Services Account Management

Job description

**Overview** Leads contributions of Account Team by guiding Services Sales account vision and strategic approach. Leads Industry Solutions (IS) account planning contribution with wider MCAPS account team, defines IS sales priorities provide input to overall account plan. Owns and maintains relationships, influences key decision makers and leads effective ROCs with stakeholders. Leverages insight from consulting account-delivery team to ensure awareness of status of projects in delivery. Drives and leverages for agreement with core account team, building and strengthening relationships with Microsoft partner teams through regular ROCs. Proactively builds and maintains up-to-date knowledge of multiple critical topics to meet customer needs and drive customer satisfaction. Leverages Microsoft Services Sales go-to-market scenarios to drive intentional customer conversations. Identifies, qualifies, leads, manages, and closes strategic industry cloud opportunities on prioritized accounts. Engages customers to co-develop on-time renewal plans and mitigate risks for non-renewal, leading renewal preparation calls, drafting proposals for Unified extensions, and coordinating any discount approvals. Orchestrates consulting-sales relationship with core account team, working closely with colleagues to ensure successful creation, maintenance, and execution of Services Sales account plan. Confirms BANT information to determine progression or lack thereof of a lead and throughout the Microsoft sales process. **Responsibilities** Accelerate Growth Engages customers well in advance of Unified contract expiration to co-develop on-time renewal plans and mitigate risks for non-renewal, leading renewal preparation calls, drafting proposals for Unified extensions, and coordinating any discount approvals. Coordinates discussions with customer success account managers (CSAMs) on verifying value delivered and identifying expansion opportunities for support contracts through enhanced solutions. Up-sells existing Unified customers to multi-year and higher-tier support options. Leads acquisition of new Unified contracts with customers. Identifies, qualifies, leads, manages, and closes strategic industry cloud opportunities on prioritized accounts aligned to documented customer business value and outcomes. Has in-depth knowledge of advanced cloud solutions and cross-check with the solutions of key competitors. Drives advanced workloads and usage. Accelerates Microsoft Cloud differentiation (e.g., security, AI) against competitors and wins more market share. Facilitates Unified contract renewals and multi-year agreements with rigorous T-minus planning (e.g., T-90 days). Increases customer business value with advanced technology (e.g., AI) and drives consumption. Leverages Microsoft Services Sales go-to-market scenarios to drive intentional customer conversations about Microsoft Cloud adoption, new AI and cloud solution offerings, renewing and growing Unified support agreements, and attaching enhanced solutions to product sales. Provides feedback on required go-to-market scenarios based on local market requirements and opportunities. Educates senior decision makers of assigned account(s) (e.g., director-level) on Microsoft value propositions that bundle Unified and Consulting offerings, aligned to the customer’s priorities and maturity, appropriately differentiating competitor solutions. Proactively identifies and engages other stakeholders who are key influencers of decision makers. Proactively builds and maintains up-to-date knowledge of customer's business priorities, risks and challenges, internal landscape (e.g., organization structure, stakeholders, business performance), industry/sector challenges, regulations, trends, and futures (e.g., impact of AI, sustainability) to meet customer needs and drive customer satisfaction. Proactively connects with internal and external network of industry experts to build industry knowledge and connections. Shares knowledge with virtual team. Account Team Orchestration Orchestrates the consulting-sales relationship with the core account team, working closely with Enterprise colleagues to ensure successful creation, maintenance, and execution of the Services Sales account plan, and a positive One Microsoft customer experience. Orchestrates and coordinates across the account team and customer success team effectively influencing and collaborating with account-aligned and solutions-aligned, pursuit and delivery colleagues including partners to bring the best resources to ensure customer success and satisfaction, successfully closing deals. Follows and champions the One Microsoft methodology (e.g., the common sales and delivery methodology for Microsoft). Deal Excellence Ensures all applicable leads and qualified opportunities are linked to customer priorities in the account plan. Maintains accurate sales stage, forecast recommendation (e.g., committed, committed at risk) and due dates in required systems of record (e.g., Microsoft Sales Experience [MSX]), in alignment with close plan. Consistently delivers on committed forecast recommendations. Coaches peers by providing guidance and tips on good practice