Personal finance columnist Scott Burns says that one way to find good investment choices is to watch your own spending patterns. After analyzing his own spending, he realized that he had shifted his business to companies that respected his time. In some cases, he was spending more money than he had before, but he was freeing up time he had been spending in stores, standing in line, etc.

I can relate. When I had more time than money, I was willing to spend time to save money. These days I find myself less and less willing to do so. I will pay more if it saves me time--and aggravation.

With all of us feeling more pressed for time these days, it is likely that your customers are making decisions about where they spend their money based on convenience. Yes, price and quality are important, but time has become an important part of our buying decisions.

How does this affect your business? To get and keep customers make it easy for them to do business with you.

• Don't make them spend a lot of time on the phone or in line.

• Minimize errors that cause them to spend time returning merchandise or dealing with service issues.

• Have business hours that conform to their schedules.

• Go to them instead of making them come to you.

• Make it easy for them to find what they need on your web site and in your physical location.

The less time customers have to spend dealing with you, the more time they have to do the things they want or need to do.