Newsletter # 10

Dunbar’s Number for Sales Professionals

Published on: June 21,2026

In issue #2, I wrote briefly about Dunbar’s number. If you didn’t read that newsletter, please go back and read it HERE, as that will give you more context on today’s topic! Above is a photo of 3 of my 5 ‘intimates’ - you’ll know what that means in a moment!

So what is Dunbar’s number?

“Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.”

Robin further postulated, and I believe he has since proved, that the various buckets of the type of relationships we can maintain is limited. Most of us understand this intuitively, but let me give you some rough numbers from his research: 

  • 1-5 “Intimates” - these are the people who you are truly intimate with. You love them. You would likely give your life for them. They are who you would call in times of crisis. The people you would confide in about a divorce, a disease, or a top-secret business idea you were working on. These are you spouse, your kid(s), your best friend, your confidant.

  • Up to 15 (ish) “Very Close Family & Friends” - these are the people whom you hang out with the most. The friends who you ‘love like a brother or sister.’ For us that includes the Gracian family. Our kids are the same age. I do jiu-jitsu with Enrique Sr. He is my daughter’s soccer coach. Our sons play football together. Our wives workout together. If our families don’t see each other every 12 hours, something feels off. My mother-in-law is in this category for both my wife and I.

  • Up to 50 (ish) “Good Friends” - these are the people in your circle who you (and/or your spouse) would gladly have over for dinner this weekend on short notice. Maybe you are separated by distance, but you call & text each other, and you check in regularly with them. You can go deep with these people, but they probably aren’t going to be your first call.

  • Up to 150 “Friends” - these are the acquaintances you run into, maybe see regularly, and have good conversations with from time-to-time… but they aren’t in your inner circle. I think about my ‘other’ jiu-jitsu training partners. They are buddies, we trust each other at the gym, but I’m not hanging out with them outside of the gym environment. I know their name, maybe even what their family looks like, but we aren’t that close.

  • Up to 500 “Known Names” - this is where it gets interesting, especially in a business context. For most of us, we have a mental and physical limitation regarding the number of people we can remember. If you’re lucky, you can associate about 500 different faces with actual names. These are the co-workers you see occasionally. Past clients or schoolmates you haven’t talked to in years. You ‘know’ these people, but don’t really have a relationship with them.

  • Somewhere around 1,000-1,500 “Known Names” - these are people you recognize, but often can’t place a name to the face. Think about a friend-of-a-friend, or someone you interact with on social media and know their screen name, but wouldn’t be able to recall it if you met in person. There’s something familiar about this face… but you can’t quite place where you met them.

Chances are, if you’re a successful salesperson or sales leader, you are completely tapped out on Dunbar’s number. You literally don’t have any more mental bandwidth or physical capacity to remember another name.

Yet, here you are interacting with new clients, new referral sources, and new introductions almost EVERY day! Remembering these people, much less building a deep relationship with them, is physically and mentally impossible.

To highlight this problem, here are my stats:

  • 1-5 “Intimates” - I have a wife, three kids, and a best friend… I have no space in my inner circle.

  • Up to 15 (ish) “Very Close Family & Friends” - add my ‘intimates’ above, plus my mother-in-law, the Gracian family I referenced earlier, 2-3 close friends at jiu-jitsu, and two team members I work with daily, and I am capped out on ‘very close friends & family.’

  • Up to 50 (ish) “Good Friends” - add the categories above with certain family members of mine, certain family members on my wife’s side, parents from our kids’ sports who we interact with four times a week, and a couple of old friends I keep in touch with regularly… and this category is filled as well.

  • Up to 150 “Friends” - add in some of my 100+ coaching clients, a few business partners who have become friends, and the six guys in my “Band” from Front Row Dads - SEE Newsletter #8 for more on FRD ... and this group is pretty much filled-up as well.

  • Up to 500 “Known Names” - add up the 150 to 200 people above and I’m out of space for humans I can keep in touch with on a regular basis. However, in Front Row Dads, there’s another 100 fathers I keep in touch with on Telegram and have the ability to go deep with them in a given conversation. There’s another 100+ jiu-jitsu practitioners & parents from the kids' class who I see often and know their names. Throw in 20-30 referral partners, strategic coaching partners, contractors I work with… and even this category is maxed out.

  • Somewhere around 1,000-1,500 “Known Names” - this is where it gets bonkers. In my OWN business CRMs, I am currently attempting to keep in touch with the following groups of people (I just looked up the numbers):

  • 4,783 - past clients who I have done a mortgage for, or who got pre-approved with our team at some point over the last 25 years.

  • 3,241 - Realtors I’ve met over the last 25 years. At some point, I did a loan with one of their clients, met them at a business event, or they were on the listing side of a transaction I was involved with.

