ProGrad Melbourne

ProGrad in 2009, the year that was

2009 was an interesting year for many.  Whether you were a job seeker, looking for a job opportunity over the last 12 months, or an organisation facing the constraints of a “tight market” and even tighter budgets from prospects.  We all felt it. 

In January 2009, ProGrad started to analyse the roles available for graduates and started to analyse our sales history in more detail.  ProGrad are a sales led business and we are heavily focused in sales activities such as lead generation, cold calling, booking business meetings and proactively selling our unique concept.  Whilst this has always been the most effective way to sell our model, it started to come with some challenges.

Companies were not quick to make decisions any more when it came to recruiting graduates.  Every business had to start justifying the expense in recruiting.  As more and more businesses were cutting costs, and making some difficult decisions around redundancies, ProGrad had to ensure we had a clear sales strategy to ensure our placements could continue.

When we were analysing our previous sales conversions, we noticed that they had started to dip.  In order to maintain the same level of placements, we would have to up the activity enormously.  This meant increased activity from the sales team, an increase in targets and a greater sales push than ever before to ensure that we could complete placements.

In May 2009, we started our new agressive sales campaign and started to see results in August and September. The campaign has not dipped off since, which has ensured a huge spike in graduate placements in November and December 2009.  The prospects for January 2010 are looking fantastic for graduates.  Whilst it is clear that “confidence is returning” in the market, it is without a doubt down to the tenacity and perseverance of our team of sales people that has ensured our strength in this competitive arena.

It’s also important that we acknowledge the support of our candidates and clients over 2009.  A large majority of our business this year came from our established account base which remained loyal to us.  We are hugely grateful for those relationships and hope they will continue in the forthcoming years. 

On behalf of everyone in the team, thank you!

Davinia