Account Executive Financial Services at Microsoft

Overview

• 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 succeed at work and beyond.
• As the Account Executive Financial Services, you will play a pivotal role in helping this organization on their digital and AI journey, delivering solutions that generate business outcomes and growth for Microsoft.
• You will collaborate with stakeholders to identify, design, and accelerate the most valuable digital and AI initiatives that align with the organization's business goals.
• You will leverage your understanding of the financial service industry to guide the organization in exploring new and emerging technology trends. 
• Your role will involve creating a clear and shared vision for their transformation, coordinating opportunities across the organization, Microsoft, and Partner teams. You will work closely with executives (Technology and Business) to develop and update their digital roadmap, ensuring alignment with their long-term goals and delivering incremental benefits throughout their digital journey.

In addition to your technical and strategic expertise, you will bring significant sales experience to the role. This includes:

• Demonstrated success in achieving and exceeding sales targets, with a strong understanding of sales processes and methodologies.
• Experience in developing and executing sales strategies that drive business growth and customer satisfaction.
• Proven ability to build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, including C-level executives, to influence decision-making and drive sales opportunities.
• Expertise in identifying and qualifying new business opportunities, and effectively managing the sales pipeline to ensure consistent and predictable revenue growth.
• Strong negotiation skills and the ability to close complex deals that deliver value to both the customer and Microsoft.

Responsibilities

• Industry Knowledge:Use your knowledge of the financial service to help plan and dirve transformation strategy that meets the customers business outcomes. Challenge and guide this financial service organisation with constructive conversations about their business and technology.
• Strategic Customer Engagement: You will have a full understanding of customer's business needs, priorities, strategies, & deliver new insights on their business strategy to educate them on ways to address them jointly. Show long-term differentiated value for the customer. You will also have to proactively elevate relationships through multiple levels of the customer's organization to secure alignment and execution. You will always consider the ‘bigger picture’ for your customers, with the ability to absorb information, and be conceptual and creative in problem-solving excellence.
• Business Relationship Owner: You will be responsible for defining the strategic vision and leading the transformation with the customer’s CxO level Technology, Digital and Business Decision Makers (BDM). This requires leadership skills and ability to challenge conventional thinking. Success will come through achieving our customer’s success.
• Team Mobiliser and Orchestrator: You will need to learn how to navigate Microsoft, work across functions, and the eco-system, understand the systems – all to maximise the value to your customer. From exec sponsors to product experts & commercial leaders, you will need to be resourceful to ensure your customer is getting the full support across the organisation.
• Sales Leader and Operational Excellence: Achieving results by understanding digital transformation drivers and customer priorities. Identifying new opportunities and helping customers accelerate their move to the digital age for their own benefit as well as their customers and stakeholders. Delivering consistent, repeatable achievement of revenue and consumption targets
• Sales Challenger: Continuously building industry and technical knowledge. Bringing innovative industry solutions, benchmarks and references to C-level executives that drive greater efficiencies, optimization and increase customer satisfaction.
• Strong Communicator: You will be able to articulate complex problems and solutions in a simple, logical, and impactful manner.
• Inclusive Leader: With strong interpersonal skills you will create an inclusive culture within your team that embraces diversity and reflects our mission to empower every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more. You will have the ability to easily establish trust-based relationships and gain valuable insights through collaboration and communication with your customer and your team.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• A keen interest in technology with a solid foundation in core technologies
• Extensive experience in addressing financial service business challenges through innovative technology solutions.
• A strategic planning approach that connects activity to long-term goals and outcomes while delivering incremental benefits
• Excellent relationship-building and consultative skills to learn, build trust, and challenge
• A strong history of success based on collaboration and coordination of virtual teams

Qualifications

• 7+ years experience solution selling for cloud solutions, with a preference for experience in the financial servicde industry.
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Technology, or related field AND 5+ years experience working in an industry (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Government, Education), driving digital transformation, or other relevant work experience (e.g., consulting, technology)
  • OR Master's Degree in Business Administration AND 4+ years experience working in an industry (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Government, Education), driving digital transformation, or other relevant work experience (e.g., consulting, technology) or equivalent experience.

Others:

• Engages in conversations with customers to introduce how our workloads could enable digital transformation areas that is aligned with the customer's industry. Initiates conversations with customers on digital transformation in a solution area, in collaboration with partners and services. Shares learning on digital transformation through seminars, workshops, webinars, and direct engagement.
• Collaborates with team members to discover new opportunities. Drives incremental revenue growth through personal campaigns (e.g., portfolio analysis) or internal sources (e.g., Marketing). Collaborates with solution teams, architects, partners, or services to track and qualify new opportunities. Collaborates with other teams (e.g., solution teams) and services to build pipeline. Interfaces with customers and builds relationships via social selling. Applies Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology (MCEM) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed.
• Identifies opportunities to drive consumption and grow business with existing customers by initiating conversations, providing demos or quotes, and collaborating with partners or internal teams (e.g., Technical Sales Professionals, Global Black Belts). For licensing transactions and project engagements, ensures rapid and robust deployment plan at point of sale that is validated by services and partners.
• Identifies customer business needs and technical readiness. Collaborates with internal teams, partners, and services to propose prioritized solutions that align with customers' needs. Leverages the value propositions to communicate business impact of proposed solutions. Listens to customers to understand business outcomes.
• Implements strategies to help accelerate the closing of deals in collaboration with other team members. Implements 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.
• Effective territory/account management: planning, opportunity qualification and creation, analysis, value engineering, services/partner engagement, opportunity management, pipeline management and deal negotiation.
• Problem Solver. Ability to solve customer problems through cloud technologies.
• Collaborative. Orchestrate and influence virtual teams to pursue sales opportunities and lead v-teams through influence.