  • 14,892 - Loan Officers I market to by email. These are people who have opted-in to getting emails from me because they know me, they read my book (www.Bitly.com/LeadGen61), I’ve answered their questions on Facebook, or they saw me give a keynote at a live event.

  • 20,428 - INDIVIDUAL contacts in my iPhone. These are all people who I’ve met, talked to, or individually emailed/called since getting my first cell phone in 1999.

There is absolutely NO CHANCE I could keep in touch with, much less have a relationship with, this many people! The numbers are overwhelming, and it’s physically and mentally impossible! Dunbar’s number suggests that even if they have a relationship with me, I only have bandwidth to have relationships with about 2% of my ‘contacts!’

As I write this email, I’m actually sitting here questioning myself about why I don’t make more money and why I am not more successful 🙂

But the answer is probably very simple. As a person, and as a business owner, it’s only within the last 10 years that I’ve taken the job of ‘staying in touch’ seriously. It’s one of the reasons why I started this newsletter. I wanted to have a way to share my thoughts and add value to what is a pretty large audience of people I know.

When I handed off my mortgage business to my partner Leah, I wanted a way to stay in touch with past clients & Realtors who might want to hear from me personally! 

So, with all of this in mind, I wanted to give you some thoughts, some coaching tips, on how YOU can manage this same dilemma. 

  • 1-5 “Intimates” - make time, lots of time, for these people. These are the people who are going to miss you when you’re gone. My son Gabe and my daughter Alina will be the legacy I leave behind. Will they remember whether or not Dad signed-up one extra coaching client in June of 2026… or will they remember that I always made time to be at their games & practices?

  • Up to 15 (ish) “Very Close Family & Friends” - make time for these people. Have them over for dinner. Deepen the relationship with them by avoiding the small talk, the gossip, the social media interactions, and find a way to be in-person with them as often as possible.

  • Up to 50 (ish) "Good Friends" - invite these people into your world. Sure, if you’re a sales professional, remind them from time to time what you do for a living and ask them if they can refer you when appropriate. However, these are the people you want to go deeper with and not let these relationships drift away. Invite them to a workout, join them for their workout of choice, get outdoors with them, have a BBQ once a year, and invite them all over. My trick is to pin them as "favorite" contacts in my phone, and I make a point to check in from time to time with a real conversation.

  • Up to 150 “Friends” - you do you! I have different types of relationships with my friends, coaching clients, and family members who are in this bucket. Text, Zoom, social media groups messages, phone calls… there’s no right or wrong way to stay in touch. But do stay in touch!

  • Up to 500 “Known Names” - Most of your business partners and referral sources probably live in this top 500. However, people in this bucket will tend to drift away over time. If you don’t follow up professionally, they won’t follow through and send you business. Make a Dream 100 list. This is straight from the book The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. As a sales coach, this is the first book I recommend to my clients. He recommends that every business professional make a ‘Dream 100 List’ of your ideal referral partners. Pick up a copy of the book or search for a talk on the topic on YouTube. For friends in this group, stay in touch digitally however you have bandwidth to do so. 

  • Somewhere around 1,000-1,500 “Known Names” - Master your CRM. If you’re a business professional, you MUST master your CRM. Every contact, every lead, every potential client or referral source should go in your CRM. Data integrity will serve you in ways you probably can’t even fathom. Offer something of value (like a newsletter) as a way to stay in touch and develop authentic parasocial relationships. A parasocial relationship is where they have a better relationship with you than you do with them. This can happen when you’re offering something of value that these people can consume on their own time. 

Managing your deep relationships, your connections, and even your fringe contacts is an art and a science. Give some thought today on who it is you need to reach out to. Think about who needs to move-up, or move-down, in the various circles of the type of relationship you can maintain. 

Thanks for reading… 

Don’t forget to share this newsletter with someone who might be interested, preferably a salesperson or sales leader who is interested in building better relationships! Connect with me on social media if you want to see what’s up with me personally and professionally. Instagram is probably best: www.Instagram.com/ScottLGroves

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My invitation to you is this: If you’re feeling like you are tapped out on the number of relationships you can manage, HIT REPLY to this email and give me your thoughts.

I personally read each and every response.

Hearing from you would not only mean the world to me, but it would also help me shape the upcoming issues of this newsletter.

And as a bonus, I will be doing my best to individually respond to each email I receive to “Scott’s Thoughts” newsletter!

Till the next time I have 2 hours to think,

Scott :-)

P.S. - None of this was written by AI, my assistant, or a ghostwriter. Just me, a real person who probably made a few typos in the newsletter above. Please forgive me!

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