When Persistence Becomes Expensive in Sales

“Never give up” sounds like good sales advice.

Until a salesperson spends six months chasing an opportunity that was never qualified.

Until repeated follow-ups begin irritating the buyer.

Until a team continues investing in one large account while better opportunities receive less attention.

The salesperson may be working hard.

The problem is not the absence of persistence.

It is where that persistence is being spent.

Sales needs persistence

Salespeople face rejection, delays and uncertainty almost every day.

Buyers stop responding.

Decisions move into the next quarter.

Champions change roles.

Budgets disappear.

Internal priorities shift.

Without persistence, many legitimate opportunities would be abandoned too early.

But persistence is not automatically productive.

The salesperson also needs to recognise when to:

• Continue with the current approach.
• Change the strategy.
• Seek new information.
• Engage another stakeholder.
• Slow the opportunity down.
• Disqualify it.
• Walk away.

This is goal-directed persistence.

The purpose is not to keep going indefinitely.

It is to allocate effort according to the evidence.

What is grit?

Grit is generally described as perseverance and passion in pursuit of long-term goals.

The idea became popular because it offered a simple explanation for achievement: people who remain committed and continue working through difficulty are more likely to succeed.

That principle appears naturally relevant to sales.

A salesperson who gives up after every rejection will struggle to build a pipeline.

Someone who continues learning, prospecting and improving through difficult periods may create better opportunities over time.

But the research presents a more careful picture than the popular phrase “grit predicts success.”

What did the B2B sales research find?

In 2019, Riley Dugan and colleagues published research examining salesperson grit in a business-to-business sales context.

The study defined grit as perseverance in pursuit of long-term goals.

The researchers found that grittier salespeople performed better and reported greater job satisfaction than less gritty salespeople in the context studied.

They also found relationships involving:

• Competitiveness.
• Self-efficacy.
• Social astuteness.
• Need for power.

Self-efficacy and social astuteness were associated with higher grit.

But the study also identified a potential dark side.

The positive relationship between grit and performance was weakened when the salesperson’s need for power was higher.

This matters because persistence does not operate in isolation.

Why the salesperson is persisting and how they interpret the situation can affect whether that effort remains useful.

What does the wider evidence say?

In 2017, Marcus Credé, Michael Tynan and Peter Harms published a meta-analysis of the grit literature.

Their review included:

• 584 effect sizes.
• 88 independent samples.
• 66,807 individuals.

The authors found that grit was moderately related to performance and retention.

They also found that grit overlapped strongly with conscientiousness.

Importantly, the perseverance-of-effort component was more useful than consistency of interest when predicting outcomes.

The researchers questioned whether grit should be treated as one higher-order construct and suggested that interventions intended to increase grit may have only weak effects on performance and success.

This does not mean persistence is irrelevant.

It means we should be cautious about presenting grit as a unique superpower or a guaranteed route to better performance.

Persistence and repetition are not the same

A salesperson sends the same follow-up message every week.

They call this persistence.

But nothing in the message changes.

No new stakeholder is approached.

No additional value is created.

No new information enters the opportunity.

The effort continues.

The strategy remains frozen.

That is repetition, not adaptation.

Useful persistence should create one of two things:

• Movement.
• Better information.

If it creates neither, the salesperson needs to question whether the current approach still deserves investment.

What misallocated persistence looks like

A salesperson may be misallocating persistence when they:

• Continue pursuing a buyer who has shown no evidence of commitment.
• Increase follow-up frequency without changing the message.
• Avoid disqualifying a large opportunity because of its potential value.
• Remain attached to a friendly champion who lacks influence.
• Keep defending a strategy after the buyer’s priorities change.
• Invest heavily in one deal while neglecting pipeline creation.
• Treat withdrawal as personal failure.
• Continue because of the effort already invested rather than the evidence available now.

None of these behaviours necessarily reflects laziness or poor motivation.

The salesperson may be highly committed.

But commitment to the wrong action can still become expensive.

Why salespeople remain attached to weak deals

Large opportunities create hope.

The possible commission is attractive.

The account may carry status.

