Director, Specialist Sales

Roles & Responsibilities

Overview

Proactively brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and coaches and influences others internally on how to do this. Coaches team through the sales process. Proactively coaches their team to remove consumption blockers in pre-sales. Guides their team to assess customer needs and connect the need to Microsoft technology. Coaches their team to expand the relationship with customers/partners. Leads their team to develop solution strategies for driving and closing strategic opportunities. Leads the team to identify new partners and evaluate partner capabilities. Guides their team to apply the orchestration model. Supports their team on participating in Microsoft events. Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events. Coaches team about Microsoft technology differentiators/competitive advantage. Leads their team to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation. Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction. Drives and oversees integrated strategic planning. Guides their team regarding client performance, in whitespace analysis. Oversees the end-to-end business. Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications. In addition, this role has people management responsibilities including driving employee growth and development, executing projects, and managing performance.

Responsibilities

Sales Excellence

• Drives and oversees integrated strategic planning to exceed cloud growth, drive consumption, and Support revenue and gain market share for the Solution Areas. Drives the integration of that all local, regional and corporate resources (e.g., Digital, Global Black Belts, FastTrack) into the strategic plan. Discusses progress against plan in rhythm of business (ROB) meetings (e.g., Quarterly Business Connect [QBC], Virtual Solutions Unit [VSU]) and aligns the plans of their team across departments. Engages with executives to bring a more strategic perspective into the business plan.
• Oversees the end-to-end business across geographical regions. Ensures their team meet targets (e.g., sales, usage, customer acquisition) and operational standards and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned subsidiary/area. Interacts with Corporate leadership and executive-level stakeholders to get support for their team and the geographical regions.
• Proactively promotes development of deep and influential relationships with client contacts. Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and facilitates the resolution of technical issues for strategic accounts. Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences. Ensures customers are made aware of new technology innovations.
• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry. Mentors/coaches the team on growing knowledge on sales or products and ensures the team complete training and obtain certifications as required. Seek additional learning opportunities and prioritize to enhance effectiveness.
• Guides their team regarding client performance, in whitespace analysis, and identifying potential new business in their assigned territories. Develops and aligns the analysis approach across the organization. Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
• Leads their team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation to drive growth by leveraging technology, industry and partner expertise. Builds new market by leveraging deep technology expertise and resources.

Sales Execution

• Leads their team to support the account teams and drive conversations with strategic/high-potential customers. Facilitates stakeholders (e.g., Customer Success team unit, account-aligned team unit, Consulting, One Commercial Partner [OCP] organization) to build pipeline across territories. Sets best practices on social presence and guides others, and drives consistency across domains/regions. Coaches team through the sales process (e.g., negotiation, commercial terms, compelling presentation). Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) and Microsoft Consumption Process (MCP) to determine the quality of the opportunity/engagement and whether to proceed, and educate the team on how to best address the customer needs. Develops, guides and empowers sales team to think across organizational boundaries and drive cloud businesses growth at or above targets, and accelerate customer value realization through cloud services consumption across solution areas (e.g., modern workplace, apps and infrastructure, data and artificial intelligence [AI] and business applications, security, support), bringing together a unified, unique value proposition for the customers. Influences the technical and product leadership agenda across the Microsoft field and supports the corporate organization. Proactively reports progress to leadership and removes execution obstacles.
• Guides their team on communicating with customers, leveraging their business language, to understand their business needs or facilitates customer interactions to assess customer needs and connect the need to Microsoft technology. Drives cloud businesses growth at or above targets, and accelerates customer value realization through cloud services consumption across solution areas, including Support. Provides direction/guidance on the development of solutions across regions. Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop strategic plans to drive sales and demonstrate business value. Autonomously provides executive sponsorship on large projects and leadership support.
• Leads their team to develop solution strategies for driving and closing strategic, highly complex and valuable opportunities. Drives the implementation of strategies and the collaboration with the account team to ensure alignment. Leads their team on ways to implement and share close plans (e.g., how to map timeline, engage the customer, get customer buy in and commitment) to de-risk and drive predictable deal closure. Coaches the organization and optimizes performance, responding to customers with agility and speed. Seeks alignment with all stakeholders and partners and removes blockers.
• Coaches their team on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners. Engages C-Suite decision makers to support teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration while maintaining an external network. Proactively leads external innovation circles/sounding boards. Represents their team internally at Microsoft as they engage internal stakeholders. (e.g., Account Team Unit [ATU], Customer Success Unit [CSU], One Commercial Partner [OCP], Worldwide Commercial Business [WCB] Solution Area Leads, Global Black Belts).
• Proactively coaches their team to remove consumption blockers in pre-sales by collaborating and innovating with partners and other internal regional and global teams (e.g., Digital Win Room [DWR], FastTrack, Global Black Belts) and coaches their team how to engage customers to drive cloud services growth, support and consumption in accounts and new markets. Leads with technical insights on how to grow customer business.
• Proactively brings impactful industry insights with partners into customer engagements and coaches and influences others internally on how to do this. Influences Microsoft's strategic direction across various markets. Acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers. Leads a virtual cross-organizational team to drive strategic projects and high impact solution sales deployments that enable digital transformation and deliver business value. May lead partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements. Oversees new Digital Transformation projects (e.g., cloud platforms and services) through business outcome selling and expanding customer business decision maker (BDM) connections. Sets a win strategy to accelerate and maintain a sustainable growth. Sets clear criteria and accountability to managers and team.

