Solution Area Specialist - Business Applications at Microsoft

Job Number: 1261734
Profession: Sales
Role type: Individual Contributor
Travel: 0 - 25 %

Job Description

• As a Business Applications Sales Executive - you will be an industry-aligned, outcome-driven business process transformation enabler within the Microsoft specialist sales organization working with our most important customers helping them with their end-to-end business transformation needs by envisioning solutions and mapping capabilities with associated business value to business decision-maker persona pains/needs.
• You will execute with excellence the entire sales process by owning and orchestrating a virtual pursuit team of technically intense workload (solution) experts including presales, co-sell partners, and Independent Software Vendors to provide customers with solutions aligned to their end-to-end business transformation needs using Microsoft Business Applications’ portfolio of offerings.
• You will use the Microsoft Catalyst Sales Methodology to enable customer digital transformation journey focusing on the business value and outcomes from Microsoft Business Application solutions.

Responsibilities

• The Business Applications Sales Executive is an accomplished and experienced solution seller with a proven track record of driving Business Application-led (ERP/CRM solutions) complex digital transformation in large enterprise accounts with experience running multi-million-dollar pursuits.

To excel in the Business Applications Sales Executive role, you must have the following traits and abilities:

• Business Process Transformation Expert - Has deep understanding of challenges and opportunities in an industry and can envision solutions mapped with business value to address customer persona business needs and pains.
• Expert Business Decision Maker Conversationalist, Digital First Seller - Identifies the right BDMs and builds relationships using social selling best practices, leverages other organizations in Microsoft and their relationships.
• Expertise in Industry and solutions with connected use cases to achieve trusted advisor role with BDMs & customer personas.
• World Class Orchestrator- Complex, multi-thread Project Manager, influences for impact, leads, manages & drives shared vision and execution across virtual teams and partners.
• Industry-based Solutioning Expert - Expert in industry and has knowledge and skills to envision solutions solving BDM persona pains with connected use cases.
• Business Outcome Seller- Expert ability to quantify business value for solution capabilities addressing customer persona needs/pains.
• Expert in Differentiating Solution Offering- Expert understanding and positioning of proposed solution(s) against competition, macro-level thinker that can articulate and present the power of the Microsoft Cloud and differentiated benefits for customer.
• World-Class Deal Crafter & Negotiator- Exceptional deal crafter with capability to map business value to customer proposals. Employs world-class negotiating techniques to close business.
• Senior Executive C-Suite Level Presenter- Expert communicator with world class skills in effective presentation skills to executive and board level BDMs.
• Build Pipe in alignment with Account Teams & Cross-Solution Areas- Build pipe by leading with industry, using digital signals & insights to prospect, network, identify, engage & nurture with right BDMs, align & gain account team commitment, plug into cross solution sales motions.
• Envision Industry-aligned Customer-Centric Solutions with Business Value Insights- Discover and envision industry-based solutions with business value insights working with a pursuit team of technically intense workload experts and partners resources to quantify and qualify end-to-end connected solution use cases expanding opportunity value across line of business BDMs.
• Engage with Partner(s)- Leverage and scale through aligning early with priority co-sell partners and ISVs.
• Develop Close Plan & Secure Customer Agreement to Envisioned Solution- Gain customer agreement by successfully presenting the business case for change, aligning business pains with envisioned solution and associated business value.
• Orchestrate Solution Design & Calculate/Present Business value - Orchestrate, bringing clarity to pursuit team to ensure designed solution(s) maps to envisioned solution and business value.  Ensure design has an end-to-end view, building opportunities for future expansion of interconnected business processes after initial sale.
• Negotiate with Proposals Mapped to Business Value- Create compelling board-level presentations with proposals aligned to customer transformation plan mapped to business value impact.  Deal crafting and negotiating using Give Gets/Balance of Trade and other resources. Engage Microsoft executives when required to expedite close and resolve stale mate/in action.
• Commitment for Customer Success- Throughout the sales process and after sales closure ensure successful handoff to customer success teams with a clearly documented deployment plan.

Key Capabilities:

• Leading/orchestrating sales processes across account planning, opportunity planning, deal negotiation, customer decision frameworks, evaluation plans and engaging in sophisticated business case discussions.
• Deal crafting, negotiating terms and contracts for multimillion-dollar digital transformation initiatives.
• Disciplined operator with demonstrated accuracy in forecasting business and maintaining pipeline hygiene.
• Strong track record and history of carrying and exceeding an enterprise account sales quota.

Deep Understanding of:

• Business solutions, specifically CRM and/or ERP applications including one or more of: Marketing Automation, Sales Automation, Relationship Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Finance, Supply Chain Management and Commerce and how they translate into business impact.
• Expert understanding and 1 to 2 years’ experience selling into one of the following industries: Financial Services, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail and Government.
• Broad understanding of commercial cloud offerings, ideally including Microsoft’s cloud platform, as well as competitors and related ecosystems.
• The security, regulatory and compliance needs of global customers.

Desired Skills:

• Design Thinking and Solution Envisioning
• Strong presentation, white-boarding and communication
• Passion and commitment for customer success
• Ability to maintain a high level of productivity, manage multiple competing priorities and work effectively under the pressure of time constraints in a fast-paced, complex, collaborative and team-oriented environment.
• Organizational agility, able to coordinate stakeholders like Marketing, Engineering, Licensing, Legal, Executives etc.
• Problem solver and ability to work in rapidly changing environment effectively managing ambiguity.

Requirements​

• 3 to 5 years of experience
• Experience with selling CRM / ERP or similar software-as-a-service, cloud-based business applications to large enterprise accounts exceeding sales targets.
• Developing demand and pipe by building BDM networking, assessing strategic customer objectives, digital transformation opportunity discovery, key improvement scenarios and an ability to measure and present incremental and new economic value from solutions proposed.
• Ability to sell solutions with connected end-to-end business transformation across business units within enterprise accounts.