The salesperson has already spent months building the relationship.

Walking away means accepting that the time invested may not produce a return.

This makes disengagement psychologically difficult.

The salesperson begins looking for reasons to continue.

A polite buyer response becomes evidence of interest.

A delayed meeting becomes proof that the opportunity is still alive.

A vague statement about “next quarter” becomes a future commitment.

The salesperson is no longer only evaluating the deal.

They are protecting the effort already invested in it.

Persistence interacts with other sales behaviours

Goal-directed persistence does not operate alone.

Self-efficacy

A salesperson with low self-efficacy may disengage too early because they do not believe they can manage the next step.

Another may persist without sufficient capability because their confidence is too high.

Rejection response

A salesperson may abandon an opportunity to avoid another rejection.

Or they may over-invest in one accepting buyer because starting new conversations feels more threatening.

Adaptive selling

Persistence without adaptation becomes repetition.

The salesperson continues working but fails to change the strategy when the evidence changes.

Explanatory style

One failed attempt may be interpreted as proof that the entire opportunity is impossible.

Alternatively, every setback may be explained away, preventing an honest decision to disengage.

Buyer value recognition

A salesperson may persist because the product appears valuable to them, even though the buyer has not recognised enough value to support change.

The commercial question is therefore not simply:

“Is this salesperson persistent?”

It is:

“Can they allocate persistence appropriately?”

Where IncaZing fits

IncaZing places sales professionals inside situations where continuing is not always the correct answer.

A large opportunity may have stopped producing new information.

A champion may be supportive but unable to influence the decision.

A buyer may repeatedly delay without making a commitment.

A different approach may still create movement.

Or the evidence may support disengagement.

Participants need to decide whether to:

• Continue.
• Adapt.
• Escalate.
• Requalify.
• Pause.
• Disengage.

We examine the reasoning behind that decision.

Are they responding to evidence?

Are they protecting the time already invested?

Are they avoiding rejection?

Are they continuing because the opportunity genuinely remains viable?

The purpose is not to reduce persistence.

It is to make persistence more intelligent.

What managers should ask

When reviewing a stalled opportunity, “What are you doing next?” may not be enough.

A manager can also ask:

• What new information have we gained recently?
• What evidence shows that the buyer remains committed?
• Has the decision structure changed?
• Which assumption are we still relying on?
• What would justify further investment?
• What would tell us to disengage?
• Are we persisting with the goal or merely repeating the action?

These questions help move the conversation away from optimism and toward evidence.

Why this matters to founders and sales leaders

Misallocated persistence can affect:

• Sales-cycle length.
• Forecast accuracy.
• Pipeline quality.
• Prospecting consistency.
• Manager coaching time.
• Cost of sale.
• Opportunity concentration.
• The number of better deals ignored.

A pipeline can appear large while containing opportunities that no longer deserve attention.

The CRM shows that the deal remains open.

It may not show whether the salesperson is persisting thoughtfully or protecting an emotional attachment to the outcome.

AI can recommend the next step

AI can flag inactivity, analyse engagement and recommend follow-up actions.

That can help sales teams notice risk.

But the human still needs to judge:

Is this opportunity stalled or dead?

Is the buyer uncertain or disengaged?

Should we change the strategy or leave the account alone?

What evidence would justify another investment of time?

The answer cannot come from activity alone.

It requires context and judgement.

The IncaZing view

Persistence matters in sales.

So does knowing when persistence has stopped serving the goal.

IncaZing helps sales professionals examine whether to continue, adapt or disengage based on the evidence available in the situation.

Because the strongest salesperson is not always the one who refuses to quit.

Sometimes it is the one who knows where the next hour of effort will create more value.

Research sources

Dugan, R., Hochstein, B., Rouziou, M., & Britton, B. (2019). Gritting their teeth to close the sale: The positive effect of salesperson grit on job satisfaction and performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 39(1), 81–101.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2018.1489726

Credé, M., Tynan, M. C., & Harms, P. D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492–511.

https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000102

Secondary keywords: salesperson grit, goal-directed persistence, sales pipeline management, sales psychology, stalled opportunities