Scaling and Collaboration

• Guides their team to build a network of partners to cross-sell and up-sell and drive usage. Leads the team to identify new partners and evaluate partner capabilities. Facilitates the development of partner strategies and ensures execution. Provides input and feedback to One Commercial Partner (OCP) on developing partner strategies and building partner capabilities to build and influence the market. Coaches the team to drive end-to-end business solutions across solution areas, resulting in increased partner satisfaction and partner deal sharing year-over-year. Leads by example to be executive sponsor for Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and Global System Integrators (GSIs) and drives sponsorship relationships for all of the Specialist Team Unit (STU) leadership team. Actively participates in the local Partner Governance Council and makes recommendation for Partner Recruitment and Partner Resource Allocation.
• Guides their team to apply the orchestration model with Account Team Unit (ATU), Customer Success Unit (CSU), One Commercial Partner (OCP), Consulting and Global Resources (e.g., Global Black Belts, FastTrack, Digital Win Room [DWR]). Establishes approach and practices to promote communication and collaboration across functions. Contributes to the development of the orchestration model and drives consistency across territories.

Technical Expertise

• Supports their team in participating in Microsoft events. Contributes to setting up the events and promoting best practice sharing across subsidiaries and the adoption from other subsidiaries. Actively participants in the Specialist Sales Leader community. Leads by example to show the learning culture across the organization.
• Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events. Provides expertise to customers/partners and shares knowledge on social media relevant for their market (e.g., LinkedIn). Establishes a sounding board of customers and partners related to technology innovation.
• Coaches their team on business and market knowledge. Reviews wins/losses with the team to determine how to identify systematic and non-systematic issues to resolve. Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services (e.g., cloud services and platforms) against competitors. Initiates discussions to share industry trends and insights across the whole organization. Leverages deep technology knowledge and coaches team about Microsoft technology differentiators/competitive advantage.

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 8+ years technology-related sales or account management experience OR
• 9+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 5+ years of scaled leadership experience, such as managing a sales team of 10+ sales professionals, sales pipeline management experience, and P&L accountability.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technology-related sales or account management experience OR
• Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 10+ years technology-related sales or account management experience OR
• 12+ years technology-related sales or account management experience, preferably selling business applications and solutions such as CRMs and ERPs.
• 2+ years manager of managers experience.
• Ability to drive influence across different countries in a matrix envrionment.

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

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Digital Transformation
Sponsorship
Strategic Planning
Business Analysis
Sales Excellence
Artificial Intelligence
Customer Success
Sales Process
Account Management Experience
Customer Acquisition
Customer Value
Cloud Services
Orchestration
People Management

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