Why Microsoft

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.

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to win “App Innovation” workloads to help customers’ Digital Transformation journey.  The Microsoft Application Innovation business is one of the fastest growing businesses with a portfolio of products spanning across Managed/PaaS services of Azure Platform, PowerApps and Developer Productivity tools like GitHub and Visual Studio. Microsoft is hiring Specialist Managers for the Application Innovation business to deliver sales goals in this dynamic and fast-growing enterprise market.

Responsibilities

The purpose of this role

As a Specialist Manager - Application Innovation, you will be a senior solution sales leader, with technical acumen, selling the Microsoft Application innovation portfolio to our largest enterprise customers. You will lead from the front, act as a recognized credible advisor and engage C- level technology and business leads, coaching teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration and removing roadblocks (specifically for App Innovation solution area).  You will be seen as a Market Maker internally and externally for the region as well as an assigned vertical focused on guiding large-scale complex deal cycles in enterprise accounts. You will be the be the ambassador of App Innovation solution in your area/region driving/generating awareness across leadership teams and other verticals for the App Innovation solution area via Brown Bags, WIN WIRES, App Innovation days to create excitement and engagement to ensure top of mind across all stakeholders. This role is flexible in that you can work up to 50% from home  

The Specialist Manager is responsible for:  

Customer centricity

• You will lead from the front, personally engaging at CxO level to support and coach teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration  
• You will lead sellers to drive end-to-end business solutions, increasing customer and partner satisfaction and average deal sizes YoY.   
• You will lead cross-team to ensure customer commitment to consume to modernize and expand cloud services.  

Sales

• You will lead sellers to drive the Azure Digital and App Innovation business to exceed revenue, consumption, and scorecard targets  
• You will develop your seller’s Solution Sales and technical skills to sell the business outcomes of the broader Azure platform  
• You will drive a strong partnership with sales team and other teams engaging in the customer (e.g., partners, services, Customer Success, engineering support, etc.)

 
People Management

• You will develop a high-performance team by hiring diverse talent, prioritizing development, leading by example and by preparing people for more senior positions in other parts of the organization.   
• You will coach field sellers with a “challenger mentality”/Consulting sales methodology by prompting sellers to engage early and lead with new insights on how to grow the customers’ business.   
• You will recognize and reward successful teams and team members both within the sales organization and at corporate levels.  
  
  

Partner Engagement

• You bring together and land Microsoft solutions with Partner solutions, fully leverage the synergy effect with our partners, and co-sell with them to make deals bigger and faster.  
• You share practical knowledge with partners to drive the sale, deployment, and adoption of Microsoft solutions.  

Qualifications

What skills do you need to have?

There will be many opportunities for you to learn and grow into this role and Microsoft. However, to be able to best deliver on the purpose of this role, these are the core skills and experiences you should have on day one: 

Professional 

• Sales or Consulting experience with data center migration or application modernization/ Cloud Native projects 
• Experience selling Cloud Application Platform services, database, Developer Productivity tools, Low Code tools with a demonstrated track record in working towards sales goals. 
• Industry knowledge of application landscape and trends in verticals like FSI, Retail, Manufacturing etc. is a plus. 
• Executive presence with experience selling to Chief Digital Officers, Head of Products, and enterprise solution architects. 

Technical 

• Technical passion with good understanding of cloud architectural patterns leveraging managed or Platform-As-A-Service offerings, rearchitecting monolithic applications with cloud native technologies, related databases and modern DevOps/ DevSecOps practices. 
• Territory/Account Management. Experienced in Territory/Account Management including planning, opportunity qualification and creation, stakeholder communication, services/partner engagement and sales excellence practices including opportunity management, pipeline management and close planning.  
• Executive Stakeholder Value. Experienced in building and maintaining Executive level (CXO) stakeholder relationships and leading value proposition conversations aligned to customer priorities and outcomes.  
• Consumption Management. Experienced in ensuring customers realize desired value by consuming their technology and services investments in the intended timescales.  
• Subject Matter Expertise with one or more of the following:  
  • Experience modernizing Java applications on cloud (e.g. Jboss EAP, Spring Cloud, VM Ware, Tanzu, Pivotal Cloud Foundry) - preferred 
  • Experience with Cloud Native technologies like Containers, Kubernetes, Serverless and APIs. (e.g., Amazon/Google/Azure Kubernetes Service, RedHat OpenShift) – preferred 
  • Experience with Enterprise Integration Services and API Management (e.g.  like MuleSoft) - preferred 

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
  OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.