The early bird gets the worm! Or, in this case, the hawk gets the grasshopper (at least that’s what it looks like to me in the above photo). Speed is this species’ preferred tool for success (as it is also for cheetah, peregrine falcons, and others in the animal kingdom). Speed is king!

The speed of business can be breakneck to keep up with. As soon as an idea for a new product, service or project pops into your head, you imagine it done. It’s fully formed. Speed is the 3D printer in your head. Except someone has to do all the actual concept-to-delivery legwork. Ugh!

As an element of business, speed is critical to success as it touches on so many aspects, from strategy to technology to competition. But not all speed has to be moving at a hundred miles per hour. If your business is hospitality, or consciously slows down the clock to provide relief, you have a different relation to speed.

How do you bring your product or service to market?

I prefer the speed of Jeannie. (You recall Jeannie: she folded her arms, blinked and voila!—Fully formed thing was right in front of her. I never understood why that made Major Nelson mad….)

Set aside the Speed of Jeannie for the moment (or Samantha, if you preferred Bewitched): how comfortable are you with speed and your business? Be honest!

• Do you make decisions about your business quickly?
• Do you usually linger and mull over all the angles before taking action?
• Do you speed through tasks and projects with a sense that every minute counts?
• Or, do you savor the process and find you get better results by taking your time to come to conclusions?
• Are you a procrastinator extraordinaire?
• Or, do you quickly dive headlong into projects?

There’s no right or wrong answer: it’s your business, not anyone else’s. But what I want to drill down is whether or not there are areas of your business where speed could be improved?

Speed and Relativity

If your product is agricultural or seasonal, then you must wait for Mother Nature to do her thing. There’s no rushing the process. Adjusting the speed isn’t an option you can control.

When you work for yourself, however, without helpers, you control the entire speed process: Do you want to have your product/service out to the public yesterday? Then you can power through the night to get it ready. Speed feels accelerated and even compressed.

Many of my clients, however, know they are reliant upon other team members to produce the product/service. Then speed feels slow and elongated. Beating the clock may require inspiring your team, or offering an incentive (hello, rush fees), to achieve the desired speed.

Fast execution, fierce competition

High speed is the essence of some businesses. No sooner do you place an order for some obscure items on Amazon, and then the doorbell rings with their delivery. We live in the Jetsons’ era now.

When you monopolize the market like Amazon, with both amazing selection and speed of delivery, you edge out most competition. But competitors to Amazon succeed because they have products Amazon doesn’t offer or other services not available through the behemoth. What’s your edge?

First to act, first to profit

Technological advances rely upon beating competitors’ speed to market. Think of Moore’s Law: When it came to Intel cornering the chip market as they doubled the speed of processing every 24-months they dominated the market…until they didn’t (because they didn’t jump on the AI-chipset technology). Adapt fast or fall behind.

Slow…It…Down….

The flip side of speed-to-market is slowing down. Who doesn’t love the quiet and stillness of a bookstore nook, the opportunity to make time transform into something else, even otherworldly?

Speed, to the massage therapist, Reiki master, hotel owner or hospitality professional, may have a very different definition. Their customers are looking for the clock to slow down or stop altogether. Their success depends upon helping their clients forget about time and speed.

Improving Your Business’ Speed

Let’s take a look at different speeds and aspects of time to find out if you want to make adjustments to your business to improve your speed, slower or faster.

1. Speed to Market – If your product is reliant upon hitting the market faster than any one else’s, this is probably top of mind for your business. Remember the golden triangle: you get to choose two of three – speed, quality or price. Which are most important?
2. Speed of Service – Do you answer your customers’ phone calls on the first ring? Return messages promptly? Complete projects quickly? Companies have died due to poor customer service and response. Where does this land in your list of speed priorities?
3. Speed of Technology – Be aware of your website’s speed. This is also often referred to as Speed Performance or specifically: length of time to load the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). If the seconds tick by while your site loads on a phone or desktop device, you may already be losing potential clients. Fix it if slow!
4. Speed of Sales Cycle – Related to your site speed performance, what about the entire UX (user) experience? Is the text/content too long before the call-to-action (CTA)? Can you improve the sales experience to make it more enjoyable, more fun?
5. Speed of Productivity – This area of your business is behind-the-scenes. Friction slows down time. If your goal is to generate an estimate or proposal for a prospective client at top speed, you’d better have an assortment of templates and tools to quickly customize them for your prospects. Where can you make time savings?

Here are a few more questions to ask about speed and your business:

1. Do you want to be known for your fast response?
2. Is it realistic and maintainable to consistently reply quickly?
3. Can you employ additional tools to indicate progress on your website? For example, this post has a progress bar at the top of the page to indicate how far you’ve read. Other folks will list the number of minutes to read an article at the top of a story.
4. Can you compress time perception? For example, some websites ask the visitor to perform an action and hit submit, page after page, which may annoy the visitor. But the same steps may seem more reasonable to complete if they were all presented on one page, with one submit button to click.
5. Have you surveyed your customers to help determine their perceptions of time in the sales cycle?
6. Are you tracking how you speed through your own time?

Summary

Did you scan through the article to find phrases that jumped out to you? (You should have!) Time is of the essence and is extremely valuable.

• Schedule time regularly to conduct time audits of your business.
• What aspects of your business need to move faster? Bringing products to market? Shortening the sales cycle? Improving customer service?
• Note where improvement is needed and develop a plan to address problem areas.
• Run a personal audit: Do you hesitate to move faster? What holds you back from moving at a greater speed?

Changing speed is difficult. We’re used to our own patterns with some preferring the fast lane at all times and others seeking out a more languid speed. What steps do you need to take to move out of your comfort zone and gain comfort going either faster or slower than you’re used to. It’s how we grow!

More Elements of Business: Repetition – Marketing’s Secret Weapoon

Elements of Business focuses on one word or short phrase about business. Given the demands upon our daily attention, it’s often daunting to consider the recommendations in an article. (It’s estimated the average American consumes about 100,000 words heard or read every day.) But a simple word or phrase may be enough to stir your grey cells on the task at hand.