How long a SaaS sales search takes
Twenty-two days is our average from kickoff to accepted offer. The variables that shrink or blow up that number are almost never the ones founders expect.
Our average from kickoff to a signed offer, across roughly 1,200 searches, is twenty-two days. That number is not because we are fast — it is because we say no to a lot of searches that we know will blow up the timeline for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidate market.
What sets the pace
Two things: how well the hiring manager can articulate the bar at intake, and how quickly they can move a candidate through interviews once one is in front of them. Everything else — sourcing volume, market conditions, comp — is manageable inside a standard timeline.
What blows searches up
Undefined bar. If we ask the hiring manager what a great hire looks like and get three different answers on three different days, no one can be shortlisted, because no one can be measured against a moving target.
Interview drift. A three-week search becomes a three-month search when interview loops stall between rounds. Top candidates in an active market are almost always in another process; a two-week silence loses them to that process.
Late-stage comp discovery. Comp expectations should be aligned in the first candidate conversation, not the offer conversation. Every search that surfaces a comp mismatch at the offer stage loses at least a week and often the candidate.
The searches that close in twenty-one days are the ones where the hiring manager treats the process the way they would treat their largest enterprise deal — with the same urgency, the same responsiveness, and the same discipline about the close.
The Cornerstone commitment
We deliver a shortlist of three to five candidates within ten business days of kickoff. From there, the pace belongs to the hiring team. When both sides show up to the process, twenty-two days is the honest answer.