When faced with competing priorities in today’s busy world, responding to everyone who reaches out to you is a challenge, but responding noticeably late (or not at all) is detrimental to job and business opportunities. More broadly, a poor response time reflects negatively on you as a professional, and in turn, on your personal brand. By not acknowledging communications, you impress upon senders a lack of respect for them or their business, indicate that you’re not on top of your workload or that you don’t pay attention to detail –- undesirable conclusions all around.