Business Development Representative / BDR - 64663290391

Role: Business Development Representative (BDR)
Priority Sourcing Location: South Africa 
Working Hours: Ability to reliably work 8am to 5pm / 9am to 6pm US Eastern Time (Monday through Friday)
Type of contract: Independent Contractor 
Type of job: Remote, Full-time (40 hours a week)
 

About the Role

Our company builds outbound deal flow for the US lower middle market. Our clients are private equity firms, independent sponsors, search funds, M&A advisors, and lenders — firms whose business is acquiring or financing companies. We've run over 100 outbound campaigns for firms in this space.

This role is selling our company's own services, not a client's. The person calls US acquirers and books discovery calls for our founder.

The role in one sentence:
Cold call US-based independent sponsors, private equity firms, search funds, and family offices, start a credible conversation about how they source acquisition targets, and book qualified discovery calls onto the founder's calendar.

The focus is on smaller and mid-sized acquirers — independent sponsors, sub-$500M funds, and individual acquirers — where the decision-maker is reachable and the sales cycle is short. Large brokerage networks and multi-office franchise groups are handled by the founder directly and are not part of this person's list.

This person does not close, initially. They do not quote pricing or handle technical questions — they open conversations and hand off. If they prove capable, the role grows into closing (see Progression below), so hire for that ceiling.

What kind of environment this is:
We are a very small company. There is no sales floor, no team lead, no shift supervisor, and no one watching a dashboard to tell this person their dials are low. They will spend most of their day working alone with a founder who is busy running the business.

This is the single most important thing for you to screen on, and it is not the same as "hardworking." We need someone who will:

• Work out who to call and why, rather than waiting for a list to be handed to them
• Notice their own numbers slipping and fix it before anyone mentions it
• Ask a sharp question once instead of sitting blocked for two days
• Rewrite the script when it isn't working and bring us the new version
• Treat the commission as the point, not a bonus

In our experience a candidate who has thrived in a large structured call centre is often the wrong fit here, regardless of how good their metrics were, and someone who has run their own hustle, worked at a startup with no playbook, or freelanced successfully is usually the right one. That is a pattern we have observed rather than a rule — if you have a call centre candidate you believe can operate unsupervised, send them and tell us why.

Key Responsibilities:

• 80–120 outbound dials per day into US acquisitive firms
• Build and research target lists — identifying the correct individual inside each firm (usually a VP, Principal, Associate, or Head of Business Development, not the Managing Director)
• Log every call outcome and disposition in the CRM without being reminded
• Book qualified discovery calls onto the founder's calendar
• Attend the calls they book to learn the sales motion

Roughly half the week is dialing, half is list building, research, and CRM work. Dialing is concentrated in a focused block, not spread across eight hours.

Qualifications:
Non-negotiables:

1. Prior B2B outbound calling experience — minimum 1 year, calling into US or UK markets. Consumer/BPO call centre experience alone is not sufficient. We need someone who has run a cold pipeline, not someone who has read from a queue.
2. Neutral, clear spoken English. Must sound credible to a US finance professional. Accent is not the issue; clarity, cadence, and confidence are.
3. Fibre internet with wired ethernet connection. Not mobile data, not shared wifi. This is the most common failure point — audio latency immediately signals an offshore call and ends the conversation.
4. Reliable power backup (inverter/UPS or generator) sufficient to cover a full shift through loadshedding.
5. Availability for a US Eastern-aligned shift — approximately 15:00–23:00 SAST. Candidates must explicitly understand and accept this is an evening shift long-term. This is our top attrition risk; screen for it hard.
6. Quiet, dedicated home workspace. No background noise, no shared room, no open-plan call floor audio.
7. Professional USB headset with noise-cancelling mic (or willingness to use one we provide).

Strongly preferred:

• Exposure to finance, private equity, M&A, investment banking, or commercial lending — in any capacity, including study
• Experience with a CRM/dialer (HubSpot, Close, Salesloft, Outreach, Apollo, or similar)
• A finance, business, or economics degree
• Experience selling into senior or executive-level buyers

Not required:

• Deep M&A knowledge — we train the vocabulary in the first two weeks
• US work authorisation — this is a contractor role performed entirely from South Africa