Business Development Representative

Role purpose:

The South African BDR will support the growth of the Demand Generation function by creating outbound pipeline, engaging target accounts, supporting event-led prospecting, and booking qualified meetings for the sales team.

This role is suited to a degree-educated candidate with strong English communication skills, resilience, curiosity, and the confidence to represent the business professionally both over the phone and face to face.

Main duties and key responsibilities:

Outbound prospecting and qualification:

• Research target accounts and contacts using approved data sources and campaign segments.
• Prospect through LinkedIn, email, and cold calling to create conversations with enterprise decision makers.
• Qualify prospects by understanding business context, challenges, timing, and fit.
• Book qualified meetings and provide clear handover notes to the sales team.

Event-led prospecting and representation:

• Support event management activity, including identifying relevant events, prospecting into attendee or exhibitor lists, and helping create meetings from event-led campaigns.
• Attend selected industry events where required, man the stand, engage prospects face to face, and clearly explain what the business does in a professional and confident manner.

Ideal candidate profile:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher.
• 0–3 years of sales, customer-facing, recruitment, retail, hospitality, or commercial experience.
• Strong English communication skills, with the confidence to speak to senior stakeholders over the phone, online, and face to face.
• Coachable, competitive, resilient, and motivated by a fast-paced, high-activity sales environment with clear progression in sight.
• Curious about business, technology, customer experience, and how companies solve operational challenges.
• Comfortable representing the business professionally at events, engaging visitors at a stand, and having short, clear conversations about the value Connect provides.
• Organised and disciplined enough to manage daily outreach activity and follow-up cadence.
• Consultative rather than overly salesy, with the ability to ask good questions and listen properly.

Requirements:

• Based in Johannesburg or Cape Town.
• Strong written and verbal English communication.
• Degree required, with commercial, business, marketing, or technology interest preferred.
• Previous outbound, SDR, BDR, telesales, recruitment, or customer-facing experience is helpful but not essential.
• Comfortable using CRM systems, LinkedIn, email, and sales engagement tools.
• Willing and able to attend relevant industry events when required, including stand support, face-to-face prospect engagement, and post-event follow-up.

Success measures:

• Consistent, high-volume outbound activity across phone, email, and LinkedIn, showing strong daily work rate and urgency.
• Qualified meetings booked and attended by target prospects.
• Clear handover notes and accurate Salesforce activity, notes, and meeting outcomes that help sales progress opportunities.
• Effective contribution to event-led pipeline generation, including meaningful event conversations, useful prospect notes, and timely follow-up after attendance.
• Improvement in messaging, objection handling, call quality, and conversion rates over the first 90 days.
• Positive adoption of coaching, process, and feedback.