Solution Area Specialists IC5

Overview

This role acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers.

It helps the team create a vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales.

The role leads the 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. It leverages global resources to help connect the partner ecosystems to form new market opportunities and acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events. The role establishes standards for customer/partner experiences, oversees the end-to-end business across geographical regions, ensures the team meets sales targets and operational standards, and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned territory.

It interacts with Corporate leadership and executive-level stakeholders to get support for the team and the geographical regions. Additionally, the role develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services against competitors and has people management responsibilities including driving employee growth and development, executing projects, and managing performance.

Responsibilities

Sales Excellence

• Oversees the end-to-end business across geographical regions. Ensures their team meet sales targets and operational standards and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned territory. Interacts with Corporate leadership and executive-level stakeholders to get support for their team and the geographical regions.
• Guides their team in whitespace analysis and supports the team to identify potential business in the assigned territory. Develops and aligns the analysis approach across the organization. Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
• Builds and transforms new markets by leveraging technical and industry expertise, partners, and resources. Leads a team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation.
• Lays out customer satisfaction long-term strategies. Proactively promotes development of deep and influential relationships with client contacts. Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and facilitates the resolution of sales/delivery issues for strategic accounts. Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences.
• 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. Seeks additional learning opportunities and prioritize to enhance effectiveness.
• Participates in regular strategic planning for their assigned territory. Reviews plans via Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings and aligns the plans of their team across departments. Guides team to align their approach with sales excellence team. Engages with external executives to bring a more strategic perspective into the planning portion of account planning.
  
  

Sales Execution

• Coaches their team and/or other teams (e.g., ATU, STU) on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners. Engages C-Suite decision makers for strategic customers to support teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration. Represents their team internally at Microsoft as they engage other internal stakeholders.
• Leads their team to develop strategies for driving and closing strategic (highly complex, high value) 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 their team to collaborate with partners and other internal teams (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, Global Black Belts). Leads with technical and industry insights on how to grow the strategic customer business.
• Brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and helps close deals with customers 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.
• Guides their team on communicating with customers to understand their business needs or facilitates customer interactions to assess customer needs. Provides direction/guidance on the development of solutions across regions. Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales.
• Leads a 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, Specialist Team Unit, One Commercial Partner organization) to build pipeline across territories. Sets best practices on social selling and guides others on how to do this, and drives consistency across domains/regions. Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed, and educate the customers on how to best address their needs.
  
  

Scaling and Collaboration

• Guides their team to build a network of partners to cross-sell and up-sell. Leads the team to identify new partners and evaluate partner capabilities. Facilitates the development of partner strategies and ensures execution. Leverages global resources to help connect the partner ecosystems to form new market opportunities.
• Guides their team to apply the orchestration model. 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

• Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events. Provides expertise to customers/partners and shares knowledge on a specific platform or market.
• Supports their team on participating in Microsoft events. Contributes to setting up the events and promoting best practice sharing across subsidiaries.
• Coaches their team on business and market knowledge. Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services against competitors. Initiates discussions to share industry trends and insights across the organization.
  
  

Qualifications

Required qualifications

• 8+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
• Proven experience in pre-sale and post-sale engagements with both Business Decision Makers (BDM) and Technical Decision Makers (TDM).
• Strong practical experience selling cloud solutions for infrastructure and DevOps.
• In-depth knowledge of cloud computing, DevOps, and cloud security practices.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to lead and manage complex sales cycles involving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field
  
  

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

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.