Three months ago we looked at the aggregate, anonymous opt-in EchoSign benchmarking data and declared, a bit ahead of the market, a "return to normalcy".
We made no claims about the underlying health of the economy in Q1, but made strong data-driven claims from our benchmarking data that sales teams across the country were seeing a return to normal business processes after the post-Lehman paralysis in Q4 and early Q1.
Our insights for Q2 aren't quite so prophetic, but are confirmational. Customers who have opted into our technology-vertical benchmarking groups (e.g., SaaS) saw material upswings in contracting rates for each month in Q2 over the corresponding month in Q1. (see the chart at the left/top) - Apr over Jan, May over Feb, June over Mar. It's important to look at individual months in the quarter as activity historically is strongest on the last month of the quarter (as companies seek to "make their quarter"), and weakest during the month in the middle of the quarter where there's typically not as dramatic a push to close (the mid-point between quarterly goals).
However, other categories in benchmarking did not see an improvement. HR, Telecom, Media and other categories were essentially flat over Q1.
So Q1 saw a return to normalcy. Q2 saw tech lead the way in pulling out of the recession. But the rest of the economy seems to not yet have followed tech's lead.
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