Overview:

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, being diverse and inclusive and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Growth mindset encourages each of us to lean in and learn what matters most to our customers, to create the foundational knowledge that enables us to make customer-first decisions in everything we do. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us achieve our mission.

This is a unique opportunity for a bold, customer oriented, strategic thinking sales professional to help identify unique prospects and execute Microsoft cloud deals that drive significant publicity, competitive share, and revenue for the Microsoft Azure platform. The primary focus will be on start-ups and ISV’s that are transforming key verticals.

The Digital Native Pursuits program at Microsoft is at the leading edge of our business and one of the fastest growing and most exciting groups at the Company. We operate like a “startup” within Microsoft and the team driving this initiative is incredibly entrepreneurial and high-performance.

The Account Executive, Digital Natives Pursuits is leading and orchestrating the One Microsoft team efforts to drive ambitious growth and wins, with start-ups and unicorns, on the Microsoft Cloud Platform. This senior role will partner closely with resources in the Business Development Organization, MCAPS, Engineering, Marketing, Finance and Legal, Business Desk, and other groups across Microsoft.

The collective responsibility of the team is:

• Leading and shaping the future of high potential startups and unicorns based on locally set selection criteria

• Assessing external data identifying those startups and unicorns, qualifying them based on current status, scores, cost of complexity and acquisition as well as internal Microsoft relationship and relevance (any upcoming ISV that can scale and go big)

• Engaging with this segment to prioritize the right motion for a potential unicorn WIN (either through projects on Azure at the start, strategic partnership with commitment, or exclusivity on a specific workload)

• Building strategic partnerships at the right time, with those unicorns to accelerate their growth and build new solutions

• Envisioning new industry scenarios and business models with the unicorns

• Driving technical alignment with the v-technical team across segments (CSU, STU, GBBs, Engineering, CSE)

Responsibilities

Responsibilities:

• Sales Leader: Ensure each customer has the most valuable relationship with Microsoft and execute MS vision of empowering enterprise customers, driving business growth and transformation through strategic thinking, sales execution and influence

• Strategic thinker and market expert: Accountable for identifying growth opportunities, defining strategies, prioritizing sales plays and developing go-to-market execution plans, to ensure Microsoft realizes its full growth potential within the startups and unicorns space. This process will integrate and rely on thorough analysis of external and internal data for building a solid portfolio of prospects

• Growth & Transformation business leader and Customer Advocate: Engage with the startups and unicorn customers to accelerate revenue growth, drive business outcomes, while helping customers to digitally transform in their industry. Responsible for supplementing global data with local insights to optimize for customer lifetime value through acquisition, retention and growth strategies

Deal Strategy  

• Deal Maker: Develop and progress the deal shaping and commercial deal construct that is optimal for both the customer and Microsoft

• Contribute to identifying appropriate parties to partner with/sell to through conducting a partner/customer assessment of their current needs and defining a value proposition to meet those needs. Assesses and pursues market opportunities and trends for the specialists that provide opportunities for partners/customers to leverage Microsoft platforms/products by identifying, quantifying, and qualifying opportunities. Contributes to evaluation of opportunities and leads account planning in cooperation with partners to identify and prioritize goals and objectives for an achievable target. 

• Obtain buy-in and engages with other internal teams (e.g., product, engineering, finance, legal, sales, marketing) to help inform and align the strategy. Execute and contribute to designing partner/customer strategic deals for a commercial strategic framework that are aligned with strategic business objectives and partner/customer current state and needs at an appropriate motion and cadence. Ensure strategic deals incorporate relevant market factors (e.g., competitive, economic, industry specific) to contribute to optimal results and return on investment. Help to empower a strong customer presence through a deep customer focus and strategic development, attracting and committing customers to the journey through integration of customer feedback. Maintain a strong customer focus throughout strategic development and brings customer along for the journey. Integrate information from prior engagements and learnings to build an improved strategy. 

*Stakeholder Management *

• Identify the appropriate executive-level stakeholder within customers to connect and work with, in cooperation with Business Development and in pursuit of new business generation. Orchestrates sales or partnership pursuits with customers/partners. Act as the voice for customers/partners across internal teams to design and implement plans/programs. Ensures customers are aware of key influencers/players, as well as Microsoft's value proposition, in order to contribute to effective customer models and strategies. Contributes to incorporating partners/customers into relevant business units. Contributes to creating and managing connections between necessary stakeholders within Microsoft and customers. 

