Specialist Sales Lead at Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. 

At Microsoft our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Specialist Sales Lead

Job number 1104047
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Employment type: Full-Time
Role type: People Manager
Profession: Sales
Travel: 0-25 %

Summary

• Develops and manages strategic solution sales plan for subsidiary/area (e.g., pipeline management, forecasting, resourcing).
• Identifies market and customer needs and collaborates with internal teams to devise solutions to meet those needs.
• Drives team to discover and qualify new opportunities; drives consumption with new and existing customers.
• Orchestrates team to drive deals across multiple stakeholder groups including partners.
• Coaches team on Microsoft technology differentiators and market knowledge while leading internal collaboration to position Microsoft products, solutions, and services against competitors.

Responsibilities
People Management:

• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.

Sale Execution:

• Brings impactful industry insights with partners into customer engagements.
• Acts as a thought leader in digital transformation across solution areas to advise customers and represent Microsoft, and coaches others internally on how to do this.
• Leads a virtual cross-organizational team on strategic projects and high impact solution sales deployments that enable digital transformation and deliver business value.
• Leads organization to drive new Digital Transformation projects (e.g., cloud platforms and services) through business outcome selling and expanding customer business decision maker (BDM) connections.
• Leverages stakeholders (e.g., Customer Success team unit, account-aligned team unit, Consulting, One Commercial Partner [OCP] organization) to build pipeline within the territory.
• Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) and Microsoft Consumption Process (MCP) to determine the quality of the opportunity/engagement and whether to proceed, and educate the team on how to best address the customer needs.
• Enables the sales team to drive cloud businesses growth at or above targets, and accelerate customer value realization through cloud services consumption across solution areas (e.g., modern workplace, apps and infrastructure, data and artificial intelligence [AI] and business applications, security, support). Reports progress to leadership and removes execution obstacles.
• Coaches their team to remove consumption blockers in pre-sales by collaborating with partners and other internal regional and global teams (e.g., Digital Win Room [DWR], FastTrack, Global Black Belts) and coaches their team how to engage customers to drive cloud services growth, support and consumption in accounts.
• Helps the team create vision for the customers and develop plans to drive sales. Leverages partners (e.g., Global System Integrators, Global Independent Software Vendor [ISV], industry) added value to increase customer outcomes.
• Participates in innovation circles. Represents their team internally at Microsoft as he/she engages internal stakeholders (e.g., Account Team Unit [ATU], Customer Success Unit [CSU], One Commercial Partner [OCP], Worldwide Commercial Business [WCB] Solution Area Leads, Global Black Belts).
• 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. Seeks alignment with all stakeholders and partners and guides team to work with internal stakeholders to remove blockers.

Scaling Collaboration:

• Guides their team to build a network of partners to cross-sell and up-sell and drive usage.
• Leads the team to identify new partners and evaluate partner capabilities.
• Leads by example to be executive sponsor for Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and Global System Integrators (GSIs) and drives sponsorship relationships for all of the Specialist Team Unit (STU) leadership team. Actively participates in the local Partner Governance Council and makes recommendation for Partner Recruitment and Partner Resource Allocation.
• Guides their team to apply the orchestration model with Account Team Unit (ATU), Customer Success Unit (CSU), One Commercial Partner (OCP), Consulting and Global Resources (e.g., Global Black Belts, FastTrack, Digital Win Room [DWR]).
• Establishes approach and practices to promote communication and collaboration across functions.
• Facilitates the development of partner strategies and ensures execution.
• Provides input and feedback to One Commercial Partner (OCP) on developing partner strategies and building partner capabilities to build and influence the market.
• Coaches the team to drive end-to-end business solutions across solution areas, resulting in increased partner satisfaction and partner deal sharing year-over-year.

Technical Expertise:

• Contributes to setting up the events and promoting best practice sharing across subsidiaries and the adoption from other subsidiaries.
• Actively participants in the Specialist Sales Leader community. Leads by example to show the learning culture across the organization.    
• Develops strategies to position Microsoft products, solutions, and/or services (e.g., cloud services and platforms) against competitors.
• Initiates discussions to share industry trends and insights across the whole organization. Leverages deep technology knowledge and coaches team about Microsoft technology differentiators/competitive advantage.
• Provides expertise to customers/partners and shares knowledge on social media relevant for their market (e.g., LinkedIn). Establishes a sounding board of customers and partners related to technology innovation.      
• Coaches their team on business and market knowledge.
• Reviews wins / losses with the team to determine how to identify systematic and non-systematic issues to resolve.

Sales Excellence:

• Leads their team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation to drive growth by leveraging technology, industry and partner expertise. Builds new market by leveraging deep technology expertise and resources.    
• Guides their team on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and facilitates the resolution of technical issues for strategic accounts.
• Establishes standards for customer/partner experiences. Ensures customers are made aware of new technology innovations.   
• Ensures their team meet targets (e.g., sales, usage, customer acquisition) and operational standards and maintains the health of metrics within the assigned subsidiary/area.
• Interacts with Corporate leadership and executive-level stakeholders to get support for their team and the geographical regions.
• Mentors/coaches the team on growing knowledge on sales or products and ensures the team complete training and obtain certifications as required. Seek additional learning opportunities and prioritize to enhance effectiveness. 
• Drives and oversees integrated strategic planning to exceed cloud growth, drive consumption, and Support revenue and gain market share for the Solution Areas. Drives the integration of that all local, regional and corporate resources (e.g., Digital, Global Black Belts, FastTrack) into the strategic plan. Discusses progress against plan in rhythm of business (ROB) meetings (e.g., Quarterly Business Connect [QBC], Virtual Solutions Unit [VSU]) and aligns the plans of their team across departments.      
• Guides their team regarding client performance, in whitespace analysis, and identifying potential new business in their assigned territories.

Other:

• Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

• 11+ years technology-related sales or account management experience
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science,  Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, Analytics, Data Science, or related field
• 8+ years people management experience.

Benefits and Perks
Benefits / perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work:

• Industry leading healthcare
• Opportunities to network and connect
• Discounts on products and services
• Generous time away.
• Savings and investments
• Giving programs
• Educational resources
• Maternity and paternity leave

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply

Note: Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer