Job Ad Half-Life & Deal Cycles

As the latest official revision shows better than reported UK economic growth figures, the job market is said the be tightening.

An outrageous fifth of all working age adults are not seeking work. Termed economically inactive. For some, there's healthy, plausible or acceptable reasons. For most of this nine million though, the inescapable belief is of a nation not quite of strivers.

Job vacancies hit an all-time high of around 1¼m a year or so back. The bulk seemingly split three ways; hospitality, coding & caring.

The present figure is said to have stabilised at around 850,000.

Whilst this relates only to advertised job openings, one stat that caught my sales eye, was length of time job ads were kept up.

Give or take an hour or two, the average being 36 days.

From a range of 31 (legal) to 45 (energy, oil & gas).

You wonder on the veracity of such figures. Given the breadth of reasons why such ad may stay or up, or be withdrawn, that do not necessarily relate to the job being actually filled.

Still, it's the duration we have (albeit from one big job board site alone; Adzuna).

With interesting similarity to that most illuminating of sales stats; deal cycle duration.

A long trusted arbiter of whether a salesperson is on their game, is to ask them what their key numbers are.

Strangely, seldom do they, or can they, recite salient data.

A number of times I've been in various sales org end-of-period meetings where this has been brought out in the open.

For instance, ask a team to raise their hand if they know their deal cycle time numbers.

Unwarned, a small slice may indeed do. So ask them what these numbers are. Then how such figure is calculated. Pretty soon, a harsh reality may well be revealed.

You can also go down the route of asking for hands for those whose deal durations are less than a certain length. Then decrease until there's a winner emerge. Remembering to ask then the how and why.

There is categorically a correlation between those sellers that know their personal numbers, and the most successful.

How you calculate such ought be consistent too.

Beginning with when does a deal become a deal. Ending with when is the 'close' date stamp. As both can be subject to shifting grey sands.

A key point of having this framing, is to try identifying the optimal. Not just the shortest, mind. Yes, you'd then want to shave a slither or lop off a chunk of time. But what marries with your ideal process should be at the heart of why you keep these variables.

When you get the overall elapsed time drop, with the total number of wins rise, you're likely pursuing high calibre sales process thought.