Signs That the Economy Will Soon Improve

  • August 22, 2008
  • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
  • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

We saw it coming.  It happened last summer, the tell tale tip off that hinted at how bad the economy had become.  One of our most popular services, something we call Express Screen Licenses, showed a dramatic drop off.

Express Screens are what we call our world-class sales candidate assessments.  Licenses allow clients to use them on an unlimited basis for a year.  The drop off could only indicate three possible scenarios:

  1. clients had stopped hiring salespeople
  2. clients were cutting back on their spending
  3. clients were dissatisfied with our service

Even though we were extremely certain that scenario #3 was not in play, we explored the option thoroughly and concluded that dissatisfaction was as far from the real reason as the age difference between McCain and Obama.

Our research into the drop off also revealed that clients had stopped hiring salespeople for two reasons:

  1. the salespeople they hired using our assessments were succeeding and they didn’t need to hire any more.
  2. their plans to hire additional salespeople were placed on hold because they were being conservative and cutting back on their spending.

Today’s article isn’t about being more aggressive in the current economy, although I’m certain to cover that topic in an upcoming post. Today’s article is about this week.  The dog days of August during an uncertain economy.

We saw it again.  It happened this summer, the tell tale tip off that things are turning around, that CEO’s are feeling confident enough to resume hiring salespeople.  Express Screens Licenses have shown a significant upswing and there are suddenly many more in the pipeline.

While Express Screen Licenses are a fairly small part of our company’s revenue, they are a huge factor in our client’s hiring successes and a major indicator of economic health.  If what we saw in the middle of this summer is as predictive as what we saw in the middle of last summer, the economy will begin to improve within 12 months and should be humming again sometime after that.