Inside Sales Associate at Prodigy Finance

What you will do in the role

We're looking for a smart, proactive and enthusiastic Sales Associate to join our Inside Sales Team. The role is ideal for someone who enjoys proactively engaging with customers and can identify meaningful insights from these engagements. The ideal candidate will not only help us convert a higher number of our applicants, but also help us improve our overall customer experience in the process. 

Reporting into the Inside Sales Manager, role will work closely with the Operations and Product teams to develop an outbound engagement approach that promotes knowledge enablement to help customers make informed decisions as it relates to funding their postgraduate studies with Prodigy Finance.

Within the Inside Sales team, there is very little ‘’cold calling’’. We use a consultative sales approach - this means we use a softer approach to get to know our customers better and educate them in areas they seek clarity within. You will not need to source leads, rather you will reach out to targeted groups of customers.

What are some of the responsibilities of this role?

• Proactively engaging with existing and potential customers through a multitude of communication media e.g. telephone, video, whatsapp, email etc.

• Drive conversion of our potential customers  

• Be deployed across different stages of our funnel to reduce potential friction our customers may face across the funnel

• Identify and share key pain points in a customer’s funding journey

• Manage day-to-day workflow and time

• Support the Inside Sales Manager in the outbound conversion function 

• Improve the overall customer experience 

• Cross-collaboration with other teams where the sales function is needed while using other digital platforms to engage with customers: Instagram, Webinars, Whatsapp Q&A’s etc.

• Coordinating specific projects to support the Inside Sales team’s campaign success

What would the ideal candidate be great at?

• Customer orientation; able and willing to find out what the customer wants and needs and to act accordingly while taking the organisation's costs and benefits into account

• Building rapport with customers

• Relationship builder: able to build and foster excellent working relationships across a number of teams including and Product

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Listen well, be biased to action and find solutions

• Sales skills and ability to dispense product information as suited to the customer needs

• Proactive and autonomous management of time and workflow

• Flexible to changing work shifts, within reason, when necessary for specific campaigns 

• Team player - we are a highly collaborative company 

• Strong attention to detail

• Able to translate insights about our customers into potential process and product improvements

• Able to work and learn quickly in a fast paced, fun and dynamic environment

• Self-starter; motivated by a fast-paced environment; a growth mindset

• The ability to pivot into other areas of the business where needed - understanding the value of and seeking learning opportunities

• Going the extra mile for the customer - where needed, you may need to call additional customers who need to hear the voice of Prodigy and feel supported 

Qualifications and Experience

• 3+ years experience in a sales / contact centre environment (preferably in the financial service industry)

• NQF Level 6 and above (3 year degree/diploma)

• Excellent verbal and written skills 

• Track record of achieving / exceeding targets in a sales role

• Good analytical and organisational skills

• Strong ability to engage with customers over the phone

Experience that would be nice to have (but we’ll trade off if everything else fits)

• Start-up experience. Sometimes the earth moves beneath your feet at Prodigy Finance so you've got to be comfortable with ambiguity, able to wear lots of hats, and adapt easily as you set up processes and frameworks for us to grow into. If you haven’t worked in a start-up before, you need to show us that you have a real desire and potential to be successful in a young, high-growth, non-corporate company

• Experience working in a compliance regulated environment, particularly with consumer financial services 

• Experience working with CRM systems such as Zendesk