for ensuring accuracy in deal commitment forecasting. Drives partnerships with relevant deal support and architects to ensure coding of all enhanced solutions and ISD packages within contracts and deals are aligned to customer needs and planned services. Uses required tooling to report out the state of the business. Maintains relationship with the customer to secure formal signing of contract and oversees the processing of that, including financial purchased orders. Drives smooth transition of sales-led accountabilities to delivery-led accountabilities through sales-to-delivery handoff, ensuring customer expectations are set and the delivery stakeholders have background information on the customer context. Support the delivery aspects with customers and delivery teams, and drives future opportunities. Once contract is signed and the Consulting engagement is in the delivery stage, supports tracking the Industry Solution Delivery (ISD) direct Azure impact (aligned with the consumption plan). Meets or exceeds personal Revenue-based incentive (RBI) targets and makes valuable contribution within team and beyond for broader impact. Contributes to win/loss reviews with sales and pursuit management, champions lessons learned activities to drive improvements and efficiency for customers and peers. Identifies repeatable intellectual property that could be replicated and sold to other customers, increasing the sales team's ability to scale the solution and grow market share. Drives customer success delivery reviews with customer success account managers (CSAMs), checking on project outcomes and support usage in order to identify new sales opportunities or issues. Drives the customer experience from sales, through delivery and support, and back to sales in a circular way according to the Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology (MCEM). Drives discussions of terms and conditions (e.g., scope, milestones, price) with executive-level customer stakeholders (e.g., CFO, CEO, elected officials, board level) for opportunities in collaboration with the entire account team and customer through multiple iterations to ensure agreement. Maintains productive working relationships with those involved in negotiation, persuading others, and driving a positive atmosphere during difficult objections and discussions. Partners with internal custom consulting experts and/or Deal & Contract Assist team for help with structuring deals and generating quotes for big and/or highly complex deals. Successfully leverages recognized techniques for handling difficult questions, overcoming objections, and respectfully challenging. Builds and executes negotiation activities into the close plan for the opportunity, based on guidance from broader team (e.g., business operations). Leverages customer connections and the account team's insight to confirm budget, authority, need and timeline (BANT) information to determine progression or lack thereof of a lead to become a Services Sales opportunity and throughout the Microsoft sales process. Leverages trusted customer stakeholder relationships to expand customer thinking. Probes and challenges customer appropriately to determine quality of customer service's BANT. Secures pre-sales investment to secure appropriate consulting resources needed to shape and scope the opportunity into a compelling customer proposition. Focuses on opportunities that are in alignment with organizational strategy, prioritizing opportunities based on highest potential for impact/consumption. Gains active contribution from others in building structured close plans (following internal customer engagement methodologies) for all qualified opportunities, initially (at qualified stage) comprising the core Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline (BANT) information and commercial strategy for the deal, and progressing to include detailed customer procurement process, risks, and issues. Updates the close plan as deal progresses through each sales stage. Obtains consensus and participation from entire account team to the close plan. Executes, updates, and closes on customer-centric actions that achieve alignment between Microsoft and customers. Builds and shares plans with the customer. Secures Microsoft virtual Consulting account team and customer stakeholder buy in to schedule of activities for successful closure of the deal. Anticipates potential risks and blockers and takes proactive action to mitigate to maintain deal velocity. Works with internal key stakeholders and approvers to ensure margin targets, consumption plans, and other key metrics are considered/met. Relationship Management Owns and maintains in agreement with the core account team customer and partner relationships, influences key decision makers and leads effective rhythms of connection with customer and partner stakeholders. Understands the customer environment and advises on which services in the catalog would be the right fit for the customer. Proactively sets expectations with customer on delivery of services to ensure aligned expectations to drive renewals and customer satisfaction. Builds and maintains relationships with appropriate networks of Microsoft decision makers and leaders, and