Why Patience Kills

You succeed through speed in today’s business environment. Patience is no virtue. It’s a relationship killer, deal killer and career killer.

If patience is a leg of your personal brand triad, rethink your goals. Laying in wait for a response to your resume, proposal or request? Might as well try to send a telegram offering your congratulations to your competition.

Treasure goes to the assertive, relentless and even (fairly) sneaky people who go full throttle in pursuit of immediate gratification of their needs – or at least feedback.

We’ve documented this in marketing for the last three decades. Companies that wait to perfect a new product before going to market will lose out on the lucrative first mover advantage – because a competitor is going to lead the charge with a buggy iteration the market may embrace warts and all.

Job seekers lose out when they lag in the aggressive pursuit of the positions they desire to fill or create. No one thinks you’re polite because you fail to “show up” multiple times in our inboxes, while you’re waiting for us to remember to call you in or call you back.

Consider that to us – the people with whom you would like to do business – you are essentially a missing person, if you are not fighting for our attention. If you are waiting patiently for us to return your emails and phone calls, you are playing hide and seek with the wrong people. This is true even when you know us and you know we like you. Even if you’re well recommended or even related.

Good things don’t come to those who wait.

Watch crime shows? Then you might know that the odds of finding a missing person drop by 50% at 48 hours. After that, the odds drop by 2% per hour until at 72 hours, the odds plummet to about zero.

This treacherous slope of failure mirrors the half-life of job openings, making a sale after a presentation or getting asked to do or be paid for whatever it is that’s on the table.

Sure, if the race is long enough, the turtle will win. But today’s business opportunities are sprints and high hurdles. The rabbit has a very good chance of enjoying the rewards that the turtle crept toward even as the crowd was long gone.

There is no virtue in missing opportunity. Not returning phone calls, emails, texts, or lagging your “liking” a comment on your thread by a very important person, kills the chances of your developing a relationship as each minute goes by.

Leap on each job announcement or tip about a business opportunities – and ride like a cowboy on a bull in a rodeo. Stay on it.

The odds are you are missing opportunity right now, simply because you are too patient.

Your parents were wrong. Patience is no virtue. You should be see
AND heard. And, you MUST talk to strangers.

Do it now!