Picture this. You just sent a request for a quote to three vendors. You are sitting there, phone in hand, and every hour that passes without a reply chips away at your confidence in that company. Did they get my message? Are they even the right fit? Should I just call the next name on the list?
Now flip it around. Your customers are doing that exact thing to you right now.
I recently sat down with Jay Baer on the Marketing Smarts podcast to talk about his research in the book Time to Win, and honestly, it rearranged some furniture in my brain. Jay has spent years studying what makes businesses win, from word of mouth to customer experience, and his latest research points to one simple, uncomfortable truth. Most companies think they are fast enough. The data says they are not, and the gap between those two realities is exactly where your competitors are eating your lunch.
Let's dig into what this means for your business, and what you can actually do about it starting this week.
Why Speed Became the New Currency of Trust
Here is the thing Jay said that stuck with me. What was fast five years ago is slow today, and that trend is not reversing. If anything, it is accelerating.
Think about what changed. The pandemic taught all of us that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and that shifted how we value our own time. At the same moment, one click shopping became the default for almost everything we buy. Jay calls it the Amazonization of expectations. We got used to instant, and now we expect instant everywhere, including from your B2B sales team.
The newest research backs this up in a big way. 82 percent of consumers now expect an immediate response to a sales or marketing question, and 60 percent define immediate as ten minutes or less. greetnow.com Meanwhile, the average B2B lead still waits roughly 42 hours for a first response, and more than half of companies take longer than five days. greetnow.com That gap is not a small crack. It is a canyon, and it is sitting wide open for any business willing to close it.
Jay put it this way in our conversation. Businesses that build a culture of responsiveness now, while their competitors are complaining about it, earn themselves a real head start before everyone else catches up. I believe him, and here is why. Being first to respond is one of the few competitive advantages left that does not require a bigger budget. It requires a decision.
Reflective question for you: if a prospect reached out to your business today, would they feel like they mattered within the hour, or would they be left wondering if their message landed in a black hole?
The Story You Tell Yourself About Being Fast Enough
Jay told me something in our conversation that I have not stopped thinking about. When he asks B2B leaders how long it takes to answer a customer question or send a quote, he almost never gets a number. He gets a story.
Something like, well, it usually takes two days, but if it is over the weekend it could be five, and if Shirley is on vacation it could stretch to six, but on a perfect day maybe we could do it tomorrow.
That is not math. That is a collection of excuses dressed up as an answer.
If speed is going to be your competitive advantage, you need real numbers. You need to know your median response time and your average response time, not a vibe. Jay calls the process for figuring this out the Got It audit, and it is exactly what it sounds like. You map out every single thing a customer needs from you, setting an appointment, getting a quote, getting a question answered, paying a bill, and you time how long it actually takes today.
This is the foundational piece. You cannot improve what you refuse to measure, and most businesses have never actually measured this. They have only told themselves a comfortable story about it.
Here is your homework this week. Pick your three most common customer requests. Time how long each one actually takes from request to resolution, using real timestamps, not memory. That number is your starting line.
The Right Now Principle and Your Goldilocks Zone
Once you have your real numbers, the next question is what do you do with them. This is where Jay introduced a concept he calls the right now.
The right now is the perfect amount of elapsed time in any interaction, and it is defined as slightly faster than your customer expects. If you are way slower than expected, they get frustrated. If you are way faster than expected, they get confused, almost suspicious. The sweet spot is that Goldilocks zone right in the middle, and it looks different for every business.
The right now for a bank is different than the right now for a software company, which is different again from a cruise line. There is no universal number here. There is only your number, and you find it by understanding what your specific customers expect, then beating that expectation just slightly.
This matters because speed for the sake of speed can actually backfire. If you respond to a serious inquiry in eleven seconds with an obviously automated reply, that can read as impersonal rather than impressive. The goal is not robotic speed. The goal is respectful speed, calibrated to what your customer actually needs from you.
What It Actually Costs You to Make Someone Wait
Let's talk numbers, because this is where the conversation with Jay got real.
Two thirds of customers say speed matters as much as price. thetimetowin.com Sit with that for a second. Are you actually running your business as if that were true? Most leaders are not.
