In this exciting new role as a Sales Support Lead - Global Black Belt, you will be leader within our Microsoft Solutions sales organization, working with our most important partners and customers. You will lead virtual teams of technical, partner and support resources to meet our most complex customer’s support needs through Unified & Premier Support and Enhanced Solutions sales.  Through close alignment with our sales teams, you will drive integrated selling of our product and support offerings. This will enable our customers to accelerate the time to value of their Microsoft investment and deliver a more integrated and connected customer experience. 

 You will build and maintain relationships with Support Sellers, Managers and Area leadership, influence strategic account direction and act as a trusted advisor. driving engagement with customers at CXO level, software developers, and Modern Support IT specialists. You will assist sales in account planning, orchestrate our most complex support sales opportunities, help customers evaluate and purchase Unified Support and Enhanced Solutions options that meet their requirements, remove roadblocks to deployment and drive partner and customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities

 The Sales Support Lead is responsible for the end to end support presales process for assigned complex deals and accounts, shaping, scoping and proposing through deal orchestration to satisfy customer’s support requirements.

·     Lead and challenge customers with clear strategic vision of Modern Support aligned to their strategic goals

·     Drive senior customer and internal stakeholder conversations for Modern Support aligned to Microsoft’s customer solutions

·     Contributing to Unified/Premier Support and Enhanced Solutions sales targets in your aligned territory by successfully winning complex support deals.

·     Understanding, demonstrating and translating customer requirements for Modern Support into winning proposals

·     Be the leader of a global virtual team, driving resource management, deal orchestration and execution

·     Responsibility to drive the deal development process through various tools and processes from estimation to support contract setup

·     Being a key point of contact for escalation and approval management

Responsibility in setting up engagements in internal systems (incl. setting up cost- and bill rates, project start and end dates, project value etc.) and supporting a smooth sales to delivery handover

·     Pipeline management in alignment with the relevant sales teams

·     Thought leadership for continuous improvement in our tools, processes and offerings.

Account Planning and Business development = 15%

·               

o      Working with account sales teams to qualify, shape and influence key customer’s modern support need, timeline for implementation and budget

o      Maps Microsoft support solutions and Intellectual Property (IP) to customer needs

o      Create and execute a territory plan where we will find the execution plan to influence the pipeline generation

o      Create awareness plan in alignment with the offering group

o      Support pipeline management in alignment with the relevant sales teams

Deal Orchestration and Preparation: = 50%

·               

o      Identify proposal deal team and technical subject matter experts (SMEs) to be staffed to support the proposal preparation

o      Refine customer requirements in collaboration with the sales and support account teams

o      Prepare approval plans based on deal complexity, exceptions and partner need

o      The Prepare Proposal phase focuses on the development of a compliant, persuasive, customer-centered support proposal

o      Use tools and resources to obtain estimate effort and resources needed to scope and shape the opportunity

o      Manage Subcontractor/Partner needs as required in coordination with a Partner Specialist (if available)

o      Involve Technical Quality Assurance (TQA) as needed

o      Define the proposal approach: Schedule, Roles & Responsibilities and proposal project schedule. Build a responsibility matrix if needed.

o      Confirm the opportunity scope with the customer, directly or through the bid team resources, ensuring relevant documents and Exhibits are aligned

o      Maintain and track the opportunity development in internal tools using standard templates

o      Build the proposal package: Executive Summary, Proposal Presentation, Exhibits, Cost estimations (Financials), Solution Pricing

o      Perform the internal and external validation processes (with the customer and partner, if needed)

o      Submit the proposal for approval and manage the process.

o      Update project resources request as early staff to deliver the project with more accurate start dates

Deal Approval = 20%

·               

o      Lead the deal review process with internal controllers (SBD, TQA, Support LT)

o      Lead the deal review process with internal stakeholders from the Account team: as needed

o      Submit the reviewed proposal package for the approval process as required

Deal Closure = 15%

o      Assemble the final contract

o      Provide the contract to the appropriate account aligned resource to facilitate customer signature

o      Submit the signed contract to be processed as an opportunity win for Support Contract setup

o      Process subcon/partner contracts and related documentation as needed

o      Enable a smooth sales to delivery hand over

o      If the opportunity is a lost, ensure to provide the proper feedback and document lessons learned

Qualifications

The Senior Support Strategic Deals Business Leader role requires individuals that can collaborate effectively across geographically dispersed teams, have excellent client-facing skills, and are able to lead multiple complex opportunities running in parallel.

·     Experience: 10+ years of related experience in Support pre-sales and/or Support roles.

·     Support Experience: 3-5 years of Support selling/deal orchestration experience with in-depth knowledge of Unified Support with complex customers. ​

·     Sales / Sales Expertise: Presentation skills, and consultative selling. Disciplined in business-management, meeting sales targets and operational standards. Mentors other sellers towards a "challenger mentality" by prompting them to engage the customer early with new insights. Demonstrated experience influencing senior stakeholders within customer and own organization. 

·     Cloud Platform: Understanding of Microsoft cloud platforms and related need for Modern Support.

·     Partner Knowledge: Strong knowledge of partner Support solutions, Managed Services, and Support landscape.

·     Competitive Landscape: Knowledge of cloud networking competitors and content delivery network provider landscapes.

·     Support: Familiarity with Microsoft Support solutions (Unified, MIPs, Reactive, proactive, DSE, Enhanced).  ​

·     Solution Expert: Deep understanding of Unified Support, key areas of differentiation, and knowledge to create industry-centric use cases for Support.​

·     Sales Orchestration: Proven ability to orchestrate the execution of large, complex Support Sales motions, Sales v-teams, and Global resources. 

·     Business Value Seller: Proven record of effective account management, particularly demonstrating coupling business acumen with technology knowledge, to connect customer business challenges to their technology decisions and; coaching the customer through business case creation, approval, and stakeholder buy-in. ​

·     Audience Credibility: Ability to influence target decision makers such as Business Decision Makers and Technology Leaders on the need for Modern Support. 

·     Capture Management: Methodical and disciplined approach to qualifying support opportunities and developing win themes and strategy to improve probability of winning a strategic opportunity. 

·     Collaborative: Able to work cohesively with customers, members of the Microsoft (or similar) sales, services, and marketing organizations and Microsoft (or similar) partners.

·     Excellent Communicator: Communication and collaboration, organizational, presentation, deep technical product demo, writing, and verbal communication skills.

·     Executive Presence: Validated experience engaging with senior level executives.​

·     Consultative Technical Selling and Challenger mindset: Validated experience in consultative technical selling approach, including bringing innovative ideas to customers problems and being customer focused.

·     Performer: Highly driven passionate person who consistently exceeds goals and expectations. 

·     Growth Mindset: Experience and passion for learning (technical and professional skills); implementing practices from others; trying, failing and learning from the experience; sharing practices and knowledge for others’ benefit.

·     Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field Preferred​

·     Broad evangelism through events (presentation skills), and consultative selling. 

Additional Details

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

·     Support sales/presales experience

·     Unified and Modern Support knowledge

·     Sales/presales orchestration and capture management experience

·     Drive for Results

·     Collaboration

·     Influencing for Impact

·     Adaptability

·     Judgment

·     Customer Focus

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. 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.

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