• Contribute to and maintain trusted advisor partnerships with cross-functional partners, representing their team to segment leadership. Collaborates and partners with cross-functional (e.g., finance, engineering, legal, commercial, product, sales segments) and multi-country team members on core initiatives. Assists to influence and deal with resource (e.g., cash) founding to ensure the availability of resources and appropriate resource allocation. Ensure that cross-functional teams are aligned to the strategy and messaging to the customer/partner. Assist to design internal orchestrations and influences assurances. Contributes to building the internal strategy for orchestrating development of sales opportunities and across the organization, especially in solution sales management (e.g., cloud, data) to drive effective capabilities. 

*Deal Negotiation *

• Participate in discussions with customers/partners to align and help determine customer/partner and Microsoft needs and desired outcomes for a territory. Negotiate with existing and new customers/partners in mid to long-term planning to form a strategically-driven deal. Engage with, acquires support from, and negotiates internally with key stakeholders (e.g., product, engineering, finance, legal, sales, marketing) to move forward with negotiations. Contribute to driving awareness of the necessary protections, compliance, or security regulations within the market. 

*Closing the Deal *

• Participate in closing mutually beneficial deals with customers/partners, in participation with internal partners (e.g., Sales Management Team). Contribute to transitioning partners/customers to the appropriate team after deal is closed. Contribute to the public relations and communications strategy of the deal. Coordinate with all necessary internal stakeholders in the deal (e.g., finance, engineering, legal, commercial, product, sales segments) to assure that the deal is closed successfully. Contribute to conversations and coordinates with Microsoft's legal team to ensure that contracts are signed, that the deal is effectively closed, and that there is compliance between teams.  

*Reporting *

• Contribute to interpretation, adds to, and applies reports to add value in generating and executing communication plans. Contribute to efforts to interpret, add to, and apply reports to add value in generating and executing communication plans. Interpret reports generated by Microsoft that reflect financial performance (e.g., pipelines, sales cycles) of deals within a portfolio or area of focus. Assesses and acts on return on investment figures, profit and loss reports, and lesson learned sessions. Provides recommendations for action based on trends and insights. Organizes and aligns stakeholders by providing financial forecasts of business, assuring it is up to date, and informing all relevant stakeholders. Identifies and escalates issues from area leadership teams.  

*Operations *

• Continuously solicit and provide feedback and identifies themes and trends regarding experiences and potential improvements to strategic plans. Contribute to developing continuous process improvements and in-flight changes through the review and analysis of performance for specific strategic plans. Takes steps to continuously learn and develop self, by bringing losses to the forefront and growing from prior engagements. Contributes to continuously driving and improving on customer centricity, technological intensity, and process simplicity. 

• Contribute to the management of projects in alignment with strategic goals. Coordinate programmatically across the different areas of engagement with stakeholders and contributors to assure appropriate resources are available and that the project is executing in a timely manner. 

• Leverage deep domain/industry knowledge to develop creative and innovative solutions for cross-team stakeholders and partners/customers to improve optimizations and workflow. Shares and may scale successes, thought leadership, opportunities for improvement, best practices, and learnings internally and externally as appropriate (e.g., industry events). 

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience

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

• 8+ years' experience in any of the following: complex solution selling, consulting services sales, sales management, corporate strategy, or enterprise technology related sales.

Additional Qualifications:

• Deep understanding of cloud computing, application hosting, social media and software development (level 200+) is preferred

• Experience in building long-term commercial agreements that deal with ambiguities and dynamic business changes while minimizing risk

• 8+ years' experience spanning complex solution selling, consulting services sales, sales management, corporate strategy, investment banking

• Ability to analyze and model financial data

• Ability to creatively move difficult deals forward by restructuring the deal and/or finding ‘win-win’ scenarios and ensuring competitive advantage

• Ability to coordinate with external partners and internal teams, both on the business and technical sides to deliver on strategy

• Domestic travel of up to 50%

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .