Persistence Is Not the Same as Sales Performance

In the previous articles, I explored role fit, commercial curiosity and the ability to challenge customers constructively. This fourth article examines another frequently celebrated salesperson characteristic: persistence. More specifically, when does persistence create value, and when does it become commercially unproductive?

Never take no for an answer. Keep following up. The successful salesperson is the one who never gives up. Sales has accumulated quite a collection of advice about persistence. And understandably so. Selling involves uncertainty, rejection, delayed decisions and opportunities that disappear after considerable effort. The ability to deal constructively with setbacks is important.

But I think we should be careful about confusing persistence with performance. Because sometimes the most commercially intelligent thing a salesperson can do is stop pursuing an opportunity.

Resilience matters. Blind persistence is different.

Research has examined the relationship between psychological characteristics and salesperson performance for decades. Seligman and Schulman's 1986 research into life insurance sales agents found that explanatory style was associated with performance and retention. It offers an interesting perspective on how individuals respond to setbacks.

However, broader psychological research also gives us reason to be cautious about overstating persistence as a universal success factor. Credé and colleagues' 2017 meta-analysis of grit, for example, questions whether grit is as distinct from conscientiousness and as predictive of achievement as sometimes claimed. The study is not specific to sales, but it illustrates an important point:

Persistence should not become a substitute for understanding what actually produces results.

Not every stalled opportunity deserves more follow-up

Consider three sales situations.

Situation one: The customer has a genuine problem but does not yet understand its consequences. The salesperson may need to provide additional insight, strengthen the business case or engage different stakeholders. Persistence can be useful here.

Situation two: The customer understands the problem and sees the value, but struggles to make a decision. The difficulty may be uncertainty about implementation, internal disagreement, perceived risk or competing priorities. More pressure is unlikely to resolve all of those concerns. The salesperson needs to understand what is preventing a decision.

Situation three: The customer does not have a compelling need, sufficient budget or a realistic reason to act. Continuing to follow up may simply consume time that could have been invested elsewhere.

These situations require different commercial responses. Yet they can look remarkably similar in CRM: an opportunity with a repeatedly postponed close date.

The ability to disqualify is a sales capability

Sales leaders often focus on pipeline creation and opportunity progression. Both are important. But I would also examine how effectively a sales organisation removes opportunities that no longer meet its qualification criteria.

A salesperson who maintains a large pipeline of unlikely deals may appear commercially active while reducing forecasting quality and wasting valuable capacity. A disciplined salesperson should be able to answer three questions about a stalled opportunity:

1. What evidence do we have that the customer still has a relevant problem?
2. What has the customer committed to doing, beyond expressing general interest?
3. What has changed that makes further investment of our time commercially reasonable?

If none of these questions has a convincing answer, the next action may not be another follow-up. It may be to revisit qualification, change the approach or respectfully disengage.

Persistence requires judgement

This does not mean salespeople should abandon difficult opportunities at the first sign of resistance. Complex sales often require patience, multiple stakeholders and sustained engagement. But patience becomes valuable when it serves a credible commercial objective.

An experienced salesperson should understand the difference between resistance that can be addressed, indecision that requires support and an opportunity that was never sufficiently qualified.

Sales leadership has an important responsibility here. If every disqualified opportunity is treated as a failure, salespeople have an incentive to keep weak opportunities alive. That is not resilience. It is a predictable response to how performance is managed.

Great salespeople do not simply refuse to give up. They understand what deserves their persistence.

And sometimes knowing when to walk away is exactly what allows them to pursue something more valuable.

Continue the series: So far, we have examined capabilities that influence individual selling performance. But what happens when the entire company's growth depends on a handful of exceptional individuals? Next: Article 5 — The Best Salespeople Don't Need to Be Lone Wolves.