It seems that the only way to win these days is to move faster and faster.

I’m going to warn you right now, you’re either going to love or hate this blog post.  And you might outwardly hate me for writing it but inwardly envy my ideas.

This question of how do businesses keep up in a world that feels like it gets faster every day was brought to my attention by a post I saw on LinkedIn a few weeks ago.  I had to let it marinate a while to decide how I felt about it.  More importantly how I would respond to it.

The post listed out a few ways business owners could keep up and take great care of their clients.  One of the tips was this:

Return phone calls and emails in two hours or less.

I kept reading and then returned to this wonderful sounding sentence.  Give your clients immediate help, immediate attention, immediate answers.  But then it dawned on me that I don’t expect this from the people who I do business with.  I don’t expect them to be “on call” for me.  In fact it’s kind of repulsing to think that they might interrupt dinner to reply to my email that just buzz them on their smart phone.

Just because emails, voicemails, texts, faxes and social media alerts can be delivered into our hot little hand 24/7 doesn’t mean we have to be a slave to them.

Are you really more “professional” if you are texting during networking events….

Taking phone calls during appointments…

Or sending emails when someone is trying to talk to you?

The real test of what we believe is worked out in what we do.  Derek and I had to decide what our policy would be.  Would we sleep with our iphones and never miss a call?  Would we be sending emails over a nice dinner out?  Would we be on call for our clients?  We decided against it.  In fact we decided to not even take our phones with us when we take Charlie on a walk or go down to 5th for a frozen yogurt.

Nothing bugs me more than when I’m with someone (either in person or on the phone) and they aren’t really there with me.

We may take 24-48 hours to call a client back.  We might not be able to fit in an appointment for two weeks but I can tell you this…

When we are with our clients we are really with them.  We are listening, taking notes and actively participating.

We like to give our best to our clients.  Our clients aren’t a number to us.  They aren’t even a business to us.  They are human beings, individuals, people with families and school plays and pets.  They have plenty on their plate and the way we feel like we can best serve them is by being present every single time we interact.

So, no we won’t be going faster to keep up – we’ll be going slower.