Google offers the following definition of patience:
the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering
without becoming annoyed or anxious
In business, it amounts to doing your job without surrendering to negative emotions when challenges arise.
And challenges will most certainly arise: projects have delays, plans rarely stick to schedule and all sorts of problems appear, both when we expect them, and when we don’t.
Patience is not about hiding anger, disappointment, or frustration from a potential client or a partner. It is not a total absence of those emotions, either.
Rather, it is a state of mind that is produced by a steady and regular (daily) creation and nurturing of opportunities.
Some of these opportunities, with sufficient amount of care and a pinch of luck, will become actual projects.
Through Effective Problem Solving, I have learned that one of the most important things at this point in my project is to have a robust pipeline of potential opportunities / possible initiatives.
This way, even if one project does not advance as I would have liked, at no point I am chasing it desperately - because I can work on other items on the pipeline, while I prepare for a better timing / different set of circumstances, to come back to that project.
If your pipeline is strong enough, you will be able to advance in your work without exerting unnecessary pressure on any one of your contacts in particular.
Winning is about taking the time that is needed, while going as fast as possible.