleasure meeting you last night. I just wanted to drop you a quick line so you have my info handy. I just watched your short Dinner for Two on your site – such a great concept and well done. I think your idea for doing something exploring being engaged is really smart. Please stay in touch, and hopefully we can work together some time.
And congrats again on your recent marriage!
Best,
Shie
This email triggered a response and we went back and forth a bit, discussing his next film and possibly having me score it. A couple of months later, we were both at another Film Independent members night. When I saw him I couldn’t remember his name, but thanks to all of the above I remembered who he was. I did a quick search on my phone’s address book for “film independent engaged” and his contact came up, allowing me to get his name. A few minutes later I was able to greet him with “Hi ______, how are you?” He recognized me and remembered I was that composer guy he’s been talking to, but didn’t remember my name. He also commented on how impressed he was that I remembered his name.
His next film is currently in pre-production, and we are discussing me scoring it.