Hiring the right talent for a Sales Development Team is crucial for any business to grow and develop. The world of sales is fast-paced and challenging, so it’s important you’re hiring candidates that are resilient and adaptable, have the drive to succeed and ultimately will hit their sales targets so you can achieve your business goals.
Having worked closely with thousands of graduates over the past 10+ years, at Give A Grad A Go we know graduates possess a hunger to learn, want to take on responsibility from day one, and look for new exciting challenges - making them a great fit for entry level Sales Development Representatives or Business Development roles.
We’ve put together some of the top reasons you should hire graduates to build your AE, SDR and BDR teams.
Unsure how to build an SDR team? Whether you’re an SME or a global company, Give A Grad A Go can offer you specialist sales recruitment, completely tailored to your needs, get in touch today and find out how we can help with your sales hiring process.
Despite the current climate, we are helping our clients hire top talent, find out how we can help you with remote hiring.
Let's just get this cleared up from the outset. These are sales acronyms used to describe:
Wondering why graduates are such a good fit for sales and business development roles? Here are 7 reasons graduates are the perfect match…
One of the great benefits of hiring graduates for your sales and AE teams is that their professional career is just starting. You have the opportunity to shape the way graduates think about all aspects of sales and business, which can be highly effective for the revenue of the business, as well as rewarding on a personal level.
Many companies have sales techniques and strategies that will differ to yours, so when hiring non-graduates who have held previous sales positions, you may have to invest time changing habits and teaching new ways. Whilst graduates are blank canvases and can be taught from the off your preferred method of working and the company’s unique SDR process, saving you time and resources in the long term.
Having a drive to succeed is a highly important quality for any salesperson to possess. With many graduates having just finished their degrees, now looking to make their mark in an industry and prove themselves to an employer, they have drive in abundance.
When hiring for your SDR team, you need candidates who genuinely want the business to succeed and want to excel in their role. One of the rewarding qualities of graduates is that many want to prove themselves from the start and show that they were the right candidate to hire. Graduates have worked extremely hard for three + years, committing themselves to a field of study, developing their drive and willingness to do well.
This competitive and determined nature will see graduates work hard to achieve your SDR benchmarks and targets - invaluable to the growth of your company.
Having spent years studying at university, graduates entering the world of work are primed and ready to learn new topics and ways of thinking. Many graduates often crave and miss the learning aspects of university and are keen to spend time building their knowledge of a new industry and role. In a recent survey we conducted on graduates, learning and development ranked first on their list of ‘what is most important in a job’, scoring higher than salary, benefits/perks and company culture.
What’s more, while some of your current employers may deem some tasks beneath them, one of the many advantages of hiring graduates to build your SDR team, is that they are willing to work on any task, even the slightly unglamorous ones as they are keen to gain new experiences and learn from any opportunity.
With graduates raring and ready to learn and take on responsibility from day one, they can quickly become a valuable asset to your sales team. With a strategic onboarding plan and clear SDR training in place, you can guide graduates towards future managerial roles within the company.
Having hired graduates from entry level sales development representative roles, they will have acquired great knowledge of the company and the SDR process, and ultimately know how to meet and succeed sales targets - making them great candidates for Sales and Business Development managerial roles.
You have the potential to keep a graduate hire for the duration of their career, allowing them to flourish and grow with your company. The high return on investment from hiring graduates makes graduates a great fit for sales startups. If you’re looking to hire for your startup, check out our blog for more reasons you should hire graduates at your startup.
While it’s important to pay graduate sales roles fair entry-level salaries, another great advantage of hiring graduates is that they won’t be expecting a high starting salary. For many graduates, entry level and junior sales positions will be their first annual salary, so their salary views are likely to be realistic.
What’s more, graduates value other aspects of a role such as career development and training just as much as they do salary. Hiring graduates on a lower starting salary means you can invest more money into training opportunities and onboarding for graduates, adding value to your business in the future and helping to create a high return of investment.
Unsure what salary to pay your Business Development graduates? Visit our Graduate Employment Statistics Archive to find out what other companies are paying Business Development graduate roles.
Many of the study skills graduates learn at university are transferable to junior sales positions. Throughout their degree, students will most likely have been tasked with giving presentations, writing coherent and compelling arguments, collaborating on group projects and working to deadlines. These tasks will all have developed their communication, persuasion and deadline management skills - all crucial skills to succeed in sales.
Many graduates also choose to get involved with a number of extra-curricular activities whilst at university, from being a committee member of a society to playing for a sport’s team and getting involved with charity work. These activities will also have developed a range of valuable skills for future employment, as well as see graduates keen to get involved and run new projects within a company such as running socials and charity events, all helping to create a great company culture.
Graduates are great at adapting and dealing with difficult situations, from university strikes to the class of 2020 having to study and complete their degrees online, graduates have shown they can work with less than ideal work environments and are highly resilient.
This resilience makes graduates a great fit for SDR roles, as they will take difficult situations in their stride and find solutions to work around challenging situations.
If you’re looking to grow a resilient team, visit our blog for our top tips on how to build a resilient team.
For companies looking to grow and develop their sales team quickly and efficiently, graduates are the ideal candidate. With an eagerness to learn, an adaptability to new environments and a drive to succeed, there are a number of reasons why graduate recruitment is the perfect choice for SDR teams.
We’re proud to be the UK’s leading graduate recruitment company with a multi-award-winning service. Receiving thousands of CVs every week, 49.5% of graduates in our database have Sales or Business Development on their CV.
With a 96% candidate probation pass rate and over 90% of companies using us on a repeat basis, our hiring process speaks for itself.
If you’re looking to hire graduates for your SDR team, get in touch today and see how we can help your business achieve its goals:
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