How Accessible Are You?

I write this frustrated. My Internet lately at my home has been up and down, up and down and I don’t have any resolve from my Internet service provider. How often are you reachable?

Sunday night my phone rang at 11 pm. I thought about answering it…looked at the caller ID and decided to let it go to voice jail. I listened to the message the next morning and heard a young woman inquiring about pricing and services for an upcoming event. She went on to say how hectic her schedule was and with everything going on she only found time at 11 pm at night to make the call to me.

Now…. this isn’t a column about whether or not you should answer that phone call…. or is it? What would you do? Do you answer the call? Do you not? I think a lot of that depends on where you are at in your business. I don’t ever want to be too comfortable and neither should you, in my opinion. About the time you stop working in your business is the time someone else hungrier than you come up who’s working ON their business and bypasses you all the way to the top of your market. I didn’t answer the call that night because I wasn’t in the business frame of mind at the time and wouldn’t be giving that person the proper attention. Think about that the next time you’re about to answer a call and decide if you can devote the proper care to that caller.

Everyone you come into contact with deserves that level of respect.

This woman didn’t realize that she might also be calling a phone where people are at all the time and didn’t think of the possibility of waking someone. The point is, how available are you? Are you available at all hours of the night? Today’s client is EXACTLY as described above in most cases…AT MINIMUM. They’re busy…swamped…and oftentimes needs someone extremely flexible in their schedule to accommodate her needs.

I had another recent conversation with a fellow entrepreneur who told me the story of a store owner who has quite a unique display of inventory in her shop but won’t put any pictures of them online because she doesn’t want anyone to see what she has. Excuse me…. if potential customers don’t know what you have…. how will they know if they want to buy from you or not?

It’s no wonder this same store owner was also complaining about how her business has been slow lately as well.

This to me is one of the most asinine thought processes I have ever heard. Today we DON’T compete on product…we compete on our talent, the results we deliver our client and our service. End of story. Increase those three areas of your business; keep an open mind about what you offer and how you run your business, and you’ll go far. If you stay stagnant and closed-minded, you’ll watch your competition will pass you by on the way to the bank.