Shire Business Group is offering new sales entrants the chance to take their first steps on their career ladders.
Based in Tamworth and employing 190 people, the award winning Shire Business Group provides business support to over 50,000 SMEs across the UK, helping them to prepare for future growth.
The Sales Academy was created in 2013, with the aim of bringing new talent into the organisation. In return it offered opportunities for new sales recruits to gain valuable experience working for a large organisation. Unlike many similar programmes, the Shire Sales Academy offers a broad range of experience across all the businesses in the Group, including finance, commercial funding, debt recovery, insurance and marketing.
Each place in the Sales Academy lasts for 6 months and comes with a host of benefits, including a good basic salary, a programme of formal training, on-the-job coaching and continual assessment. At the end of the 6 months, there are opportunities for a permanent sales position within the Group.
John Worton, Shire’s joint chairman, said “Investing in new talent is critical for any business that wants to move forward. Our Sales Academy means we can recruit candidates who have the enthusiasm and hunger to succeed, but may be finding it difficult to secure long term employment when they come up against more experienced professionals. The Sales Academy creates an environment tailored to provide them with basic sales training and experience, equipping them with the skills they need to succeed in a highly pressured sales role. It gives us a unique, tailored opportunity to identify individual potential, and develop them into the next generation of sales and business development roles.”
Shire provides its recruits with an exciting and challenging programme, giving them the chance to play a real role in projects across the group’s individual businesses. They are given specific objectives and targets to meet, and receive the support of the team in each business division they’re working for.
Shire’s Sales Academy manager, Sally Chesterton said “We knew the Academy would prove popular, but we were overwhelmed by the volume of interest. Our initial aim was to get 20 applications – we had 150 in total, and invited 37 of these to the one day assessment at our offices in Tamworth. At the end of an intensive selection process, the top six candidates were invited to join the Academy programme.”