successfully leverages them where needed for customer and partner success. Leverages insight from consulting account-delivery team to ensure awareness of status of projects in delivery. Provides feedback on how the services in the catalog would meet customer maturity and/or ability to receive services in partnership with pre-sales resources and customer success account managers (CSAMs). Plans regular consulting connections with customer to seek customer feedback and maintain proactive dialogue on overall consulting value provided, as well as relationship risks and issues. Anticipates issues/risks on customer satisfaction, determines the root cause of problems, removes blockers, and establishes recovery action plan to improve customer's overall experience. Facilitates C-suite connections between customer and Consulting to enable customers to provide feedback directly to Microsoft executives, and to develop customer/consulting executive relationships. Drives and leverages for agreement with the core account team, building and strengthening relationships with Microsoft partner teams, such as software and customer success teams, (e.g., Account Team Unit [ATU] and customer success account managers [CSAMs]), as well as the pursuit and delivery teams, through regular rhythm of connections. Brings expertise, insights, and perspectives from customer engagement to Microsoft business to drive deeper customer engagement. Facilitates discussions across the Account Team Unit (ATU), Specialist Team Unit (STU), Strategic Services (e.g., Strategic Consulting Team [SCT], Global Black Belts [GBB], Partner), and Customer Success Unit (CSU) for holistic execution of Services to lead cloud adoption, AI initiatives, and measurable customer outcomes. Contributes to and leads the Microsoft overall account teams, solution teams, and other partner groups. Strategy and Planning Leads the Industry Solutions account planning contribution with the wider Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) account team, defines Industry Solutions sales priorities to leverage insight and provide input to overall account plan. Proactively looks ahead and identifies actions required to develop Services Sales renewal/up-sell opportunities that are aligned with the account strategy, Microsoft's strategy, and Services Sales catalog go-to-market solution plays. Positions AI business solutions, cloud and AI platforms, and security solutions to enable a point-of-view and roadmap for deploying and supporting customer AI-first transformation. Leads Services Sales input to account-team planning sessions, follows the common sales and delivery methodology for Microsoft, and provides updates per required account-team governance and rhythms. Leads the mapping of which customer and/or partner accounts need Unified contract renewals within the quarter, where there are upsell opportunities, and which accounts have gaps in Services coverage based on existing or future customer positioning and FRA spend. Understands revenue drivers for other Microsoft business segments (e.g., Microsoft Azure Commit to Consume [MACC]) and aligns plans appropriately (e.g., cloud-success metrics, revenue-recognition timelines). Thinks strategically about Services Sales account planning for assigned accounts, setting standards and priorities, outlining where to and how to invest resources of the account management team and other stakeholders, engaging internal and external decision makers on long-term business planning, and anticipating needs of assigned accounts to turn enterprise accounts into strategic accounts. Leads the contributions of the Account Team by guiding the Services Sales account vision and strategic approach. Provides insights, ideas, and recommendations to address immediate and longer-term customer priorities to deliver, support and secure Microsoft products and objectives. Contributes to the overall One Microsoft strategy, driving for agreement with account team on Consulting and Partner strategy. Leverages appropriate tools, frameworks, and methodologies to develop a deliberate approach to position potential modernization, digital and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation, security, and support outcomes aligned with customer's priorities. Understands the weaknesses and strengths of competitor solutions and footprints and leverage this knowledge in strategy and planning to align Services Sales with Microsoft Field Revenue Accountability (FRA) and cloud objectives. **Qualifications** Required/minimum qualifications Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years consultative sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. finance, local government) or related work OR equivalent experience. Additional or preferred qualifications Bachelor's Degree in Business, Information Technology (IT), or related field AND 10+ years consultative sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. finance, local government) or related work OR equivalent experience. This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. --- Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about [**requesting accommodations.**](https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html)