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.