One thing I hate about business is that many people don't feel they have to return phone calls, or respond to email.

Now, if someone is just soliciting, whether or not the other person knows them or not, that's a much different thing, because if someone is trying to sell you something that you don't want at that moment, you're under no obligation to get back to that person, especially if you don't know them.

However, if someone has contacted you for information, or you're trying to buy something from them, one would believe that it's not only good customer service to return that phone call or email, but it's also courteous. After all, who doesn't want to make more sales? By that token, why ask for information, only to ignore that person when they try to get back to you to give you what you initially asked for?

From my perspective, I tend to respond to things based on how I'd feel if it were happening to me. As an independent consultant, I'm supposed to make more calls than I do, but I'm a monster on email. I get contacted all the time because I have a pretty good web presence, but I'm amazed at how often people don't send the response email afterwards. And when I hear the excuse "I don't check email often", my response usually wants to be "then don't give the address out to anyone."

I remember a guy many years ago who told me he didn't understand why time was such a big deal. I asked him how he felt when he was expecting someone to reach him by a certain time and it didn't happen. He said it bothered him. I said "there you go", and, according to him, he was never late again, and his business started to strive because of it.

Most of us have skewed priorities when it comes to things like this, and are always ready to blame someone else for doing to us what we do to others. How many people really believe rich people got rich by ignoring phone calls from people they may not have wanted to talk to? How many people really believe these rich people got rich by missing appointments on a consistent basis? Overall, we tend to get back what we put out. Overall, that is; for some of us, we'll just have to wait a little longer.