Solution Sales Leader - Data & AI

The Data and AI team acts as trusted advisors and subject matter experts with core capability and expertise in Data Modernization, Analytics and AI. We work with customers to leverage data to help them achieve their business priorities and help guide customers’ journey through Analytics-led Azure Data transformation. We also support customers in evaluating their applications and business requirements, recommend solutions that meet their requirements, and demonstrate these solutions to win the technical decision.

The Solution Sales Leader for Data & AI is a senior leader within our enterprise sales organization and you will be responsible for leading, developing and managing of Solution Sales Managers to identify, drive technical solutioning and win over the sales decision maker in the Business and IT department of our Enterprise Customers leveraging Microsoft Data &AI solutions. You and your team will drive decisions for the customer that helps them achieve Business value with the Microsoft Platform, and thereby secure long-term sustainable growth for Microsoft. As a Solution Sales Leader you will be a key leader to helping customers embrace and succeed through digital transformation.

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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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 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.

• 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.

• Acts as the spokesman for Microsoft at external events. Provides expertise to customers/partners and shares knowledge on a specific platform or market.

• 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.

• Supports their team on participating in Microsoft events. Contributes to setting up the events and promoting best practice sharing across subsidiaries.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

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

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• 12+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field AND 10+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
  • OR Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 8+ years technology-related sales or account management experience.
• 10+ years services sales or account management experience.
• 5+ years people management experience.
• 2+ years manager of managers experience.

Solution Area Specialists M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $155,000 - $243,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $198,800 - $267,000 per year.Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay Microsoft will accept applications for the role until December 11th, 2024.

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. 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.