The Mackay 66 is a 66-question customer profile created by Harvey Mackay to help people understand the person behind a business transaction. You can adapt its listening-and-follow-up approach to build stronger professional relationships: learn a few relevant details through ordinary conversation, keep discreet notes, and use what you learn to follow through in ways that are genuinely useful.
What is the Mackay 66?
Mackay describes the Mackay 66 as a profile for learning about a customer’s personal and professional context—not just what they buy. Its prompts include business objectives, concerns, relationship quality, colleagues who also know the customer, and whether the person tends to focus on the present or the future. The official questionnaire is marked © Harvey Mackay 2010. Mackay calls it “a tool to help you humanize your selling strategy” in “Knowing Something About Your Customer Is Just As Important As Knowing Your Product.”
Using it for peers, mentors, collaborators, or other professional contacts is an adaptation. Mackay’s original tool is explicitly a customer profile, though he says it can also be used for suppliers, employees, and competitors. The point is not to investigate people or complete a form about everyone you meet. It is to listen well, remember what is relevant, and make your future interactions more thoughtful.
How do I use the Mackay 66 to build a network?
1. Choose a few relationships to cultivate
Start with a small number of people with whom a stronger relationship could be mutually useful: perhaps a colleague whose work overlaps with yours, a mentor, a potential collaborator, or a customer you serve regularly. Treat network-building as relationship-building, not as collecting contacts or extracting favors.
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2. Focus on context that helps you show up well
You do not need to reproduce all 66 questions. For a broader professional network, useful topics may include a person’s role, current priorities, preferred communication style, interests they choose to discuss, and commitments you have made to them. Keep the focus on information that can help you communicate or follow through better.
3. Learn gradually through ordinary interaction
Mackay recommends building a profile through routine conversation and observation rather than administering the questionnaire as an interview. Ask open, relevant questions when they fit the conversation, and pay attention to what the person volunteers. Leave anything unknown blank; Mackay says a partial profile can still be useful.
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4. Record selectively and handle notes discreetly
Write down only details that are relevant and appropriate to retain. Do not collect sensitive personal information simply because the original form has a field that invites it, and respect a person’s choice not to share. Mackay says profile information should be guarded and handled sensitively. In practice, keep notes private, limit who can access them, and avoid treating personal details as a way to manufacture intimacy.
5. Put what you learn to work by being helpful
Use a remembered preference to adapt a meeting, send a resource that fits a stated need, make an introduction that is likely to help, or keep a commitment you made. Mackay writes in “Customize your customer service” that “This information is a starting point to help you customize every meeting, phone call or email.” For a broader network, the same principle means making interactions more relevant—not assuming that a contact owes you something in return.
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6. Review and correct your notes
Before an important conversation, glance at the details that will help you prepare. Update them when someone corrects you or their circumstances change. A note is a reminder, not a permanent fact about a person.
What questions are on the Mackay 66?
The downloadable questionnaire covers a wide range of personal and business context. Among its topics are:
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- The quality and history of the relationship.
- Other colleagues who know or work with the customer.
- The customer’s business objectives and concerns.
- Whether the person tends to focus on the present or the future.
For network-building, use those areas as prompts for listening rather than a checklist to complete. A lightweight set of relevant notes may be more appropriate than a full customer profile when you are getting to know a peer or mentor.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is the Mackay 66 free?
Yes. The Mackay Academy resources page lists the Mackay 66 among its free resources. You can try the core method without buying a book or course.
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What the Mackay 66 can—and cannot—tell you
The framework offers a practical way to remember useful context and personalize follow-up. The sources describing it present Mackay’s perspective and practice; they do not establish through controlled evaluation that using the profile causes stronger relationships or better sales outcomes. Treat it as a listening and preparation tool, not a guaranteed networking formula.
Mackay’s networking advice also emphasizes being helpful without making a show of it, responding promptly when people ask for help, and being patient. He says positioning some networking goals can take 1–2 years; that is his advice, not a universal timeline or research finding. You can read his guidance at “Networking 101.”
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