Solution Area Sales Specialist (Azure Infrastructure) at Microsoft

Responsibilities

Sales Execution

• Brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and closes deals with customers. Acts as a thought leader across solution areas to advise customers across business functions on digital transformation. Leads virtual transformational shifts to drive deployment and create business value for customers. May lead partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements. Provides thought leadership.
• Orchestrates with team members on conducting personal campaigns to discover new opportunities and generate new leads. Leads conversations with strategic/high-potential customers (e.g., high budget, global account, highly competitive) along with account teams or partners. 
• Drives consumption and grow business with existing strategic customers by initiating conversations, guiding others on demos or quotes, and the collaboration with partners or internal teams. For licensing transactions and project engagements, ensures rapid and robust deployment plan at point of sale that is validated by services and partners. Drives advanced workloads and usage.
• Explores and assesses the needs of strategic/high-potential customers. Articulates business value and long-term implications for customer business. Collaborates with internal teams, partners, and services to lead the proposal or development of solutions that align with customer and Microsoft priorities. Analyzes market trends to identify opportunities for new solutions.
• Proactively builds and governs external stakeholder network and leverages internal partners to engage external stakeholders. Acts as a thought leader and subject matter advisor to the executive-level business decision makers at the customer's/partner's business. Guides others on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners.
• Develops strategies for driving and closing strategic and/or prioritized opportunities. Collaborates with account teams to ensure alignment with the account strategy and plan. Leads deal execution with the deal teams across the organization. Coaches others on the implementation of 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.

Scaling and Collaboration

• Leads the planning and execution on opportunities with resources and partners to cross-sell and up-sell. Identifies, leverages, and coordinates partners and resources across solution areas. Validates partner solution relevance for customers. Provides input and feedback to Global Partner Solutions (GPS) on developing partner strategies and connects the partner ecosystems to scale business results.
• Leads the sales orchestration with internal stakeholders and partners. Applies a holistic approach to build network across territories. Positions opportunities to promote collaboration and participation.

Technical Expertise

• Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft. Mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing across subsidiaries. Contributes ideas that can be instituted across Microsoft.
• Posts information or speaks at external events, drives conversations with prospective customers/partners as a thought leader across solution areas.*
• Leverages and shares competitor knowledge across solution areas as a subject matter expert to inform decisions on pursuit or withdrawal. Collaborates with the 'compete' global black belts (GBB) to proactively provide analysis of the competitive landscape in supported solution area. Leads the communication to provide feedback to other teams (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) on future product trends or sales blocker.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 4+ years experience with cloud and/or datacenter technologies

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

•  9+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• OR Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 5+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 6+ years solution or services sales experience with a cloud or datacenter provider.