Hootie & the Blowfish 1990s hit says ‘Time ain’t no friend of mine…wasting time.’

“A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.” Job 14:5

You can make more money – but you cannot add more time to the twenty-four hours in a day.

Can you imagine what we could get down with ‘eight days a week.’

In all seriousness I bring this up because, while opportunity cost and return on time has always been important in business and personal life, with COVID this has only been magnified.

Time is valuable – an employee doesn’t want to work at home till eleven o’clock at night trying to get a purchase order processed and navigate multiple systems.

IT directors don’t want to have to go in after hours for simple patches that could be automated. IT Directors also don’t want to have to spend extra time digging into additional reports on multiple data silos from numerous not integrated software to ensure security.

For those of us who did work 20 of 24 hours just to be on top of everything – burnout is real. That leads to employee disengagement and attrition, which leads to less productivity.

As we enter the ‘post’ pandemic phase – where COVID is still active, but we are in a new era per se, the biggest conversation piece I recommend driving with customers is time.

Their time for a conversation is valuable -so when prospecting you have to be focused and specific in your value for requesting their time. IT has to be about their needs and not your feature pitch.

In speaking with customers – they are most likely dealing with budget freezes or stiffening approvals. Digging into processes and pain is still a foundation – but your ROI evaluation needs to be target to time.

What is their time worth? What would the cost of that time back to the company and their personal life be? How would that time improve value.

Many CEOS and CFOS don’t care about process – but how does this help the company make money and improve operational workflow. How does this empower productivity and ensure employee retention.

Time is being lost with most pain points you are investigating – time can be quantified to money.

With prospecting I feel I waste time with a ‘cold approach’ – cold calling and emailing is essential in sales and can be targeted, but when I don’t have a cadence in place I’m not able to get the return on my time.

Pivot your conversations around time and the cost of time. How have supply chain issues slowed down your workforce – if we were able to help empower your technicians to quickly file reports in the field and take orders – how would that improve your time and money.

Don’t forget when leaning into value – think about ROT – Return on Time and how you can help power the clock to ‘go back’ even a few hours a week.