Solution Sales Director Cloud & AI at Microsoft

Overview

• Acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers.
• Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales. Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales.
• 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.
• Leverages global resources to help connect the partner ecosystems to form new market opportunities.
• Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events.
• Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences. 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.
• Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services against competitors.
• In addition, this role has people management responsibilities including driving employee growth and development, executing projects, and managing performance.

Vision: 

• Deepen customer alignment by reducing account load and enabling more strategic, trust-based engagements.
• Drive unified solution conversations across the Azure stack, avoiding fragmented sales motions.
• Accelerate AI readiness by guiding customers through digital estate evolution and simplifying their cloud journey

Responsibility 

• Lead a team of SSPs aligned by solution area (e.g., AI, Data, Infra).
• Orchestrate customer conversations around specific solution plays and technical workloads.
• Improve pipeline quality and win rates by ensuring sellers articulate the full Azure value proposition.
• Manage change and execution urgency to meet evolving customer expectations.
• Provide strategic leadership in sales planning, execution, and team development

Strategic Impact

• Enhance execution across AI and non-AI workloads.
• Improve MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment) health.
• Simplify team orchestration and deepen technical delivery.
• Strengthen Microsoft’s leadership in AI-powered cloud transformation

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or related field AND 8+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management OR equivalent experience.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 12+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, Information Security, or related field AND 15+ years experience in technology-related sales or account management OR equivalent experience.
• 10+ years services sales or account management experience.
• 5+ years people management experience.

Responsibilities

Customer Engagement

• Champions adhering to sales frameworks and guidelines to assess and qualify sales opportunities, ensuring alignment with AI-enhanced sales methodologies and best practices. Serves as an escalation point and advisor for teams in securing highly complex, high-value strategic deals. Fosters a culture of collaboration across organizations (e.g., Account Team Unit [ATU], CSU, ISD, GPS), ensuring a comprehensive approach to deal orchestration and seamless transitions throughout the deal lifecycle. Drives advocating for and institutionalizing best practices that secure customer engagement and deal closure, and proactively mitigate risks that impact overall sales effectiveness and growth across the territory.
• Oversees team on directing and implementing sales strategy tailored to each customer's security priorities, showcasing Microsoft's dedication to secure, AI-powered transformation and addressing their specific needs within the customer success plan, fostering long-term partnerships through AI-driven insights. Champions partner team interaction, expertly navigates resources and fosters lasting relationships that activate co-selling strategies that drive partner attach to each opportunity through every stage in the sales lifecycle. Champions partner organization connections (i.e. GPS) that foster enduring relationships, share gains, partner health and alignment with execution plans to accelerate customer value realization at scale.

Sales & Pipeline Management

• Architects the strategic framework for business analysis and identification of emerging opportunities to refine the customer portfolio and drive customer-driven innovation. Champions the integration of technologies (e.g., AI sales agents, automation, Power Platforms) to drive growth and market share across the territory. Provides expertise and vision across the territory on integrating propensity, renewal, consumption, and usage data to prioritize sales strategy. Steers teams in optimizing partner collaboration for each account and/or opportunity, ensuring seamless handoffs with other teams (e.g., Global Partner Solutions [GPS], Customer Success Unit [CSU], Industry Solutions Delivery [ISD], Partner) throughout the deal lifecycle.
• Empowers team to drive comprehensive sales pipeline reviews across the territory with internal executive stakeholders to drive forecasting accuracy and exceed sales targets, ensuring the use of AI-powered analytics and forecasting tools to enhance precision. Holds team accountable for maintaining sales and/or consumption pipeline hygiene on all opportunities and milestones using all available tools and processes. Hold teams accountable for maintaining usage and/or consumption pipeline hygiene to actively monitor adoption trends, identify opportunities for intervention, enabling customers to realize the value of solutions purchased, drive expansion, and ensure healthier, more predictable renewals.

Sales Strategy

• Provides strategic oversight for regional territory analysis and guides sales initiatives that address complex customer business priorities and outcomes, incorporating AI-driven predictive analytics to forecast future market needs. Steers teams toward developing and advocating for innovative solutions and strategies that advance customer business objectives. Champions the identification and strategic resolution of gaps, enhancing market engagement and maximizing overall sales performance.
• Provides direction and guidance across cross-functional teams in leading strategic discussions with executive stakeholders and decision makers for high-value customers to deepen relationships and identify, qualify, and accelerate sales opportunities. Acts as a principal point of contact and ensures comprehensive strategic collaboration with internal executive stakeholders within and across organizations to optimize customer success on a broad scale. Champions strategic partnerships with account teams and customers to leverage technological advancements for market influence and competitive advantage. Advocates for and drives adoption of security principles in customer interactions, opportunity, and pursuits to ensure highest levels of trust and compliance standards. Champions a consumption/usage strategy with the team, and champions driving seller behaviors that include support solutions in every solution sale in collaboration cross organizationally as part of rhythms and scrums.
• Strategically directs multiple teams across regions in the innovation and deployment of solutions to advance artificial intelligence (AI)- and cloud-driven transformations for a broad customer base, emphasizing the integration of cutting-edge AI technologies and cloud services. Develops and communicates a cohesive strategic vision that differentiates Microsoft’s offerings and establishes market leadership in the competitive landscape. Oversees team on acting as a subject matter expert and trusted advisor for key strategic customers (up to the executive level), and leads the strategic integration of technologies and solutions that are in line with their goals that align and advance their strategic goals and drive digital transformation.
• Defines overarching strategy for regional teams on whitespace analysis and proactively uncovers business opportunities and market gaps within the assigned territory, utilizing AI-driven market intelligence tools to assess trends and insights. Acts as a subject matter expert for, and oversees team on systematically synthesizing and forecasting market intelligence, trends, and insights and drive sales outcomes. Develops and champions innovative market analysis methodologies to ensure strategic alignment with corporate objectives and anticipation of market evolutions.