More than half of customers say they have hired the first business that responded to them, even when that business was not the cheapest option. thetimetowin.com Jay shared a story about a friend who needed a billboard advertising quote. She called three companies. The first got back to her in a few hours with a rough estimate. The second took two days. The third took eleven days, by which point she had already hired the first company. And here is the part that should make every business owner sit up straight. The company she hired was not the cheapest. It was the most expensive. It did not matter, because speed reads as caring, and responsiveness reads as respect. People will pay more for that feeling every single time.
This is not just an acquisition play either. Jay's research found that speed is a critical factor in loyalty for the vast majority of customers, meaning responsiveness helps you keep the customers you already earned, not just win new ones. In an uncertain economy, that retention math matters even more.
One more finding surprised both of us. Gen Z, the generation everyone assumes is impatient and glued to their phones, actually tested as the most patient generation in the research. Baby Boomers tested as the least patient. Jay's theory is that retired customers with more free time actually have more bandwidth to notice, and get frustrated by, slow service. It is a good reminder to check your assumptions about who needs speed most. It is probably not who you think.
And the newest 2026 lead data shows this problem has not solved itself. B2B leads contacted within five minutes convert at dramatically higher rates than leads contacted later, yet a large share of leads never get a real first response at all. greetnow.com Wait, let me say that cleanly. A large share of leads never get contacted at all. greetnou.com That gap is your opportunity if you are willing to close it before your competitors do.
Four Moves That Build a Real Culture of Responsiveness
Knowing the problem is not enough. Here are the four moves Jay shared that you can actually put into practice.
1. Run the Got It audit first. Before you fix anything, measure everything. Get real numbers on how long your key customer touchpoints take today. This is your baseline, and every improvement gets measured against it.
2. Respond without answers. This one changed how Jay operates in his own life, and I think it will change yours too. When someone asks you a question you cannot immediately answer, do not disappear while you go find the answer. Respond right away and say something like, good question, let me find out and I will get back to you. Two things happen. The request moves off their mental to do list and onto yours, which changes how responsive they feel you are. And it buys you the actual time you need to get the real answer right. Time to response matters more psychologically than time to resolution. Say that one twice.
3. Close the uncertainty gap. The uncertainty gap is the space between what you know internally and what your customer knows about their own request. Jay told a great story about ordering handmade shoes online that were going to take ten weeks to arrive. Instead of leaving him in the dark, the company sent him a weekly email introducing him to the actual craftspeople making his shoes. He never once felt anxious about the wait, because he was never uninformed. Being under informed creates anxiety even when the wait itself is reasonable. Close that gap with proactive updates, even small ones.
4. Offer a fast pass. One in four customers say they would pay as much as fifty percent more to skip the wait entirely. thetimetowin.com Think TSA PreCheck, or a hotel letting you pay a small fee for early check in. This works in nearly any business. A consultant can charge a premium for expedited onboarding. A service business can charge more to move a client to the front of the queue. It costs you nothing but a little resequencing, and it turns your existing speed into a new revenue line.
How Sidekick Strategies Helps You Build This, One Step at a Time
Here is where I want to be honest with you. None of this requires you to be a giant enterprise with a call center and a huge team. It requires intention and the right systems.
At Sidekick Strategies, this is exactly the kind of work we help business owners, HubSpot Super Admins, and marketing leaders put into motion. We start with your own version of the Got It audit, using your actual HubSpot data to find out how long things really take today, not the story your team has been telling itself. From there, we help you build workflows and automation that shrink your response times without making your business feel robotic, close uncertainty gaps with proactive customer communication sequences, and identify where a fast pass offer could become a new profit center inside your existing service menu.
This is not about working harder. It is about respecting your customer's time on purpose, with a system behind it instead of good intentions alone.
Your Time to Win Starts Now
Jay left me with one last piece of wisdom that I want to leave with you. If you are not differentiated, you will never hit your goals. You have to know your point of difference, and then double down on it everywhere you can.
Speed might just be yours. It is available to nearly every business willing to measure it, own it, and act on it before their competitors wake up.
So here is my question for you. If a customer reached out to your business right now, this very minute, would they feel respected by how quickly you showed up for them? If the honest answer makes you a little uncomfortable, good. That discomfort is exactly where the opportunity lives.
Reach out to Sidekick Strategies, and let's build your Got It audit together. One honest number is where every real transformation begins.
