Patient Urgency
Act aggressively on today's opportunities without demanding instant results
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Perkins argues that success in a difficult mortgage market requires patience and urgency at the same time. Patience comes from recognizing that rates, buying activity, and refinancing move through cycles; a salesperson cannot command the timing of the market. Urgency governs controllable behavior inside that cycle. Rather than waiting for conditions to improve, the salesperson digs deeper, has more conversations, builds more relationships, and increases the frequency of useful connections. The two forces correct each other's failure modes: patience prevents panic and false expectations, while urgency prevents patience from becoming inactivity. The result is a sustainable operating stance for a market where fewer buyers and stronger competition mean that easy, automatic business cannot be assumed.
Origin
Perkins offered the combined mindset when asked what loan officers and entrepreneurs need in the current environment. Extracted from Coffeez for Closers.
Core principles
- 01Market cycles require patience
- 02Present opportunities still require action
- 03Hard markets demand deeper activity
- 04Patience is not passivity
- 05Urgency is not a promise of immediate reward
How to run it
- 1
Name the cycle
Recognize which parts of the environment are cyclical and outside your immediate control. Use historical perspective to avoid treating the present as permanent.
Watch out Do not use cycles to dismiss a structural decline in demand.
- 2
Separate controllables
List the actions you can increase now, especially conversations, relationships, and connection frequency.
Pro tip Measure behavior separately from closed outcomes.
- 3
Drive harder
Increase the depth and consistency of those controllable actions. Treat a hard year as a period requiring more deliberate activity, not a toss-up.
Watch out More activity should remain relevant and respectful rather than becoming noise.
- 4
Hold the timeline lightly
Maintain action without demanding that the market reward it immediately. Continue to review whether opportunities and demand remain real.
Pro tip Use a fixed review cadence rather than reacting emotionally each day.
In the wild
Perkins points to a market with fewer buyers and more loan officers and agents competing for share. His response is not simply to wait for rates to change, but to dig deeper, create more conversations, build relationships, and connect more frequently while retaining patience about the cycle.
→ The salesperson remains active enough to find current opportunities without mistaking a slow cycle for personal failure.
Common mistakes
Turning patience into waiting
Recognizing a market cycle does not remove the need to pursue the opportunities still available.
Expecting urgency to control rates
Extra effort affects conversations and relationships, not the timing of the wider market.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for salespeople operating in a cyclical market with fewer easy transactions.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the underlying offer has no demand and persistence would only postpone a necessary change.
From the transcript
“it's an interesting combination to have urgency and patience together”
“you just got to dig deeper you got to have more conversations build more relationships uh increase the frequency of your connections”
From the episode
Conversations at Scale ft. Jason Perkins
Jason Perkins