Senior Sales Specialist Azure Core

Senior Sales Specialists (Azure/Core) are responsible for orchestrating and delivering Azure migration and modernization strategies for our customers. Their role involves deeply understanding customer needs and business objectives, then aligning Azure solutions to effectively meet those goals and drive successful outcomes.

As a Senior Sales Specialist (Azure/Core), you are a senior business leader with technical and business expertise within our enterprise sales organization, working with our most important customers. You will lead a virtual team of sales, technical, and services resources to help customers realize the digital transformation through cloud computing.  A core competency of the role is to advance the engagement process to achieve/exceed quarterly Azure infrastructure, data, applications, and security consumption targets for related workloads in your assigned accounts. You possess a high EQ with executive presence, able to engage with decision makers to uncover digital transformation initiatives, and a passion for learning how Azure cloud services can deliver digital transformation. You will develop and maintain a holistic Azure migration and modernization 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 business and 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. You will lead customer cloud decisions on the Microsoft Azure platform.  You will champion the Microsoft platform across Azure, Modern Work, Dynamics, and Security to ensure our customers are best served.  You will remove roadblocks to deployment and drive customer satisfaction.

We are currently looking for Senior Sales Specialists (Azure/Core) professionals to join our teams across various business groups, for varying customer sizes, in our enterprise, regulated, and partner services organizations. By applying to this role, you will be considered for multiple opportunities within Microsoft across the United States, including locations beyond where the role is posted. This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home. Travel percentages will vary according to role.

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.

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 4+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.

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.

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

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. Lads conversations with strategic/high-potential customers (e.g., high budget, global account) along with account teams or partners. Facilitates the account team unit (ATU) and/or Specialist Team Unit (STU) to build pipeline in collaboration with partners and services. Guides others on social selling. 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.
• 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 (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, Global Black Belts). 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 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 One Commercial Partner (OCP) on developing partner strategies and connects the partner ecosystems to scale business results.
• Leads the sales orchestration with internal stakeholders and partners (e.g., Enterprise Operating Unit). 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 supported solution area. Leads the communication to provide feedback to other teams (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) on future product trends or sales blocker.

Sales Excellence:

• 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.
• Reviews feedback report and sets long-term strategies aimed at maintaining levels of client satisfaction. 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.
• Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning, Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings to review and plan for strategic accounts across territories.
• Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to lead business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business. Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
• Manages the end-to-end business for strategic accounts across the organization. Leads forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling with on-strategy engagements in high propensity accounts. Mentors less experienced team members.
• Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry. Proactively seeks training, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' business, and shares it with team members. 

Other:

• Embody our and