Time is The New Gold

If there is one fundamental thing that customers have realised has no elasticity it is time. They are quite clear they can get access to more money. They can always get more “stuff”. There is always an alternative. But time is finite. There always have been and always will be 168 hours in a week.

Forget the 35 hour week – most of us will spend at least 50 hours a week travelling to and fulfilling our employment commitments. 8 hours sleep a night takes another 56 hours a week. Eating will consume another 14 hours. Washing bathing, dressing and undressing another 7 hours.

That leaves a grand total of 41 hours to take the kids to school, sport and any other activity they have. Do the house maintenance work and all the fundamentals of just getting family life to hang together. Have some leisure time – perhaps a little golf or tennis. To read or do some quiet television watching. Entertainment.

And then perhaps shopping.

And we can no longer console ourselves with thinking that women are the saviour. In recent industry analysis there are now more white collar females than males in accountancy and law. Under 30, the balance is in favour of women in all paid employment – albeit dominated by part time employment.

So the key battleground is first and foremost claiming share of time before we can get anywhere near share of wallet. Consumers today have a new personal key performance indicator. I call it R.O.T. – return on time.

So what are you doing to give your customers a better return on their time investment than your competitor does?