The 18-month VP of Sales is a myth: the median is 32 months

The median VP of Sales, CRO or Head of Sales stays in the seat for 32 months, not the 18 months founders keep hearing. At 18 months, 72.4% of them were still in the job. We followed 143,761 top sales leaders at companies with 10 or more employees, in seats started from 2015 to 2025, using the work histories in Ken internal data.

The short tenure is real in one corner of the market: at companies under five years old the median is 24 months, and at software companies it is 25. And when a company's only sales leader leaves, its headcount falls about 10% behind similar companies within a year.

How we measured it

We kept the top sales seats: VP of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Sales Officer and Head of Sales. We left out regional and segment roles such as "Regional VP of Sales" or "VP of Enterprise Sales", because they are not the top seat, and we left out founders, interim and fractional leaders. When someone moved from VP of Sales to CRO at the same company, we counted one seat, not two.

Many leaders are still in their seat today, so an average of finished jobs would understate tenure. We used a survival curve, the standard way to measure how long things last when some of them have not ended yet.

Where the 18-month figure might come from

Look only at stints that have already ended and the median is 22 months. That is close to the folklore number, and it is the wrong way to measure: it leaves out everyone still in the job, and they are the people who stay longest.

The other source is company type. Tenure depends far more on the company's age than on its size. It runs from 24 months at companies under five years old to 41 at companies 20 years or older. By size, the range is narrower: 30 months at companies with 10 to 49 employees and 37 at companies with 1,000 or more.

At small young companies (10 to 49 people, under five years old) the median is 24 months, and 39% of leaders are gone by month 18. That is the closest the data comes to the 18-month story, and it is still six months longer.

CROs and Heads of Sales turn over faster

VPs of Sales last a median 35 months, while CROs and Heads of Sales last 26. In a model that holds company age, size, start year and country fixed, CROs leave 25% faster than VPs of Sales and Heads of Sales 36% faster. Part of the CRO gap is a labelling choice: some VPs of Sales are promoted to CRO in the same seat, and labelling those seats by the later title gives CROs 29 months.

Tenure is also getting shorter. Across all company sizes, leaders who started in 2015 to 2017 lasted a median 36 months; those who started in 2021 to 2023 lasted 30. Repeat sales leaders, on at least their second top sales seat, last 27 months against 35 for first-timers.

Growth falls behind after the leader leaves

We then looked at 22,054 companies with 20 or more employees whose only top sales leader left between 2017 and 2024. Each was compared with up to five similar companies whose sales leader stayed: same quarter, industry, size band, age band and recent growth. Headcount, rebuilt quarter by quarter from work histories, is the growth measure, with the departing leader taken out so their own exit does not count.

Before the exit, there is no sign of trouble. In the year before the exit quarter, the companies grew in line with their matched peers. One quarter before the exit the gap was -0.2%, too small to tell from zero.

After the exit, growth falls behind. In the exit quarter the companies were about 2% smaller than their peers, and four quarters later about 10% smaller. They had grown 6.4% in the year before the exit and were only 2.2% above that starting point a year after it, while their peers reached 13.8%. Sales and marketing headcount followed the same path.

The gap holds when we change the comparison. Against companies that lose their own sales leader two to four years later, the gap after four quarters is 12.8%. Among companies with 50 or more employees, it is 8.9%.

Replacing the leader is slow, too. At companies with 50 or more employees, 22.2% showed a new top sales leader within three months of the exit and 33.1% within a year. These are lower bounds: we only see a successor whose profile carries the company and a top sales title.

What we expected

We wrote our predictions down before pulling any data. We expected a median of 24 to 36 months, longer than the folklore, and shorter at small young companies than at companies with 200 or more employees. Both held: 24 months against 36. We also expected companies to slow down before the leader left. By the letter of our test that passed, because the gap from four quarters before to the exit quarter is -1.7%. But nearly all of it falls in the exit quarter itself, so we read it as no sign of a slowdown beforehand.

What this data cannot show

• Cause. This is a matched comparison, not an experiment. Some companies may have had problems that headcount did not show yet, such as a lost customer, a failed fundraise or a planned restructuring. Company decline and acquisitions would produce the same pattern.
• Self-reported profiles. People leave short jobs off, which can push tenure up, and add new jobs late, which shortens recent cohorts. Deleted profiles are missing.
• Coverage. The data covers six English-speaking countries, so staff elsewhere are not in the headcount. Founded year is missing for about a third of seats.

What it means if you are hiring one

• Plan for about two and a half years, not 18 months. The typical seat lasts 32 months. At a company under five years old, plan for two.
• Pick the title on purpose. CRO and Head of Sales seats turn over faster than VP of Sales seats, even at similar companies.
• Treat the exit as a growth risk. Companies that lose their only sales leader fall about 10% behind similar companies within a year. A succession plan, a deputy who can step up, or an early search may be worth more than it looks.
• If you sell to sales leaders, refresh your list at least once a year. Only 62.1% of them are still in the seat 24 months after they start.