Persistence Pays, but How Much Does It Cost?

"Champions keep playing until they get it right." Billie Jean King, tennis legend

Persistence and perseverance are critically important to achieving goals. We need to unlock ways in which to cultivate a persistence mindset and create tools that help us to persist at work more dynamically, enabling us to realize our objectives more quickly.

There are some unique features in business development that require a particular approach with regard to persistence. We must demonstrate a high level of persistence when it comes to our business relationships, for example—if we want to prevent our meetings from starting to feel repetitive or pushy.

One of my new passions is wingsuit flying. This form of skydiving uses a webbing-sleeved jumpsuit, which allows the pilot to glide a long distance laterally while descending. To do it safely, a pilot needs skill and experience. She needs focus and discipline. She needs technical knowledge, physical fitness, preparation, and the confidence that comes from bringing all these together. These qualities can only arise from constant self-development, which requires persistence as well as its sister quality: patience.

So, how does the determined business development professional achieve goals using persistence?

1. Fully immerse yourself in understanding your goal

This is harder than it seems, but serious work at this stage can help avoid friction or plan reversals later. In business development, the goal is to build and maintain relationships for the business. Fully immersing yourself in the understanding of that project means thinking about your new potential partners and understanding their needs, ambitions, what they want to achieve in their sectors, and a host of other factors. Seeing the world from your prospect's perspective takes time and research, but it pays off.

Once you understand your goal, think about how your offer might fit and how you, as the business development professional, might align with the partner to start building the relationship.

2. Plot a clear path toward success

This is a macro-level stage in which you should visualize the overall pathway using what you know about your goal.

In wingsuit flying, as in all linear sports (such as running or mountaineering), you are imagining the whole journey, from the initial launch to the resolution. As in the first phase, there is a sensory, immersive quality in which you must rely upon your imagination to guide you through the process.

3. Build your step list

Now for the micro part. The step list comprises the hurdles you will need to clear that lie on the pathway to your goal. Here, you can drill down into the technical process as thoroughly as you like. The steps may be critically dependent on each other and need to follow a sequence.

Project management tools like critical path analysis and visualization techniques like mind mapping could be helpful here. The legendary free solo climber Alex Honnold, who ascended Yosemite's El Capitan—a 3,000-foot cliff—without a rope in 2017, logged and studied every single move he had to make for almost a decade before attempting the climb. That was some step list, but it paid off.

4. Do not let your goal dictate your persistence

Sometimes, you'll have to review the goal and modify it, so don't make your plans inflexible. Be ready to pivot rapidly and effectively in the face of unexpected change. All relationships develop unevenly over time and are influenced by an ecosystem of other connections over which you have no control. The same conditions apply exactly in business development. The persistent professional learns to "tack with the wind" to use the sailing term: That is, to swing the vessel to a new course if the wind direction changes.

5. Be prepared to fail and stay mentally fit and resilient

It may be a cliche, but it is worth repeating: Failure is a wonderful teacher. The persistent business development professional knows that reversals and rejection go with the territory. The only real failure is not learning from a setback.

By being detached and resilient, you can look at each part of your step list as a mechanic looks at an engine. Constantly review and analyze each step—what made it succeed or fail? Where could it have succeeded better? To look at failure objectively, you need to be mentally strong. Resilience is critical.

6. Enjoy the experience of persistence and patience so it becomes a habit

By nurturing the habits of persistence and patience into your work, you will start to practice them automatically and apply the tools and strategies from a persistence mindset that comes easily and doesn't need conscious application. Once this is achieved, you can manage to stop thinking about failure as a personally-defining threat to cause anxiety but rather a technical issue that needs attention from the belief that persistence will eventually deliver.

Business development is persistence in action

The persistent business development professional keeps up a high level of emotional intelligence while not giving up, even when times are difficult. Katherine Barchetti, the upscale Pittsburgh retailer of the 1970s and '80s, once said: "Make a customer, not a sale."

Persistence in business development is about building relationships through repeated and patient demonstrations of quality values, including trust, respect, and a willingness to show vulnerability. If done well, it can bring in clients, drive higher profits, and create more business. Persistence must be consciously applied, flexible, and practiced in conjunction with patience and resilience.

In business development, persistence is about learning from each business relationship and repeatedly inventing new ways of showing high-quality values. It is the same persistence that leads to skill and success in wingsuit flying and many other extreme sports. Successful persistence in business development means detaching failure from personal feelings and looking at the relationship-build as a process you can master. As Albert Einstein said, "It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer."

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Originally published: 29 December 2022