Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best-known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
We are recruiting to fill the position below:
Job Title: Solution Area Specialist - Modern Work
Job number: 1788579 Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-Time
Travel: 0-25 %
Profession: Sales
Role type: Individual Contributor
Worksite: Up to 50% work from home
Overview
Are you inspired to help customers empower their employees and students, maximize the employee and student experience, and do great work using the devices and apps they love, now enhanced with the transformative power of AI?
We are seeking individuals to guide customers through significant changes as we embrace generative AI through Copilot, Copilot+ PCs, and Windows in the Cloud. Microsoft is leading this evolution, enabling organizations to reimagine their business for success in this new era.
With AI integration, physical Windows devices, as well as Cloud PCs offer unprecedented flexibility and efficiency, allowing for a seamless transition between on-premise and remote work environments.
Join us in helping organizations leverage AI to optimize workflows, foster innovation, and secure their operations, all while providing a familiar and powerful Windows experience across any device.
In the Education MW Specialists team, we are looking for passionate, experienced, and credible specialist sellers with a drive for developing and winning strategic opportunities that deliver end-to-end Modern Work thought leadership driving significant customer value and enabling transformational customer outcomes.
As a MW Specialist you will build digital transformation modern work strategies with customers, collaborating across different groups inside the Customer environment to successfully enable customers to drive transition to AI Digital transformation.
You will lead consultative customer conversations and collaborate on the planning, orchestration and execution of end-to-end Frontline worker, Employee Experience, Teams Rooms and Phone, Next Generation Windows Experiences as well as Copilot opportunities with internal stakeholders and partners to cross-sell and up-sell.
This opportunity will allow you to learn and accelerate your career growth, honing your solution sales and collaboration skills and deepening your modern worker end-to-end expertise.
Responsibilities
Sales Excellence:
Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning, Rhythm of Business (ROB) meetings to review and plan for strategic accounts across territories.
Builds and transforms new markets by leveraging technical and industry expertise, partners, and resources. Leads a team to explore business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and facilitate customer innovation.
Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry. Proactively seeks training, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' business, and shares it with team members.
Manages the end-to-end business for strategic accounts across the organization. Leads forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling with on-strategy engagements in high propensity accounts. Mentors less experienced team members.
Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to lead business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business. Acts as a thought leader and clears opinions and perspectives from business analysis.
Reviews feedback report and sets long-term strategies aimed at maintaining levels of client satisfaction. Coaches others on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction by establishing recovery action plans to improve clients' overall experience. Manages and/or orchestrates sales and delivery success through the account team and pursuit team.
Sales Execution:
Orchestrates with team members on conducting personal campaigns to discover new opportunities and generate new leads. Leads conversations with strategic/high-potential customers (e.g., high budget, global account, highly competitive) along with account teams or partners. Facilitates the account team unit (ATU) and/or Specialist Team Unit (STU) to build pipeline in collaboration with partners and services. Guides others on social selling. Applies Microsoft's sales process (MSP) to determine the quality of the opportunity and whether to proceed, and educate the customers on how to best address their needs.
Drives consumption and grow business with existing strategic customers by initiating conversations, guiding others on demos or quotes, and the collaboration 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. Drives advanced workloads and usage.
Proactively builds and governs external stakeholder network and leverages internal partners to engage external stakeholders. Acts as a thought leader and subject matter advisor to the executive-level business decision makers at the customer's/partner's business. Guides others on identifying and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to expand the relationship with customers/partners.
Explores and assesses the needs of strategic/high-potential customers. Articulates business value and long-term implications for customer business. Collaborates with internal teams, partners, and services to lead the proposal or development of solutions that align with customer and Microsoft priorities. Analyzes market trends to identify opportunities for new solutions.
Brings impactful industry insights into customer engagements and closes deals with customers. Acts as a thought leader across solution areas to advise customers across business functions on digital transformation. Leads virtual transformational shifts to drive deployment and create business value for customers. May lead partner integration into account/territory planning and customer engagements. Provides thought leadership.
Develops strategies for driving and closing strategic and/or prioritized opportunities. Collaborates with account teams to ensure alignment with the account strategy and plan. Leads deal execution with the deal teams across the organization. Coaches others on the implementation of 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.
Scaling and Collaboration:
Leads the sales orchestration with internal stakeholders and partners (e.g., Enterprise Operating Unit). Applies a holistic approach to build network across territories. Positions opportunities to promote collaboration and participation.
Leads the planning and execution on opportunities with resources and partners to cross-sell and up-sell. Identifies, leverages, and coordinates partners and resources across solution areas. Validates partner solution relevance for customers. Provides input and feedback to One Commercial Partner (OCP) on developing partner strategies and connects the partner ecosystems to scale business results.
Technical Expertise:
Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft. Mentors others and develops strategies for best practice sharing across subsidiaries. Contributes ideas that can be instituted across Microsoft.
Posts information or speaks at external events drives conversations with prospective customers/partners as a thought leader across solution areas.
Leverages and shares competitor knowledge across solution areas as a subject matter expert to inform decisions on pursuit or withdrawal. Collaborates with the 'compete' global black belts (GBB) to proactively provide analysis of the competitive landscape in the supported solution area. Leads the communication to provide feedback to other teams (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) on future product trends or sales blockers.
Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
OR 7+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
Additional or preferred qualifications:
8+ years of solution or services sales experience.
Master's Degree in Business Administration (i.e., MBA), Information Technology, or related field AND 5+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, or related field.