As an Azure Specialist, you are a business leader with technical expertise working with our most important managed customers. You will lead a virtual team of sales, technical, and services resources to help customers realize digital transformation through cloud computing achieve/exceed quarterly Azure consumption targets for related workloads in your assigned accounts. You possess both a high EQ with executive presence, able to engage with senior decision makers to uncover digital transformation initiatives, and a passion to learning how Azure cloud services can deliver digital transformation. You will develop and maintain an Azure expertise, able to identify projects, build a compelling business case, and drive the consumption project to production. You will build and maintain relationships with customers, influence long-term strategic direction and act as a trusted advisor driving engagement at the CXO level with technology decision makers. You will help customers evaluate their cloud strategy, determine approaches to application and data migration and modernization, and recommend solutions that meet their requirements.
The Small, Medium, and Corporate team helps businesses achieve their digital transformation goals by matching customer challenges with Microsoft solutions. Located in either a Digital Sales center, or a local subsidiary, you will help our managed customers across industries, company sizes and territories to identify their needs and opportunities. One of the fastest growing customer segments in the technology industry, you will help customers get to the cloud across Microsoft solution areas like Modern Workplace, Business Applications, Applications, Infrastructure, and Data and AI.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
The role will focus on Application Innovation in Azure.
Specific responsibilities for this role will include:
Understand customer’s application footprint, business and technology strategy and compete landscape to map customer’s expectations.
Create “buy-in” vision by proactively building key executive relationships with key decision makers (CDO, CIO, CMO, Head of Apps) and create value to influence strategic decisions.
As a business leader for assigned territories, own ACR forecast, workload penetration, Partner involvement, BG initiatives to support landing of solution plays (Job 1 Build & Modernize AI Apps, Job 2 Developer Productivity)
Ensure Infra Specialist owns the holistic conversation on Migrate Enterprise Apps as part of WS/SQL pitch. They engage with Apps Specialist on a need basis. Use metrics like Opportunities created by Infra and Data team as leading indicator.
Prioritize engagement with local marketing to drive top of the funnel and local initiatives.
Collaborate with Global Black Belt (GBB), Technology Specialists (TSP), Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) and Executive Briefing Center (EBC) to land solution value and seek platform commitment.
Develop technical acumen to hold conversation / Whiteboarding and earn BDM and TDM mindshare.
Own commercial conversation including TCO/Business value, to secure customer commitment. Leverage Strategic Pursuits Team / Deal Desk and Sales Acceleration Programs, as needed.
Orchestrate and align with ATU for account planning, CSU for smoother Oppty transition and proactively hunt for net-new upsell scenarios.
Additional responsibilities for this role will include:
Sales Execution
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Engages in conversations with customers to introduce how other workloads could enable digital transformation areas that is aligned with the customer's industry and turns opportunities into deals. Has a deep understanding of customers' business and its priorities to drive conversations with customers on digital transformation across multiple solution areas, in collaboration with partners and services. Creates guiding examples of digital transformation through seminars, workshops, Webinars, and direct engagement.
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Collaborates with team members to discover new opportunities. Drives incremental revenue growth through personal campaigns (e.g., portfolio analysis) or internal sources (e.g., marketing, account teams). Collaborates with account teams, partners, or services to track, qualify, and expand new opportunities. Collaborates with other teams (e.g., account teams) and services to build pipeline. Interfaces with customers and builds relationships via social selling. Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed.
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Identifies opportunities to drive consumption and grow business with existing customers by initiating conversations, providing demos or quotes, and collaborating with partners or internal teams (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, global black belts [GBBs]); for licensing transactions and project engagements, ensures rapid and robust deployment plan at point of sale that is validated by services and partners. Identifies, articulates, and facilitates the removal of blockers to consumption by partnering with internal and external stakeholders.
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Identifies customer business needs and technology readiness. Contributes to the development of solutions in collaboration with internal teams, partners, and
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services. Proposes prioritized solutions that align with customers' needs. Articulates the business value of proposed solutions.
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Proactively builds external stakeholders' mapping. Collaborates with account teams (e.g., Account Executives) to identify and engage senior business subject matter decision makers at the customer's/partner's business.
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Implements strategies to accelerate the closing of deals. Contributes input on strategies to drive and close prioritized opportunities. Coaches junior team members in deal plan execution. Implements 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
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Collaborates with One Commercial Partner (OCP) and with a network of partners to cross-sell, up-sell, and co-sell. Identifies and supports on-boarding new partners by researching and discussing customer scenarios. Provides feedback to OCP on partner gaps. Develops joint proposals and consumption plans with partners. Contributes to developing partner strategies to address gaps in partner capabilities.
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Applies the orchestration model to proactively drive deal closure by identifying and aligning internal stakeholders and leveraging and expanding relationships with partners.
Technical Expertise
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Collaborates with the "compete" global black belts (GBBs) to analyze competitor products, solutions, and/or services and implements strategies to position Microsoft against competitors in customer communication. Proactively provides analysis of the competitive landscape in supported solution area. Evaluates opportunities and makes recommendations on pursuit or withdrawal.
Sales Excellence
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Collaborates with partners and resources and leverages customer insights or industry knowledge. Contributes to exploring business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and support customer innovation.
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Reviews feedback report and coaches others on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction by establishing recovery action plans to improve clients' overall experience. Manages and/or orchestrates sales and delivery success through the account team and pursuit team.
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Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning, rhythm-of-business (ROB) meetings to review and plan for accounts in the assigned territory.
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Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to conduct business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business.
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Manages the end-to-end business of the assigned territory. Cnducts forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling aligned with strategic priorities.
Required/Minimum Qualifications :
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Experience of technology-related sales or account management experience
Additional or Preferred Qualifications
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Demonstrated experience of technology-related sales or account management experience
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Solution sales or consulting services sales experience.
Professional
Technical
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Azure Platform. Understanding of Microsoft Azure Cloud platform with emphasis on Azure Infrastructure solutions including IaaS and PaaS based environments, and Azure based application management and governance. Understanding and being familiar with Windows Server and Linux Server Licensing model required
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